The Queen visited Canada more than any other country during her long reign

The Canadian Press

Published

2 years ago

10 minute read

By Michael MacDonald in Halifax

It wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest the Queen held a special place in her heart for Canada.

As an ardent world traveller, she visited this country more than any other during her reign, and she was in the habit of referring to it as home.

If you include overnight visits and aircraft refuelling stops, the Queen visited Canada no less than 31 times since her coronation in June 1952, according to the Canadian Heritage Department.

In second place is Australia with 18 visits, including stopovers, according to the The Royal Family’s official website.

“I think she really developed a warm affection for us,” says Barry MacKenzie, a spokesman for the Monarchist League of Canada. “She’s done a marvellous job of taking advantage of all of those opportunities to meet Canadians and to develop a taste for life here.”

Here are some highlighfts from her visits:

1. Fall 1951

Royal watchers say the Queen’s close relationship with Canada started even before she acceded to the throne.

On Oct. 8, 1951, Princess Elizabeth arrived at Montréal–Dorval International Airport, where she was met by 15,000 people on the tarmac.

Over the next 33 days, the princess and her husband, Prince Philip, travelled across the country and back again, visiting a total of 60 communities and every province.

She took in hockey games in Montreal and Toronto, made a side trip to Washington, D.C., to visit U.S. President Harry Truman, and square danced at Rideau Hall.

The quiet, 25-year-old princess and the gregarious prince were met by large crowds wherever they went, with some reports suggesting that one million people turned out to see them in Toronto and even more showed up in Montreal.

“It was an incredible feat of stamina,” says MacKenzie, a history instructor at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S.

“People recognized that this young woman was next in line …. And she also had the added bonus of having a husband who was a war hero. They were young. They were beautiful.”

At the end of the tour, in a farewell radio message broadcast from St. John’s, N.L., Princess Elizabeth referred to Canada as her “second home.”

“Wherever we have been throughout the 10 provinces … we have been welcomed with a warmth of heart that has made us feel how truly we belong to Canada.”

—

2. Fall 1957

The Queen’s first official visit to Canada was a high-profile, four-day tour that included her first ever televised speech, broadcast live from Rideau Hall on Oct. 13, 1957.

The next day, she officially opened a new session of Parliament by reading the speech from the throne in the Senate chamber, with Prince Philip at her side.

It was the first time a reigning monarch opened the Canadian Parliament. The speech was also carried live on television.

—

3. Summer 1959

The longest royal tour in Canadian history was a gruelling, 45-day marathon that started on June 18, 1959 in eastern Newfoundland.

The highlight of the visit was the official opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway on June 26, when the Queen was joined by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia at the lift-lock near St. Lambert, Ont.

Five days later, on Canada Day, the Queen delivered a televised address from a sunny veranda at Rideau Hall.

“If I have helped you feel proud of being Canadian, I shall feel well satisfied, because I believe with all conviction that this country can look to a glorious future,” she said.

The Queen and Philip travelled to every province and both territories, logging 24,000 kilometres.

“This is the first time since she became Queen that everyone in Canada had the opportunity to see her,” says MacKenzie. “And it’s the last time that we see one of these huge undertakings.”

The official itinerary included a trip to the Calgary Stampede, where Philip donned a cowboy hat, and numerous stops along the Great Lakes, including a trip to the World’s Fair in Chicago.

On the last leg of their tour, the young couple made an unscheduled stop in eastern New Brunswick to meet the families of fishermen who died on the night of June 20-21 when a hurricane roared over the Northumberland Strait. The brutal storm capsized more than two dozen fishing boats, killing 35 men and boys — most of them from the village of Escuminac.

At Pointe-du-Chêne, N.B., the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh met with 16 grieving widows and their families on July 29.

Among them was a “tiny grey-haired woman in black, surrounded by 12 of her 18 surviving children,” The Canadian Press reported at the time.

“(She) sat on a Northumberland Strait wharf …. and blinked back the tears as she received a sympathetic smile and kind word from Queen Elizabeth.”

—

4. Summer 1967

The Queen and Prince Philip spent six days in Ottawa and Montreal to celebrate Canada’s centennial.

Under bright sunshine on Parliament Hill, 50,000 people watched as the Queen cut into a gigantic birthday cake decorated with the coat of arms of each province and territory.

And in Montreal, the Queen rode the automated monorail that was part of the Expo 67 international exhibition.

That brief visit was marked by tight security as organizers wanted to avoid what happened in 1964 when the Queen’s visit to Quebec City was marred by waves of police using truncheons to round up separatist protesters who were shouting slogans and singing irreverent songs.

