Canadian titles debate

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The Canadian titles debate has been ongoing since the adoption of the Nickle Resolution in 1919. This resolution marked the earliest attempt to establish a Canadian government policy forbidding the Sovereign from granting knighthoods, baronetcies, and peerages to Canadians, and set the precedent for later policies prohibiting Canadians from accepting or holding titles of honour from Commonwealth or foreign countries.

Its adoption and use as a precedent in the area of titular honours for Canadians is also an important part of the history of the creation of the Order of Canada in 1967, which was designed to bestow honours on those recipients whom the Government of Canada recommends that the Queen of Canada honour with membership in the Order, without endowing those recipients with titles.

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[edit] The Nickle Resolution

The Nickle Resolution was a motion brought forward by a Conservative Party Member of Parliament (MP), William Folger Nickle, who represented the Ontario constituency of Kingston in the Canadian House of Commons. Nickle was Chairman of a Special Committee of the House of Commons that had been struck to look at the question of honours. There had been controversy during World War I about the large number of Canadians being recommended for knighthoods and the qualifications of recipients, as well as the question of whether honours were compatible with a democratic society. As a result of the committee's deliberations, Nickle moved that an address be made to King George V, requesting that His Majesty no longer grant "any title of honour or titular distinction... save such appellations as are of a professional or vocational character or which appertain to an office" (hence, for example, the use of the style of The Honourable by various office-holders, and the form of address, Your Honour, for lieutenant-governors) and that all hereditary titles held by Canadians become extinct upon the death of the incumbent. The motion was carried by the House of Commons.

Note that "Canadians" in the above context refers to British subjects "domiciled or ordinarily resident" in Canada; Canadian citizenship did not yet exist at the time the resolution was passed.

As a resolution rather than an Act of Parliament or Order-in-Council, the Nickle Resolution is not legally binding on the government. However, it established a policy precedent whose application has had a varying degree of success and enforcement in governing the granting and use of titular honours in Canada, and of their receipt and use by Canadians, under successive Canadian governments with the exception of the government of R. B. Bennett which chose to ignore the resolution.

Enforcement of the latter point of the motion regarding restrictions on the inheritance of titles seems never to have been attempted. Canadian citizens may inherit and use British titular honours, as is reflected in the Canadian Almanac and Directory. One surviving Canadian titular honour, that of le baron de Longueuil, dating from 1700, was recognized by the British in the Treaty of Paris, 1763, through which France ceded Canada to Great Britain. This treaty provision was later exercised in 1880 when the title was confirmed by Queen Victoria (see Burke's Peerage and Baronetage under "Old Canadian Title"). The title descends to the heirs general of the first grantee, and as such survives today in the person of Dr Michael Grant, 12th Baron de Longueuil (b. 1947), the 12th Baron de Longueuil, a female-line descendant of Charles Le Moyne, the 1st Baron. On 10 May 2004, the city of Longueuil in the province of Quebec was granted arms by the Canadian Heraldic Authority based on the arms granted by King Louis XIV in 1668 to the father of the 1st Baron de Longueuil, the original Charles Le Moyne, sieur de Longueuil, in the presence of the Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec and Le Moyne's direct descendant, the late 11th Baron.

Some Canadian title holders do not employ their British- or French-derived titles in Canada. One such example being Kenneth Thomson who from his father's death in 1976 until his own death in 2006 held the hereditary peerage Baron Thomson of Fleet. Thomson once stated in an interview "In London I'm Lord Thomson, in Toronto I'm Ken. I have two sets of Christmas cards and two sets of stationery. You might say I'm having my cake and eating it too. I'm honouring a promise to my father by being Lord Thomson, and at the same time I can just be Ken," [1] It is noteworthy that not employing his title in Canada was his personal choice, rather than the result of any government legislation.

Just as in Britain, foreign titles (i.e., non-Canadian and non-Commonwealth titles), must be explicitly recognized by the Sovereign and licensed to be used in Her Majesty's realms, as in the case cited above regarding the barony de Longueuil. Such licences are no longer forthcoming from the Sovereign in any of her sixteen Commonwealth Realms except the United Kingdom. Thus, for example, titles granted by European rulers to people whose inheritors are now Canadian citizens would not be officially recognized by the Government of Canada, unless they were permitted by earlier royal licences.

