Edward Watson McWhinney, QC (May 19, 1924 – May 19, 2015) was a Canadian lawyer and academic specializing in constitutional and international law.
He held professorships at Yale, the Sorbonne, Toronto, McGill, Indiana, the Collège de France, and at the Meiji University in Tokyo.
[2] In 2005, in anticipation of the publication of his book, The Governor General and the Prime Ministers, Canadian media sources reported that McWhinney, a professor of constitutional law and former Member of Parliament, had suggested that a future government of Canada could begin a process of phasing out the monarchy after the eventual demise of Elizabeth II "quietly and without fanfare by simply failing legally to proclaim any successor to the Queen in relation to Canada".
This would, he claimed, be a way of bypassing the need for a constitutional amendment that would require unanimous consent by the federal parliament and all the provincial legislatures.
[3] However, Ian Holloway, Dean of Law at the University of Western Ontario, criticised McWhinney's proposal for its ignorance of provincial input and opined that its implementation "would be contrary to the plain purpose of those who framed our system of government.