After I graduated from law school in 2015, I went to work as a clerk at Alberta’s superior trial court. The Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta, or “QB” as court staff, students, and judges affectionately call it, is sometimes described as a “Section 96 court”—so named for the section of the Constitution Act, 1867 that prevents these courts of inherent jurisdiction from being legislated out of existence.

During my clerkship, one of the other articling students broached the issue of the Court’s name.

“I wonder what they will call this place after the Queen dies.”

“Simple,” I said. “The law says it shall be styled the Court of King’s Bench during the reign of a male monarch.”

And so it did.

That provincial law—the Court of Queen’s Bench Act—seemed to make intuitive sense: Canada is and always has been a constitutional monarchy. If the Court is known as QB today, there is no contradiction in calling it KB when a King ascends to the throne. Indeed, as the fount of legal power, it is the Crown’s tripartite infusion of the legislature (The Queen in Parliament), the executive (The Queen in Council), and the judiciary (The Queen on the Bench) that demonstrates the ingenious beauty of our constitutional order.

It comforted me to know that, at least on this narrow question, the law provided a clear and ready answer (which, as any lawyer will tell you, is rare).

Yet, when the issue arose among my friends again this month, I retrieved the Act only to discover that section 2(2) had been repealed and replaced with section 27(1)(a). The new provision empowers Cabinet to unilaterally change the Court’s name at its discretion, even before Her Majesty has met her maker.

In other words, Alberta has presumptively removed the would-be King from his own Bench.

Democracy in action or inaction?

Immediately, I set out to find the reason for the change.

Was it politically motivated or purely pragmatic?

Did any legislators resist the proposal or was it embraced without question?

Surely the monarchists—identifiable by their cupboards of porcelain mugs emblazoned with the faces of royal babies and their spontaneous eruptions into fervent renditions of God Save the Queen—had mobilized to oppose the name change. Right?

Wrong.

At the time that then-Minister Brian Mason tabled Bill 31, which amended various laws and dropped the King from the Court, he noted that it had been circulated to opposition parties.

“I believe there is consensus on all of the clauses of the bill, so it is our hope it can be passed, therefore, without debate in the House,” he said.

By the time the bill became law on December 11, 2018, Members of the Legislative Assembly had said fewer than 250 words about it on the floor. That’s half as much as I’ve said since you started reading this column.

Members had no questions. No comments. No amendments. No debate.

And, just like that, with barely a whisper, the Court of Queen’s Bench took one step closer to becoming something other than the Court of Queen’s Bench.

What’s in a name?

This isn’t the first time that the province has flirted with changing the Court’s name.

For 70 years, Alberta’s superior court was styled the Supreme Court, a name that is still used in four provinces and two territories. It was not until 1979 that the Court got the Queen’s Bench moniker, which is also used by superior courts in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and New Brunswick.

In a show of modesty, Ontario and Quebec simply call their superior courts the Superior Court. (Ontario tosses in “of Justice,” for good measure.)

The differences might seem trivial; however, names are important. They shape identity and build character. Sometimes, they are misleading (think North Korea’s official name, the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”). But, even when they are not empirically accurate, they are symbolic.

In much the same way that public monuments—those we tear down as much as those we erect—tell us something about ourselves, names reveal what a society values and to what it aspires.

Those who would argue the QB name is a relic of a bygone era and a blemish on Canada’s claim to independence misunderstand our law and history. The Canadian Crown is a robust, functional institution that stands separate and apart from the foibles of the Royal Family. Replacing it would be nothing less than a legal revolution.

Of course, we should reform our institutions and their names to adapt to modern realities. But, when we do, we ought to do so for good reason—not prejudice—and only after meaningful, public debate.

Questioning the Crown’s continuing relevance to our civic identity and aspirations is a healthy habit, but snuffing out its most visible manifestations in our institutions is a cowardly way to attack our constitutional settlement.

To be fair, that might not have been the legislature’s intention. In the same bill, lawmakers authorized Cabinet to rename Alberta’s Provincial Court too. However, even if the legislature did not intend to undermine the Queen’s position, it appears to have been indifferent to whether that was a consequence of its actions. The result is the monarchy’s death by a thousand amendments.

It remains to be seen whether the executive will exercise its new power to change QB’s name and, if it does, whether any new name will include the King. Whatever the case may be, one thing is clear: from legislation to the Court’s letterhead, the monarch’s place in Canada is under siege. Last year, nobody saw it coming.

Next time, I’ll be watching.


Agathon Fric is a lawyer in Calgary. He received his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. A lightly edited version of this article first appeared in the Edmonton Journal on May 30, 2019.

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1 Comment

  • Dr. Rand Dyck
    Posted May 31, 2019 at 5:13 am 0Likes

    Agathon Fric knows what he is talking about. He wrote an honours thesis at Carleton University on the monarchy in Canada that I had the privilege of “supervising.” I endorse his concern!

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