Although the Nickle Resolution was adopted by the Canadian House of Commons, the humble address to the King meant to arise therefrom was never sent, nor was it advanced to the Senate to be voted on, lest it be defeated, which it was its expected fate, as it touched on a constitutional matter outside the competence of the House of Commons.

Nevertheless, by tacit Canadian government policy, there was an effective hiatus in the former practice whereby the King granted titles to Canadians, until the practice was revived by Conservative R. B. Bennett during the latter years of his prime ministership, 1930 to 1935.

Shortly after the end of a year of celebrations marking the centenary of Canada's nationhood, begun with the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, the policies enunciated in 1919 by the Nickle Resolution were reaffirmed when, in 1968, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson's government published "Regulations respecting the acceptance and wearing by Canadians of Commonwealth and foreign orders, decorations and medals".

These policies were again affirmed in 1988 when the government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney published "Policy Respecting the Awarding of an Order, Decoration or Medal by a Commonwealth or Foreign Government".

[edit] Origins

The Nickle Resolution's adoption by the Commons came about in answer to a controversy about the sale of honours, particularly those that involve the use of a title, because of their greater day-to-day public visibility. Rather than simply bestowing an honour, such as an honorary university degree, these honours alter the formal and official style by which an individual is known, or, to put it simply, gave them an 'honorific' prefix to their names, such as Sir or Lord.

At the time, the Canadian public was much exercised when it was revealed that third parties were using their influence in political circles to have the government of the day cause the King through prime ministerial recommendation manipulated outside normal channels to confer titles on their clients or cronies, for a fee. This practice did not only affect those who were Canadian subjects of the King in the pre-1947 period when Canadian citizenship, as such, did not exist; it was a phenomenon that potentially affected all British subjects at the time.

The Nickle Resolution was a motion put forward in the House of Commons by William Folger Nickle, a Conservative MP who would later serve as Attorney-General of Ontario. The press, particularly the Globe and Mail, had criticized what it characterized as a surfeit of knighthoods granted during World War I. The government appointed Nickle as head of a special committee of the House of Commons to examine the question of honours. Nickle concluded that the practice was inconsistent with democratic values and successfully moved a resolution through the House to end the practice of appointing Canadians to knighthoods and peerages. Nickle's detractors charged him with being motivated more by spite and chagrin over his failed attempted to garner a knighthood for his father-in-law, Daniel Gordon, the principal of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

The Nickle Resolution was passed shortly after the First World War in a nation that was deeply divided due, in part, to the Conscription Crisis of 1917. As well, the end of the war saw a burgeoning working class movement that resulted in actions such as the Winnipeg General Strike. The conferring of knighthoods and peerages, with their connotations of aristocracy, were inconsistent with demands for class equality. In addition, the sacrifices of World War I were seen by some as the crucible in which a national Canadian identity was created distinct from the sentiment of strong identity with the British Empire and "Britishness" that had previously predominated in English Canada and that was expressed in practices such as the conferral of honours.

Moreover, the use of political influence to obtain titles was understood as being a part of Canadian political reality at the time, no matter how much it was decried by party placemen when in opposition. That the outright sale of honours was occurring, however, was a revelation distasteful to most on the Canadian scene, and one against which bipartisan support was obtained.

Just as the sale of honours often involved the granting of titles to people who did not merit them, so too many in Canada and the rest of the British Empire were much exercised by the issue of war-profiteering, or making money out of the misery and slaughter of the First World War. The buying of honours was one way in which such war speculators and profiteers sought to gain respectability, and, further, socially-approved recognition within post-war society.

Against this backdrop, therefore, the Canadian aspects of the post-war sale-of-honours controversy struck a deep chord in Canada.

[edit] After the resolution

Continentalist and nationalist forces in Canada's political life grew in strength through the 1920s and particularly with the governments of William Lyon Mackenzie King who, following the King-Byng Affair, made it a priority at Imperial Conferences to insist on an end to imperial practices such as the role of the British government in appointing dominion Governors-General and demanding a recognition in law and in practice of Britain's equality to the dominions - seen in such agreements as the Balfour Declaration of 1926 that recognized the autonomy of the dominions.

