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Agree with Zoisite's remarks and link. In short, does the Queen herself make any money off the taxes Canadians pay, revenues Canadian companies generate, royalties from natural resources (e.g. oil and gas, lumber, mining) sourced in Canada? No.
That being said, our taxes (federal and provincial) do help pay for the Governor-General and the Lieutenants-General of the provinces, who represent the Queen in Canada and the provinces. But unlike republics, we have, under our constitution, a separate Head of State (the Queen, through the GG) and Head of Government (the PM). Unlike the president of a republic, the duties of our Head of State are largely ceremonial, and the Queen's actual power is extremely limited--if she, or the GG, attempted to use her power outside certain narrowly-defined parameters and customs, we'd have a constitutional crisis on our hands. Or, in other words, she's pretty harmless politically; and if the $1.10 figure per Canadian for the GG and Ls-G is to be believed (and I see no reason why it should not be), she's less expensive annually than my coffee is daily.
It is true that your taxes help pay for security, travel, etc., when the Queen or members of her family visit. But then, they also help pay for security, travel, etc., when the US president visits, when the president of France visits, and so on. It's something we extend to visiting foreign politicians, and they extend the same service to ours, when our politicians visit them.
Municipal/regional/county/etc. property taxes pay for local services (fire, police, road repairs, parks, garbage pickup and similar). They're not kicked back to a province or to the feds.
Everything you said is true but there is likely quite a bit more involved financially in a royal visit for Canada (think Will and Kate a few years ago) than for a visit by a foreign head of state with the possible exception of the President of the United States.
We should be happy having a non-partisan head of state. Gosh, imagine what it's like living in some countries where their PM is virtually an authoritarian dictator for 5 years.
Canadians and Americans both swear allegiance to something that symbolizes stability and values and that is above politics - Americans to a flag and Canadians to the monarch.
But the Americans' flag is American. The Canadians' monarch is British (though ethnically German).
Indeed the old adage rings true; you learn something new and painfully nonsensical every day.
What you don't really understand is that historically there was no difference between being Canadian and being British, and while everyone considers them to be different now, Canadians view the countries as having diverged from a common past as one united Empire, so the royal family has legitimacy through that unbroken line of history. British meant being a subject of the King irregardless of being Welsh, Irish, English, Norman, Mohawk, Quebecois, Manx... etc, and Canada was just a part of that British Empire under the crown. It split into pieces, but it sees the crown as having also split into pieces and the monarch as being international. This, by the way, is how Queen Elizabeth herself views her citizenship, as a transnational monarch, and she regularly argues in favour of internationalism to the Brits as a result.
We should be happy having a non-partisan head of state. Gosh, imagine what it's like living in some countries where their PM is virtually an authoritarian dictator for 5 years.
What you don't really understand is that historically there was no difference between being Canadian and being British, and while everyone considers them to be different now, Canadians view the countries as having diverged from a common past as one united Empire, so the royal family has legitimacy through that unbroken line of history. British meant being a subject of the King irregardless of being Welsh, Irish, English, Norman, Mohawk, Quebecois, Manx... etc, and Canada was just a part of that British Empire under the crown. It split into pieces, but it sees the crown as having also split into pieces and the monarch as being international. This, by the way, is how Queen Elizabeth herself views her citizenship, as a transnational monarch, and she regularly argues in favour of internationalism to the Brits as a result.
Which seems to go back to the OP's question about feeling a lack of Canadian sovereignty- the laughable idea that this elderly English woman halfway across the world is any way, shape, or form Canadian depends on the concept of Canada as a dominion of Great Britain. But we agree on one point: Queen Elizabeth II is as much a Canadian as she is a Mohawk.
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Very true
