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.)
In June of 2005, the Westons arranged for a select group of Canadians who head charitable and community organizations paralleling the Prince's philanthropic interests to spend a week with him and senior aides in Britain. Mr. Cappe and his wife Marni, an urban planner, joined the group on several occasions.
The Canadians met at length with the Prince and heads of charitable agencies that he supports and were invited to Highgrove, the Prince's 364-hectare estate, for an intensive tour of its organic farming operations.
Clarence House staff showed a keen interest in what the Canadians were doing and how it might fit with the Prince's interests in education, health, at-risk youth, corporate social responsibility, architecture and urban planning.
The blueprint with other countries where similar contacts had been made was for the Prince to follow up with a visit to promote projects and partnerships. The follow-up visit to Canada never happened. A number of charitable organizations asked Ottawa to invite him in 2006 – and the Prince indicated he had open time – but the new Conservative government said no, sources said.
Ms. Weston at first appeared favourable to being interviewed by The Globe and Mail about her efforts to build a closer relationship between the Prince and Canadians. She asked for a list of questions in advance. When she saw them – one question asked, “Have there been barriers put in the way of the Prince coming to Canada? Or, if not barriers, a lack of official enthusiasm in Ottawa? Could you explain this?” – she and her staff terminated contact and did not reply to subsequent e-mails or telephone calls.
A statement issued yesterday by the Department of Canadian Heritage said: “The Government of Canada has an ongoing planning process for Royal visits. Requests for visits by the Prince of Wales are reviewed in this context. We are not in a position to comment on invitations until this process is complete.”
The Prince's itinerary is planned three to four months in advance. When Clarence House let Ottawa know in July or August of 2005 that he wanted to bring Camilla to Canada at the end of October, 2005, prime minister Paul Martin's office advised that the visit would coincide with the release of the Gomery Commission report into the Liberal sponsorship scandal which could drop-kick the minority government into an election.
“It was a courtesy the palace appreciated,” one former Martin aide said. “We would have loved to have him, but it would have probably been unfair to him.”
There are rumours in Ottawa the Prince may be invited by the federal government later this year. Ottawa says it's still thinking things through.