It should be no surprise, therefore, that the Nickle Resolution was recognized as policy during King's long tenure as Prime Minister and that, despite the interval in which R. B. Bennett reinstituted the practice of recommending the conferral of titular honours, the Nickle Resolution was entrenched in government practice by the time King retired in 1948. Successive Canadian governments pursued an unwritten policy, reflective of the Nickle Resolution, whereby they did not recommend that more than a handful of even non-titular honours from within the existing British imperial and Commonwealth system of honours be bestowed on the Sovereign's Canadian subjects, both in the period from 1919 to 1932, and from 1935 to 1967.

In February 1929, during the Liberal ministry of William Lyon Mackenzie King, a debate was held on the question of titular honours in the House of Commons, specifically to put to the House the question of whether the Nickle Resolution ought to be reconsidered. This motion was defeated by the Liberal majority on 14 February 1929, thus reflecting the policy of the Liberal government and the prime minister of the day.

[edit] Granting of honours resumed

On 30 January 1934, however, Prime Minister Bennett said, when speaking about the Nickle Resolution and the shelf-life of Canadian parliamentary resolutions (Canadian Hansard):

"It has been a matter of passing comment, as pointed out by an eminent lawyer not long ago, that a resolution of a House of Commons which has long since ceased to be, could not bind future parliaments and future Houses of Commons."
"The power of a mere resolution by this house, if acceded to, would create such a condition that no principle which secures life or liberty would be safe. That is what Judge Coleridge pointed out."

Moreover, as a matter touching the royal prerogative, R. B. Bennett had already reported to the House of Commons the previous year, on 17 May 1933 (Hansard, p. 5126) that the Nickle Resolution was of no force or of null effect, stating:

"... it being the considered view of His Majesty's government in Canada that the motion, with respect to honours, adopted on the 22nd day of May, 1919, by a majority vote of the members of the Commons House only of the thirteenth parliament (which was dissolved on the 4th day of October, 1921) is not binding upon His Majesty or His Majesty's government in Canada or the seventeenth parliament of Canada."

On 30 January 1934, in speaking about his responsibility as Prime Minister to advise the King as the King's first minister, and about his own advice to the King that as prime minister he wished to continue the custom of advising His Majesty to bestow royal honours on His Majesty's Canadian subjects (which Conservative and Liberal administrations had chosen not to exercise for almost 15 years), Prime Minister Bennett said:

"The action [of recommending (or choosing not to recommend) people for titular honours] is that of the Prime Minister; he must assume the responsibility, and the responsibility too for advising the Crown that the resolution passed by the House of Commons was without validity, force, or effect, with respect to the Sovereign's prerogative. That seems to me to be reasonably clear."

To these official statements of Prime Minister R.B. Bennett can be added what he wrote in a 1934 letter to J.R. MacNicol, MP when he stated his view that:

"So long as I remain a citizen of the British Empire and a loyal subject of the King, I do not propose to do otherwise than assume the prerogative rights of the Sovereign to recognize the services of his subjects."

Moreover, as Bennett stated to Parliament about the Nickle Resolution (see Hansard):

"That was as ineffective in law as it is possible for any group of words to be. It was not only ineffective, but I am sorry to say, it was an affront to the Sovereign himself. Every constitutional lawyer, or anyone who has taken the trouble to study this matter realizes that that is what was done."

R.B. Bennett's government submitted honours lists to the King every year from 1933 onward, recommending that various prominent Canadians receive knighthoods, including the Chief Justice of Canada, Sir Lyman Poore Duff, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Commissioner Sir James Howden MacBrien, Sir Frederick Banting, the discoverer of insulin, and Sir Ernest MacMillan, composer and conductor.

When a vote was called on 14 March 1934, on a private member's bill to require the prime minister to cease making recommendations to the King for titles, this renewed Nickle-like Resolution was defeated 113 to 94. The Canadian House of Commons, by this vote, refused to reaffirm or reinstate the Nickle Resolution or its attempts to prevent the Prime Minister's involvement in the exercise of the Royal Prerogative of granting titles to Canadians. This is the last time that the lower house of Parliament ever voted on the issue (although the Leader of the Opposition, Stockwell Day, MP, called for a parliamentary debate on the matter in 2001 in an attempt to curtail what he described as the arbitrary exercise of prime ministerial power in this regard).

