Canada finally has the opportunity to gracefully ditch the monarchy, and it's all thanks to gender equality.
Last week, the British prime minister asked Stephen Harper and the leaders of the 14 other countries of the Commonwealth to change the Act of Succession so the firstborn child of the royals, regardless of gender, can become the head of state.
While the move is welcome and significant, more than anything it shows how wildly absurd the continuance of the monarchy is in Canada.
In a letter to the other Commonwealth leaders, who all need to approve the change to the Act of Succession, David Cameron wrote, "We espouse gender equality in all other aspects of life and it is an anomaly that in the rules relating to the highest public office we continue to enshrine male superiority."
Seeing as Jews, Sikhs, Catholics, Athiests, Unitarians and all sorts of other people can never take the throne, one assumes Cameron is perfectly fine with the Commonwealth continuing its tradition of enshrining the superiority of the Anglican faith.
On top of that, it remains true that heirs to the throne are chosen based solely on whose vagina from which they arrived in the living world. It appears the British prime minister is also okay with that method of appointment.
While the United Kingdom has a long history of living within a rigid and ridiculous class system, Canada is a country that prizes, at least in theory, meritocratic beliefs, multiculturalism, and sanity in state decisions. It is, therefore, disingenuous of us to allow our heads of state to be chosen in the manner we do.
There should be no job in Canada that is not available to any Canadian citizen willing to do the work to earn the position, so Canada should refuse to consent to a change in the Act of Succession unless it is a complete overhaul of how the kings and queens of Canada are selected.
That leaves us with two options we can politely suggest to the British prime minister: succession based on election or government appointment or the complete abolition of the monarchy in Canada.
What is most sensible would be a combination of the two ideas, dropping the monarchy but retaining the appointed position of governor-general. Unless there's some reason why we need to have foreigners visit us every few years to collect flowers from strangers and hijack all our available media space, there's no reason not to harness this opportunity and extricate ourselves from the mess of monarchy.