"as long as she does not use it." That is basically the same as here. She has some kind of power to step in and appoint a govt if one can't be formed by any other means.It is the recognised duty of our leading politicians to make sure that the monarch is never put in a position where these powers are used.

The whole system is kind of dependent on stability which there has been with the present monarch. It may not always be so of course. For instance for things to change re the monarchy then it has to be agreed in all the realms. For instance the change to the line of succession which was recently agreed upon. However in the end I think the British (just my opinion) public wouldn't give a damn what people in Candad or NZ etc thought about a certain issue should opinons in these countries differ from here. Should such an issue arise then I suspect Canadians etc would finally say "why on earth do we have foreigners as Head of State?" so agin another reason why the royals as a whole keep the heads down an stay away from contention as much as possible. One good thing though about having a non-political Head of State is you don't get the stalemates in govt like the US seemed to have over the Fiscal Cliff thing.