[edit] Mackenzie King reaffirms ban

When Liberal prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King returned to power in 1935, he ignored the precedent set by Bennett's government, and the parliamentary vote, instead resuming the former, unspoken, prime ministerial policy, based on the Nickle Resolution. The no-honours policy of successive Canadian governments, has been in effect ever since. Noteworthy, however, is the fact, when Bennett left power in 1935, no attempt was made to forbid the use of the titular honours by those who had been granted them by the King at Bennett's recommendation.

As to the fate of Prime Minister Bennett, he outlived the return of Mackenzie King to the prime ministership in 1935. Indeed as late as 1941, three years after his retirement from the Canadian House of Commons in which he had served as Prime Minister of Canada (1930-1935), and Leader of the Opposition (1935-1938), he was elevated to the British House of Lords, as "1st Viscount Bennett, of Mickleham in the county of Surrey, Hopewell in the province of New Brunswick, and Calgary in the province of Alberta". This was a reflection of British policy at the time of conceding viscountcies to retired dominion prime ministers, if recommended. Retiring British prime ministers were normally offered earldoms.

[edit] Conrad Black vs Jean Chrétien

The best-known modern application of the Nickle Resolution occurred when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien used it to prevent Canadian publishing mogul Conrad Black from becoming a British life peer. Chrétien held that, in spite of the fact that the British government was honouring Black as a British citizen, and that Black then held dual citizenship of Canada and Britain (allowed since 1977), he as prime minister of Canada had the right to keep Black from enjoying one of his rights as a British citizen because he was also a Canadian citizen.

In light of the controversy surrounding the possible elevation of Conrad Black to the House of Lords, it was revealed in one magazine, to Chrétien's avowed surprise, that, in June of that year (2001):

"two men, (one of whom was born in Canada), but both holding dual British and Canadian citizenships, were granted titles by the Queen."
"Mr Chrétien, incensed about British Prime Minister Blair's 'lack of consultation', in an angry letter to Mr Blair, reminded him of the now-famous Nickle Resolution (even though apparently overridden by a later vote of the House of Commons), and stated that 'conferring titles on Canadians is not compatible with the ideals of democracy as they have developed in Canada.'"

The magazine continued:

"The fact is, however, these two recent recipients of the British titles had dual British and Canadian citizenships. Although Mr Black did not have British (dual) citizenship at the time he first sought a title, he had acquired (dual) British citizenship before Mr Chrétien spoke out against his receiving a title."

In the end, Welsh-born computer entrepreneur Sir Terry Matthews (b. 1943) and Winnipeg-born Sir George Sayers Bain (b. 1939), head of Queen's University in Belfast, both Canadian citizens but British residents, were honoured with the receipt of knighthoods from the Queen. The Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley sent diplomatic protests to London against the British government's interference in Canadian affairs.

Chrétien was quoted by a British Broadcasting Corporation report of 11 June 2001, as saying, "What I and the government object to is that, by conferring the knighthoods without seeking the agreement of the Canadian government, you have not taken into account the Canadian government policy with regard to how Canadian citizens should be honoured."

The British government, however, begged to differ on the grounds that it was honouring its own citizens who only happened to be Canadians as well.

Moreover, Black's supporters argued that Canada did not object to the granting of honours to dual citizens such as Ontario native Sir Bryant Godman Irvine (1909-1992), deputy speaker of the British House of Commons (1976-1982) who was knighted in 1986. So too was a prominent Quebecker, the British and Canadian industrialist, Sir Neil McGowan Shaw (b. 1929) in 1994. Finally, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's own personal expert on Canadian symbols, the British Columbia-born historian and author of Canada: Symbols of Sovereignty (University of Toronto Press, 1977), Sir Conrad Michael John Fisher Swan, KCVO, was knighted by the Queen when he was serving in the Royal Household as Garter Principal King of Arms (1992-1995), the chief heraldic officer at London's College of Arms.

