“True North is indeed strong and free”
And you'd think it's a Ned Stark line from Game of Thrones. This illusion of liberty north of America still bends the knee... As the Canadian Parliament begins a new session with their monarch's consent.
King Charles III says Canada faces unprecedented dangers as Trump threatens annexation | by Rob Gillies | May 27, 2025 | Associated Press
OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — King Charles III said Canada is facing unprecedented challenges in a world that’s never been more dangerous as he opened the Canadian Parliament on Tuesday with a speech widely viewed as a show of support in the face of annexation threats by U.S. President Donald Trump.
The king is the head of state in Canada, which is a member of the Commonwealth of former colonies. Trump’s repeated suggestion that Canada become the 51st state prompted Prime Minister Mark Carney to invite Charles to give a speech from the throne outlining the Liberal government’s priorities for the new session of Parliament.
“We must face reality: since the Second World War, our world has never been more dangerous and unstable. Canada is facing challenges that, in our lifetimes, are unprecedented,” Charles said in French, one of Canada’s official languages.
He added that “many Canadians are feeling anxious and worried about the drastically changing world around them.”
The king reaffirmed Canada’s sovereignty, saying the “True North is indeed strong and free.”
Trump seemed to respond to the king’s visit later Tuesday, writing that if Canada becomes the “cherished 51st State” it won’t have to pay to join his future Golden Dome missile defense program.
“It will cost $61 Billion Dollars if they remain a separate, but unequal, Nation, but will cost ZERO DOLLARS if they become our cherished 51st State. They are considering the offer!,” Trump posted on social media.
A rare moment
It’s rare for the monarch to deliver the speech from the throne in Canada. Charles’ mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, did it twice. The king noted that it had been nearly 70 years since his mother first opened Parliament.
The visit to Canada was Charles’ first as king and his 20th overall.
“Canada has dramatically changed: repatriating its constitution, achieving full independence and witnessing immense growth. Canada has embraced its British, French and Indigenous roots and become a bold, ambitious, innovative country that is bilingual, truly multicultural,” the monarch said.
The king said that among the priorities for the government is protection of the French language and Quebec culture, which are at the heart of Canadian identity.
He said when his mother opened a new session of Canadian Parliament in 1957, World War II remained a fresh, painful memory and the Cold War was intensifying.
“Freedom and democracy were under threat,” he said. “Today, Canada faces another critical moment.”
The speech isn’t written by the king or his U.K. advisers, as Charles serves as a nonpartisan head of state. He read what was put before him by Canada’s government, but can make some remarks of his own.
Underscoring Canada’s sovereignty
Canadians are largely indifferent to the monarchy, but Carney has been eager to show the differences between Canada and the United States.
After the United States gained independence from Britain, Canada remained a colony until 1867, and afterward continued as a constitutional monarchy with a British-style parliamentary system.
The king’s visit clearly underscores Canada’s sovereignty, Carney said.
Carney won the job of prime minister by promising to confront the increased aggression shown by Trump and made his first official trip to London and Paris, the capital cities of Canada’s two founding nations.
Carney is eager to diversify trade, and the king said Canada can build new alliances. More than 75% of Canada’s exports go to the U.S., and Trump has threatened sweeping tariffs on Canadian products.
Tense relationship with the U.S.
Just a few days ago the new U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, said that sending messages to the U.S. isn’t necessary. He said Canadians should move on from the 51st state talk, telling the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that if there’s a message to be sent, there are easier ways — such as calling him or Trump.
“Move on. If the Canadians want to keep talking about it — that’s their business. I’m not talking about it; Donald Trump is not talking about it,” he said then.
The king said Canada must protect Quebec’s dairy supply management industry, which Trump has attacked in trade talks.
And he said the Canadian government will protect the country’s sovereignty by reinvesting in the Canadian Armed Forces. Trump has asserted that Canada doesn’t spend enough on its military.
Pomp and ceremony
A horse-drawn carriage took Charles and Queen Camilla to the Senate of Canada Building for the speech. It was accompanied by 28 horses. After inspecting a 100-person honor guard and receiving a 21-gun salute, the king entered the building as the crowd cheered.
Former Canadian Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper were among those in attendance.
The king returned to the U.K. after the speech and a visit to Canada’s National War Memorial.
“Thank you for coming,” one voice called from the crowd as the royal couple moved toward their motorcade.
Justin Vovk, a Canadian royal historian, said the king’s visit reminded him of when Queen Elizabeth II opened the Parliament in Grenada, a member of the Commonwealth, in 1985. A U.S.-led force invaded the islands in October 1983 without consulting the British government following the killing of Grenada’s Marxist prime minister, Maurice Bishop.
