King Charles wraps whirlwind visit, urges Canada to seize 'incredible opportunity'

replete(p) spoken language | billie jean moffitt king charles ix delivers speech from the throne

King Charles reflects on his mother and a changing world

King Charles and Queen Camilla parade to Parliament

King Charles and Queen Camilla arrive in Canada ahead of throne speech

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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his wife Anaida were spotted amongst the guests who took in the speech from the throne.

He won’t be joining the rest of his caucus when they return to the House of Commons, however, since he lost his seat on election night.

Instead Conservative MP Andrew Scheer will lead the Official Opposition’s response to the throne speech from inside the House.

Poilievre is hoping to win a byelection in a Conservative safe seat in order to face off against Carney in the House of Commons later this year.

As the King said his farewells he shook hands with Diana Fox Carney, the prime minister's wife.

Microphones picked her up telling Charles she'll keep her husband on “the straight and narrow” and “make sure he delivers on all of that.”

So he’ll have at least one person at home keeping him accountable to his promises — along with the many, many more in the House of Commons.

Charles and Camilla's motorcade has departed the National War Memorial and is heading to the airport, marking the end of a brief but busy trip to open Canada's 45th Parliament.

As Charles and Camilla made the short walk from the Senate building to the National War Memorial, they took time to greet those gathered along the way.

Charles seemed energized by the walkabout, a regular feature of royal tours and one that had one of its earliest moments at the National War Memorial.

“One of the first royal walkabouts took place [there] in 1939 with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth plunging into a crowd of Great War veterans,” Toronto-based royal author and historian Carolyn Harris told me.

“That was highly symbolic because it was the eve of the Second World War and it was known that war could break out at any time.”

From the 1970s, Harris said, Queen Elizabeth revived the royal walkabout on her tours throughout the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.

Charles and Camilla are paying their respects and laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial after the speech from the throne.

It’s a regular stop on royal visits to Ottawa, and this trip is no different.

The war memorial was unveiled by Charles’s grandfather, King George VI, during his visit with his wife Queen Elizabeth in 1939.

It’s one last engagement today for Charles and Camilla, and one that reinforces a focus that has long been important to them — support for the military. It also has a deep personal resonance.

“There is tremendous poignancy there and you’ve got it happening then on multiple levels,” royal historian Justin Vovk of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., told me.

“You've got the personal poignancy of Charles inhabiting the space and this site of memory that had been inaugurated by his grandparents … the last time that a reigning King was in Canada.

“It also has great poignancy for Canadians who have served in the Armed Forces. Charles's role as commander-in-chief, Canada's tremendously proud history of peacekeeping and its military history. That is a significant way for the King and Queen to show solidarity with Canadians and our history.”

Now that the King has wrapped up the speech from the throne, it has been delivered back to the Speaker of the House of Commons with the instructions from the King that they carry out their duties to the Canadian people.

Speaker Francis Scarpaleggia, as is custom, spoke right before Charles began the speech.

"I am but little able to fulfil the important duties assigned to me,” the Speaker said. He then asked that the Crown recognize all of the MPs' "undoubted rights and privileges," including freedom of speech during debates.

When MPs arrived at the Senate they huddled around the entrance of the chamber, but weren’t allowed to cross a brass bar.

Both the Senate and the House have a brass bar at their entrances, which symbolizes the two chambers’ independence from each other. Only the prime minister is allowed to cross the Senate bar for the throne speech.

'The true north is, indeed, strong and free,' says King Charles in throne speech

King Charles received a long round of applause on Tuesday in the Senate as he cited Canada's national anthem, saying the song reminds us, 'the true north is, indeed, strong and free.'

The King concludes the speech from the throne by praising Canada as a “force for good” in the world.

“As the anthem reminds us: The true north is indeed strong and free,” he said, which received applause from the room.

Carney’s promise to bring down the government’s operating budget is laid out in black and white ink here.

Reading the government’s speech, the King noted day-to-day government spending has been growing by nine per cent every year.

The promise: the Carney government says it will introduce measures to bring it below two per cent while protecting transfers to the provinces and territories.

“The government will balance its operating budget over the next three years by cutting waste, capping the public service, ending duplication, and deploying technology to improve public sector productivity,” reads the speech.

Carney is also promising to spur new investment and create jobs.

“The scale of the government’s initiative will match the challenges of our times and the ambitions of Canadians.”

The government says it will protect more of Canada’s nature “than ever before” through the creation of new national parks, national urban parks, marine protected areas, and other conservation initiatives.

“Nature is core to Canada’s identity,” read the King, a noted environmentalist.

The speech circles back to the border — an irritant in the Canada-U.S. Relationship. While the stats and figures Trump cites to justify tariff threats are often wrong, fentanyl is a very real threat and the government is under pressure to crack down.

Charles opened Parliament by signalling the government’s intentions to introduce legislation to enhance security at Canada’s border. It will give the Canada Border Services Agency new powers to examine goods destined for export.

The government reiterates its promise to hire 1,000 more Mounties and update the Criminal Code to make bail harder for certain crimes including car theft, home invasions and human trafficking.

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