Backed by information of this kind, Black took the Prime Minister to court. The court upheld the government's interpretation of the Nickle Resolution, stating that Chrétien's exercise of such powers was entirely within the discretion of the Prime Minister in whose prerogatives it declined to interfere on the grounds that to do so it [the court] would be ultra vires. Rather than take the matter further to the Supreme Court of Canada, Black gave up his Canadian citizenship, and was duly created Baron Black of Crossharbour in 2001 as a naturalized British citizen. For further details of this matter, see the link to The New Yorker magazine article below.

[edit] Exceptions and anomalies

Even in the immediate aftermath of the Nickle Resolution's non-binding adoption in 1921 titular honours were granted to subjects of the King who remained residents of Canada, and such honours were passed on to their legal inheritors (see below under the case of Sir James Hamet Dunn, 1st Baronet).

The prime minister of the day, Sir Robert Laird Borden, GCMG had already been knighted in 1914, five years before the adoption of the resolution.

That the Nickle Resolution posed little impediment to honouring further Canadians with titles after its adoption is illustrated by the example of the baronetcy granted to Canadian steel magnate, Sir James Hamet Dunn. He was created a baronet by King George V on 13 January 1921 (and his son Sir Philip Dunn, 2nd Baronet, inherited his father's baronetcy at the latter's 1956 death). At the time, the same parliament that had adopted the Nickle Resolution was still in session. It follows that such a resolution, had it had any binding nature, would have been in effect at least until the dissolution of the 13th parliament on 14 October 1921. The Nickle Resolution, however significant its passage by the House of Commons in 1919 may have appeared to be, was not an effective instrument by which to establish the legal and constitutional precedent reflective of Canada's desire to see an end to the practice of granting titular honours, knighthoods, baronetcies, or peerages, to Canadians by Canada's monarch. It would take later prime ministers to do that. Even now, the policy remains essentially an ad hoc or interim policy of successive prime ministers from 1935 onward, and does not carry the weight of law.

"If we are to have no titles, titular distinctions or honours in Canada, let us hold to the principle and have none, let us abolish them altogether; but if the sovereigns or heads of other countries are to be permitted to bestow honours on Canadians, for my part I think we owe it to our own sovereign to give him that prerogative before all others." Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, House of Commons, 12 Feb 1929.
"...it being the considered view of His Majesty's government in Canada that the motion, with respect to honours, adopted on the 22nd day of May, 1919, by a majority vote of the members of the Commons House only of the thirteenth parliament (which was dissolved on the 4th day of October, 1921) is not binding upon His Majesty or His Majesty's government in Canada or the seventeenth parliament of Canada." Prime Minister Richard B. Bennett, 17 May 1933.
"In other words, it asks the sovereign, by resolution of the House of Commons, to cease to exercise his prerogative in Canada. That was as ineffective in law as it is possible for any group of words to be. It was not only ineffective but I am sorry to say, it was an affront to the sovereign himself......The action is that of the Prime Minister; he must assume the responsibility, and the responsibility too for advising the crown that the resolution passed by the House of Commons was without validity, force or effect with respect to the sovereign's prerogative. That seems to me to be reasonably clear." Prime Minister Richard B. Bennett, 30 Jan 1934.

The Government of Canada made no objection when, near the end of the Second World War in 1945, British prime minister, Winston Churchill, recommended that the King bestow a knighthood on the British Commonwealth and Empire's invaluable spymaster, the Winnipeg-born Sir William Stephenson, known also as the "Quiet Canadian", whose exceptional war-time career was made famous by the book The Man Called Intrepid. Stephenson is Canada's largely forgotten war hero who served as an important model for the fictional James Bond. Churchill described the honour he sought from the King for Stephenson as "one dear to my heart", such was his [Churchill's] sense of gratitude for the largely unsung work of Stephenson in the secret aspect of the fight against fascism and tyranny. Years later, Sir William was given Canada's highest honour in being made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1979.

Also honoured with knighthood following the Nickle Resolution was Sir Frederick Banting, the Canadian medical doctor who co-won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for creating insulin. This knighthood was awarded by King George V in 1934.