Charles is also the king of the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica and others — 14 realms in total. He exercises no political power in any of them.
https://apnews.com/article/canada-king-charles-speech-parliament-carney-8974156597e4cea19e1f25394953e45a
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Carney Taps King Charles to Signal Canadian Strength to Trump | by Stephen Maher | May 27, 2025 | TIME
King Charles III is not just monarch of the United Kingdom, he is also the putative ruler of 14 other Commonwealth realms—including Canada. In that role, he paid a heavily freighted visit to his northern realm this week to deliver a message to the leader of the republic to the south.
In an act of prime ministerial ventriloquism, Prime Minister Mark Carney had Charles deliver Canada’s throne speech, a ceremony in which elected politicians sit humbly in the presence of a ceremonial figurehead who reads words written by the politician who is actually in charge.
Normally, this duty is discharged by the governor general, a Canadian who represents the monarch in Canada. Mary Simon—Canada’s first Indigenous governor general—would, in the normal course of events, read the speech in a little-noticed event in the sleepy Senate chamber.
But these are not normal circumstances. Rather than having Simon do the job, Carney had Charles and Queen Camilla fly in, travel to Parliament Hill in a horse-drawn carriage behind an honour guard of Mounties in a show of regal pageantry not seen in the capital since Charles’ late mother, Elizabeth, opened Parliament in 1977.
Charles’s presence in Ottawa was unusual. It was his 21st trip to Canada, but the first time in which he appeared in Parliament to kick off a parliamentary session with a throne speech. There was a happy and friendly crowd there to greet the royal visitors, breaking out into impromptu rounds of “O Canada” as they waited for the royal procession, but the monarchical fever has not spread far beyond the parliamentary precinct.
Most Canadians have apathetic, if not negative, feelings about the monarchy, an institution that seems increasingly distant as the country’s cultural links to Great Britain grow weaker. A poll this week found that 83% of Canadians “don’t really care,” about Charles’s visit. But the seemingly archaic constitutional structures suddenly looked useful to the people running the country.
Because President Donald Trump has been threatening to annex Canada, something that he seems to believe was possible given Canada’s comparatively small military, Canadians have been by turns fretful and intent on showing their resolve. Inevitably, they looked for support from the mother country, home of their head of state. But UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer has been criticized for repeatedly failing to speak up for Canadian independence. His ministers apparently pleaded with Canada to keep Charles from saying anything that might damage the relationship with the UK. But Charles is the king of Canada, as well as the UK, and Starmer could not have stopped him from going, even if he wanted to do so.
When Starmer himself visited the White House in February, hunting for a trade deal, his perfunctory gift was an invitation from the King for Trump, who described Charles as a “beautiful man, a wonderful man.” Having observed Trump's taste for all things gold and royal, Carney used Charles to send a clear signal to Trump: the King is with us.
Charles, who is strictly limited by long constitutional tradition on what he can say about anything political (practically nothing) repeatedly demonstrated his support for Canada with coded symbols—at least until he could show up in person and deliver the message in person. Carney, speaking through Charles, acknowledged that “many Canadians are feeling anxious and worried about the drastically changing world around.”
Through his presence, Charles reminded Canadians that Canada has a different, and independent, constitutional tradition. Through his words, he sent a signal to Trump, who Carney likely hoped was paying attention.
“We must be clear-eyed: the world is a more dangerous and uncertain place than at any point since the Second World War,” Charles said, switching easily between English and French. “Canada is facing challenges that are unprecedented in our lifetimes."
There followed a recitation of Carney’s to-do list—including faster approvals for energy projects and an ambitious home-building program—before he circled back to deliver the main message again: "As the anthem reminds us: The True North is indeed strong and free."
The words came from Carney, but the Canadians were hoping that the intended recipient of the message, in the White House, will get the message: Canadians don’t want to be annexed.
Early in his second term, Trump seemed to hope for a groundswell of annexationist sentiment north of the border. However, there are now indications that Trump has realized that his northern neighbours would like to stick with their royal, perhaps albeit antiquated, traditions—and with their sovereignty.
In a tense but successful visit to the Oval Office earlier this month, Carney pointed out that some properties never go on the market: "We're sitting in one right now, Buckingham Palace that you visited, as well. And having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign the last several months, it's not for sale, it won't be for sale, ever."
Trump responded by saying “never say never.” But his new ambassador to Ottawa, Pete Hoekstra, has said that his marching orders have nothing to do with annexation, which suggests the American president may be ready to move on.
It would be foolish to predict how Trump will respond, or whether he will even notice, but Canadians and their monarch have done what they could to send the American president a clear message about their sovereignty.
Canada already has a King, and it’s not Trump.
https://time.com/7288894/carney-king-charles-signal-to-trump/
image 2 : Royally Indifferent: 83 per cent of Canadians say they ‘don’t care’ that King Charles will deliver throne speech
https://angusreid.org/king-charles-throne-speech-canada/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