—

5. Spring 1982

A four-day tour of Ottawa culminated in a ceremony on a sleet-soaked Parliament Hill, where the Queen joined Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to sign the proclamation of the Constitution Act

The act gives the Canadian Parliament the right to amend the constitution without the approval of the British Parliament.

The Act’s passage, marked by royal assent from the Queen on April 17, 1982, signalled the last stage of Canada’s political evolution from colony to fully independent state.

But it did not signal the end of the monarchy in Canada. Far from it. The Queen remained Canada’s head of state and she retained her title as Queen of Canada.

“She wasn’t signing a document and giving us our freedom,” says MacKenzie. “This was the Queen of Canada signing an act that had been passed in her name in the Canadian Parliament …. It was not a declaration of independence.”

—

6. Summer 2010

On the Queen’s final visit to Canada, she told a crowd in Halifax exactly how she felt about this vast part of her realm.

“It is very good to be home,” she said on June 28 as she started a nine-day tour that would also take her to Ottawa, Winnipeg, Waterloo, Ont., and Toronto.

“My mother once said that this country felt like a home away from home for the Queen of Canada …. I am pleased to report that it still does.”

In Ottawa, she celebrated Canada Day with a crowd of 70,000 on Parliament Hill, where she took a more wistful tone in her speech.

“During my lifetime, I have been witness to this country for more than half its history since Confederation,” she said. “I have watched with enormous admiration how Canada has grown and matured while remaining true to its history, its distinctive character and its values.”

In her book, “A Royal Couple in Canada,” author Allison Lawlor says that on each of the Queen’s many visits to Canada, she “succeeded in gracefully lifting Canadians out of their everyday lives for a few moments.”

“Not only has she witnessed the growth of Canada, but generations of Canadians have watched the progression in her life as she moved from being their beautiful princess on her first visit in 1951, to a young mother raising four children, to a dignified Queen, and … as an elder, worldly stateswoman.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 8, 2022.

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Business

Taxpayer watchdog calls Trudeau ‘out of touch’ for prioritizing ‘climate change’ while families struggle

Published on November 23, 2024

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The prime minister told a G20 panel this week that fighting so-called ‘climate change’ should be more important to families than putting food on the table or paying rent.

Canada’s leading taxpayer watchdog blasted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for being completely “out of touch” with everyday Canadians after the PM earlier this week suggested his climate “change” policies, including a punitive carbon tax, are more important for families than trying to stay financially afloat.

In speaking to LifeSiteNews, Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) federal director Franco Terrazzano said Trudeau’s recent comments show his government “continues to prove it’s out of touch with its carbon tax.”

“Canadians don’t support the carbon tax because we know it makes life more expensive and it doesn’t help the environment,” Terrazzano told LifeSiteNews.

Terrazzano’s comments come after Trudeau told a G20 panel earlier this week that fighting so-called “climate change” should be more important to families than putting food on the table or paying rent.

Speaking to the panel, Trudeau commented that it is “really, really easy” to “put climate change as a slightly lower priority” when one has “to be able to pay the rent this month” or “buy groceries” for their “kids,” but insisted that “we can’t do that around climate change.”

Terrazzano said that the Trudeau government’s carbon tax in reality “impacts nearly all aspects of life in Canada by making it more expensive to fuel up our cars, heat our homes and buy food.”

“The carbon tax also puts a huge hole in our economy that we can’t afford,” he said to LifeSiteNews, adding that if Trudeau really wanted to help Canadians and “prove it understands the struggles facing Canadians,” then it should “scrap the carbon tax to make life more affordable.”

On Thursday, Trudeau, who is facing abysmal polling numbers, announced he would introduce a temporary pause on the federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) for some goods.

Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre this afternoon said about Trudeau’s temporary tax holiday that if he is serious about helping Canadians, he would cut the carbon tax completely.

“What a ridiculous gimmick. Bribing Canadians temporarily with borrowed money,” Bernier wrote.

“When the real solution is to stop growing the bureaucracy, cut wasteful spending, stop sending billions to Ukraine, eliminate subsidies to businesses and activist groups, stop creating new unsustainable and unconstitutional social programs, eliminate the deficit, and THEN, cut taxes for real. None of which he will do of course.”

As reported by LifeSiteNews, a survey found that nearly half of Canadians are just $200 away from financial ruin as the costs of housing, food and other necessities has gone up massively since Trudeau took power in 2015.

In addition to the increasing domestic carbon tax, LifeSiteNews reported last week that Minister of Environment Steven Guilbeault wants to create a new “global’ carbon tax applied to all goods shipped internationally that could further drive-up prices for families already struggling with inflated costs.