Another significant example of government indecision over the matter of titular honours was reported in the Canadian magazine, Saturday Night, which published an article about how, in 1959, Progressive Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker almost allowed a lifting, after over 20 years, of the Canadian prime minister's moratorium on asking the Sovereign to bestow titular honours on Canadians.

When reappointing the popular Vincent Massey, who was the first Canadian to serve as the country's highest viceregal representative, to stay on for a further, extended period as Governor General of Canada, there was talk of asking the Queen to honour Canada by making Massey a Knight of the Garter, just as Churchill had been honoured at the end of the war. At the last minute, however, Diefenbaker decided against asking the Queen of Canada to confer this honour on her chief Canadian subject.

A different example was that of Sir Edwin Leather, KCMG, KCVO, LLD, the Toronto-born Governor of Bermuda. He arrived in Britain with the Canadian Army in 1940, and stayed on after World War II to become a Conservative Member of Parliament

After the murder of Sir Richard Sharples, the Bermudian viceroy, Sir Edwin was appointed to the vacant colonial governorship at the recommendation of the government of British Prime Minister Edward Heath. When Sir Edwin was knighted in 1962, it seems that as he had not been resident in Canada since 1940, he was not made to renounce his citizenship in his native country, a citizenship, moreover, which had not existed, per se, until 1947, some seven years after Sir Edwin's arrival on British soil.

In addition to this extra-territorial anomaly, even today the Governor General of Canada is actively involved in the creation of knights and dames via one of the recognized orders (see Order of Merit) within the Canadian honours system. His or Her Excellency presides over the Canadian branch of the Order of St John and confers knighthoods and damehoods on some of its members in ceremonies at which the Governor General performs the act of investing new recipients with their honour. Persons so honoured are, however, officially prohibited from publicly employing the usual knightly accolade of "Sir" or "Dame" followed by their personal and family names, and the claim is made that the honour of knighthood or damehood is conferred without the Queen or Her Governor General's concession of any appellative accolade, thus avoiding the bestowal of any titular honour.

Continuing controversy about Conrad Black's career has done nothing to diminish negative opinions about allowing titles of honour to be conferred by the Queen on any of Her Majesty's Canadian subjects. During the premiership of Tony Blair at least two persons holding dual Canadian and British citizenship were granted titular honours by the Crown before the Black peerage issue, which brought the matter to the Canadian prime minister's attention.

In February 2004, the Department of International Trade announced the impending visit to Sydney of Sir Terry Matthews, with a press release that included the following passage: "Sir Terry is the Chairman of Mitel Networks.... In 1994, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire and was awarded a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours, 2001."

Prime Ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King, John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, have themselves been recipients of Commonwealth honours. Diefenbaker and Trudeau were both made members of the Order of the Companions of Honour. Pearson and Mackenzie King were made members of the Order of Merit, and Pearson also held the distinction of being an officer of the Order of the British Empire. None of these honours was accompanied by more than some postnominal letters, but all three received among the highest non-titular honours available from their sovereign in cases where their own exercise of the prohibition of titular honours meant that they themselves could not receive such titular marks of distinction to honour their service in high national office.

Currently there are two Canadian Companions of Honour: General John de Chastelain (appointed in 1999), and University of Toronto Professor Anthony Pawson (appointed in 2006, invested in October 2006). Both men were born as British subjects but became naturalized Canadians decades ago. Both have also been honoured under the Canadian Honours System with de Chastelain being made an Officer of the Order of Canada and Commander of the Order of Military Merit, and Pawson, being created an Officer of the Order of Canada and Member of the Order of Ontario. Neither appointment caused any noticeable debate in Canada.

Former Governor General of Canada Jeanne Sauvé in 1984 was sworn in as a Dame of Justice in the most Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem in Great Britain while she visited the Queen in 1984. This was in addition to being a Dame Grand Cross and Chief of the Order in Canada during her tenure as Governor General. Two other governors general, Vincent Massey and Roland Michener, received the Royal Victorian Chain, another honour within the personal gift of the Queen, but one which does not bestow any title or postnominal letter though it is seen as a mark of the Queen's greatest respect.

