He's constitutionally Canada's next head of state. A top aide says he's keen to deepen his relationship with the country. He wants to visit, get to know people. He's arranged meetings with key Canadian philanthropic and community leaders with the aim of cementing connections with his own charitable interests.
So where is he? Find the Prince of Wales. Find Charles Philip Arthur George.
He hasn't been here for eight years.
He wanted to come to Canada four years ago – to introduce his new wife on her first royal tour – but the federal government told him it likely wasn't a good idea because there might be an election campaign when he arrived. So he bypassed Canada and took Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, to the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
“You know, His Royal Highness would be keen to maintain and indeed deepen his relationship with Canada, and obviously a visit would be a great step forward in that regard,” the Prince's spokesman, Paddy Harverson, said in a recent telephone conversation from London.
“But I suppose it comes back to [the] point that that requires an invitation and it requires the timing to be right. The Prince of Wales would very much love to pay a visit to Canada but, as I've said, he has to wait for the invitation.”
The Prince's relationship with the government of Jean Chrétien was warm, especially with heritage minister Sheila Copps whose hometown of Hamilton got an impressive number of princely visits. Charles also got along well with Mel Cappe, the former privy council clerk who was high commissioner to London from 2002 to 2006.
But the governments of Paul Martin and Stephen Harper appeared to show little interest in him. Requests to Ottawa from various organizations – such as the Regina Symphony Orchestra, of which he is patron, and the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, of whom he is colonel-in-chief – to invite the Prince to Canada have been either ignored or met with tepid interest.
A spokeswoman for Heritage Minister James Moore, whose department is responsible for royal tours, said this week: “Discussions (led by the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister's Office) regarding the plans for future royal visits are currently under way. Letters will be sent to Clarence House [the Prince's official residence] or Buckingham Palace [the Queen's residence] once the plans have been finalized.”
Whatever that means, it sounds like things aren't going to be the way they once were.
From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, Prince Charles was in Canada almost annually. Then, during the next decade, tours were spaced out every five years. Then they just petered out. He's spent far more time in the republican United States (sometimes paying two visits a year) than in monarchical Canada.
His friends, Galen and Hilary Weston – he's the bakery billionaire; she was Ontario's lieutenant-governor from 1997 to 2002 – have done their best to introduce him to the Canadian public. They took his itinerary out of the hands of Ottawa planners in 2001 and arranged a blow-out gala for him with the Toronto arts community.
They stick-handled their way around the proscription on private visits in 1998 and arranged a skiing trip to Whistler, B.C., for Charles and his two sons that turned into a smash hit – thousands of screaming, cheering students greeted them on their way through the Vancouver area. Prince William, the older son, was deemed hot.
(For reasons that rest in the realm of obscurity, because the Queen and Charles, her eldest son, play a constitutional role in Canada as head of state and next-in-line, they are not supposed to be in Canada privately, only officially.)