Not only is the carbon tax costing Canadian families hundreds of dollars annually, but Liberals also have admitted that the tax has only reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 1 percent.

Energy

Ottawa’s proposed emission cap lacks any solid scientific or economic rationale

Published on November 23, 2024

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Jock Finlayson and Elmira Aliakbari

Forcing down Canadian oil and gas emissions within a short time span (five to seven years) is sure to exact a heavy economic price, especially when Canada is projected to experience a long period of weak growth in inflation-adjusted incomes and GDP per person.

After two years of deliberations, the Trudeau government (specifically, the Environment and Climate Change Canada department) has unveiled the final version of Ottawa’s plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) from the oil and gas sector.

The draft regulations, which still must pass the House and Senate to become law, stipulate that oil and gas producers must reduce emissions by 35 per cent from 2019 levels by between 2030 and 2032. They also would establish a “cap and trade” regulatory regime for the sector. Under this system, each oil and gas facility is allocated a set number of allowances, with each allowance permitting a specific amount of annual carbon emissions. These allowances will decrease over time in line with the government’s emission targets.

If oil and gas producers exceed their allowances, they can purchase additional ones from other companies with allowances to spare. Alternatively, they could contribute to a “decarbonization” fund or, in certain cases, use “offset credits” to cover a small portion of their emissions. While cutting production is not required, lower oil and gas production volumes will be an indirect outcome if the cost of purchasing allowances or other compliance options becomes too high, making it more economical for companies to reduce production to stay within their emissions limits.

The oil and gas industry accounts for almost 31 per cent of Canada’s GHG emissions, while transportation and buildings contribute 22 and 13 per cent, respectively. However, the proposed cap applies exclusively to the oil and gas sector, exempting the remaining 69 per cent of the country’s GHG emissions. Targeting a single industry in this way is at odds with the policy approach recommended by economists including those who favour strong action to address climate change.

The oil and gas cap also undermines the Trudeau government’s repeated claims that carbon-pricing is the main lever policymakers are using to reduce GHG emissions. In its 2023 budget (page 71), the government said “Canada has taken a market-driven approach to emissions reduction. Our world-leading carbon pollution pricing system… is highly effective because it provides a clear economic signal to businesses and allows them the flexibility to find the most cost-effective way to lower their emissions.”

This assertion is vitiated by the expanding array of other measures Ottawa has adopted to reduce emissions—hefty incentives and subsidies, product standards, new regulations and mandates, toughened energy efficiency requirements, and (in the case of oil and gas) limits on emissions. Most of these non-market measures come with a significantly higher “marginal abatement cost”—that is, the additional cost to the economy of reducing emissions by one tonne—compared to the carbon price legislated by the Trudeau government.

And there are other serious problems with the proposed oil and gas emissions gap. For one, emissions have the same impact on the climate regardless of the source; there’s no compelling reason to target a single sector. As a group of Canadian economists wrote back in 2023, climate policies targeting specific industries (or regions) are likely to reduce emissions at a much higher overall cost per tonne of avoided emissions.

Second, forcing down Canadian oil and gas emissions within a short time span (five to seven years) is sure to exact a heavy economic price, especially when Canada is projected to experience a long period of weak growth in inflation-adjusted incomes and GDP per person, according to the OECD and other forecasting agencies. The cap stacks an extra regulatory cost on top of the existing carbon price charged to oil and gas producers. The cap also promises to foster complicated interactions with provincial regulatory and carbon-pricing regimes that apply to the oil and gas sector, notably Alberta’s industrial carbon-pricing system.

The Conference Board of Canada think-tank, the consulting firm Deloitte, and a study published by our organization (the Fraser Institute) have estimated the aggregate cost of the federal government’s emissions cap. All these projections reasonably assume that Canadian oil and gas producers will scale back production to meet the cap. Such production cuts will translate into many tens of billions of lost economic output, fewer high-paying jobs across the energy supply chain and in the broader Canadian economy, and a significant drop in government revenues.

Finally, it’s striking that the Trudeau government’s oil and gas emissions cap takes direct aim at what ranks as Canada’s number one export industry, which provides up to one-quarter of the country’s total exports. We can’t think of another advanced economy that has taken such a punitive stance toward its leading export sector.

In short, the Trudeau government’s proposed cap on GHG emissions from the oil and gas industry lacks any solid scientific, economic or policy rationale. And it will add yet more costs and complexity to Canada’s already shambolic, high-cost and ever-growing suite of climate policies. The cap should be scrapped, forthwith.