On 2 November 1999, Canadian Senator Anne Cools brought to the Senate of Canada's notice the discrepancy in policy on Orders for English Canadians, and Orders for French Canadians:

"Honourable senators, the sovereign of France, the President, conferred the Ordre Royale de la Légion d'Honneur on Quebecer Robert Gagnon just two weeks ago, and on Premier René Lévesque in 1977, while he was Premier of Quebec. No doubt Premier Lévesque would have frowned on any anglophone premier being knighted "Sir" by the Queen of Canada."

In addition, on 4 November 1999, she brought to the Senate's notice the fact that in the first decade alone after the Nickle Resolution was debated, there were:

"many distinguished Canadians who have received 646 orders and distinctions from foreign non-British, non-Canadian sovereigns between 1919 and February 1929."

As well, Canadians whose ancestors were United Empire Loyalists are entitled to the initials U.E. after their names.

Statistics are not available on the total numbers of titular and non-titular honours that Canadians throughout their country's history.

[edit] Titular honours elsewhere in today's Commonwealth: a comparison

Australia is another Commonwealth Realm that at present does not allow the conferring of titular honours on its citizens, except where those honours are conferred personally by the Sovereign (however, in practice, Her Majesty does not confer titular honours)` though this occurred after the creation of the Order of Australia, which initially included grades that bestowed knighthoods and damehoods. Additionally, even once the Commonwealth of Australia government had ceased making recommendations for the Australian quota of the British honours list, the governments of the various states of the Australian federation were free to do so, and notably in the case of the State of Queensland, continued to do so for some years.

Of course, the Australian states have a constitutional relationship to the Australian federal government that is different from the Canadian provinces' standing vis-à-vis Canada's federal power. The Australian states have governors while Canadian provinces have lieutenant-governors, reflecting the greater prerogative powers held by the states vis-à-vis the provinces in their respective relations with the central government.

This said, many of the provinces of Canada initiated their own honours systems, without titles, and without the permission of the Canadian federal government, and one, the province of Quebec, even did so without the inclusion of the Sovereign's representative in any aspect of its Order or investitures.

In the case of other Commonwealth countries such as the United Kingdom, Jamaica and Papua New Guinea, titular honours are still conferred for the time being, though the UK under Tony Blair had been toying with the idea of abolishing them - both life and hereditary[citation needed] - altogether, despite the fact that the Blair government had, for example, recommended the creation of more life peerages than any of its predecessors[citation needed]. Indeed, there have been reports in the British press of the sale of honours to Britons making large financial contributions to Mr. Blair's Labour Party coffers, thus raising the hackles of egalitarians in his own party. Peerage watchers and historians note that such a scandal about the sale of honours occurred in the 1930s in the famous Maundy Gregory affair. Jamaica has, in addition, its own Order of the Nation, which confers a title on its bearer.

The New Zealand government bestowed titular honours on its citizens until 2000, when, under a Labour government, it discontinued its recommendations to the Queen of New Zealand to confer knighthoods or damehoods on members of the New Zealand Order of Merit, replacing the two higher grades of the Order which had hitherto bestowed the chivalric accolade with simple postnominals as indicative of membership therein, in an effort to make this Order more like the one-grade Order of New Zealand, which never conferred a title on its recipients. As in Australia, Her Majesty may continue to make titular awards in the Royal Victorian Order, the Order of the Thistle and the Order of the Garter, since these Orders are within the Sovereign's prerogative.

New Zealanders who received New Zealand's former titular honours prior to 2000 may continue to employ them, but these ranks have been replaced by grades of the Orders concerned which do not confer titular honours. Also, New Zealanders still have (limited) access to certain British state orders, including the Order of the Garter and others, meaning that titular honours are not totally outside of the New Zealand honours system.

One New Zealand opposition Member of Parliament lampooned the highest grade of the altered Order, Principal Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (PCNZM), as standing for "Politically-Correct New Zealand which once was a Monarchy".

There have been calls for the abolition of the New Zealand honours system, restoration of titular honours, and for the restoration of the British honours system, which was the case prior to the middle of 1996.

Antigua and Barbuda created its own honours system in 1998 with its two highest orders, the Order of the National Hero and the Order of the Nation bestowing titular honours.

[edit] See also

[edit] References