Janet Davison

Janet Davison is a senior writer and editor at CBC News who focuses on the contemporary monarchy and how it uses and affects public money. Her coverage tracks the financial and institutional consequences of royal decisions, from the wealth of the Crown and the costs of ceremony to taxpayer-funded security and government oversight. She writes long-form explainers and recurring Royal Fascinator pieces that connect royal personalities to the hard numbers and legal structures behind the institution.

Royal finances and taxpayer accountability

Davison’s work on royal finances foregrounds the money trail behind the monarchy’s power and public role. She has examined coronation planning through the lens of cost-cutting and “straitened times,” highlighting how King Charles seeks to reduce expenses while inheriting assets that have pushed his private wealth toward £2 billion.

In covering that coronation, she points readers to investigations into royal assets and private wealth, making clear how those holdings sit alongside constitutional responsibilities and symbolic duties.

Her reporting on King Charles’s income tax disclosure digs into what transparency does and does not reveal about royal finances.

In that piece, she uses the release of tax information as a starting point to probe unanswered questions about the broader system of royal funding, including how different streams of income, estates and public grants intersect. She brings in outside experts on royal history and finance to test the significance of the disclosure against the longstanding opacity of the monarchy’s wealth.

The result is coverage that treats royal tax as a public policy story as much as a palace announcement.

Davison also follows the financial implications of royal property and infrastructure decisions. In her reporting on Prince William and “change for good,” she highlights how King Charles’s private property estate earned more than a million pounds at taxpayers’ expense from land sales tied to a cancelled high-speed rail leg. By unpacking how those profits arise from projects ultimately funded by the public, she underscores the tension between private royal estates and public infrastructure spending.

Her approach consistently connects royal wealth and landholdings to real-world budgets, contracts and government oversight.

Royal tours, security and the cost of ceremony

Davison’s explainer on royal visit costs is a clear example of her financial focus. She breaks down the price of a three-day tour by Prince Charles and Camilla in Canada, detailing line items for administration, professional services, rentals, hospitality and travel, while emphasizing that security costs sit on top of those figures. She traces how multiple levels of government and the RCMP share expenses, using specific amounts for past visits by William and Kate to show how policing and logistics add up to millions of dollars.

The piece treats a royal tour as a multi-jurisdictional budget exercise, not merely a ceremonial event.

Security and its funding recur across her coverage of Harry and Meghan and their changing status. She has reported on the public cost of protecting the couple while they were in Canada, citing more than $334,000 in taxpayer-funded security over less than four years. In a later piece on their move back to the U.K., she focuses on how a government committee will reassess their police protection, stressing scrutiny over how taxpayers’ money is spent and the push toward a smaller, more clearly defined working Royal Family. Across these stories, the key thread is who pays for protection, under what rules, and how those decisions are justified to the public.

Her coverage of Prince Andrew’s loss of titles and housing further reinforces this focus on cost and accountability.

She reports that Andrew is being evicted from a 30-room mansion leased from the Crown Estate and relocated to one of the King’s private estates, quoting experts who note that housing him on a private estate means no taxpayer money will be spent. By pairing the headline-making loss of the prince title with the quieter financial and property consequences, she shows how royal scandals translate into tangible changes in public and private expenditure.

Succession, image and the evolving monarchy

Beyond financial questions, Davison follows how individual royals embody the institution’s evolution. In pieces on Prince William under pressure amid scandal, she frames him as central to the monarchy’s future, linking reputational crises to the stability of the institution.

Her writing about the Princess of Wales’s “more serious public image” explores how Catherine’s changing role and presentation align with expectations of a modern consort and the need for the monarchy to show “change for good.”

She has also chronicled younger royals like Prince George and Princess Charlotte, noting George’s “challenging time” at 13 and Charlotte’s growing confidence in public appearances.

These stories situate the next generation of royals within an apprenticeship to the Crown, connecting their education, public exposure and media scrutiny to long-term institutional continuity. In pieces reflecting on Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, she steps back to assess how prior reigns modernized the monarchy’s finances, protocols and outreach, drawing a line from mid-20th-century reforms to today’s debates over cost, transparency and relevance.

Taken together, her work treats royal biography as a way to understand how the monarchy adapts to political, economic and social pressures over time.

Across this body of work, Davison distinguishes herself by treating royal stories as public policy and financial accountability stories first, and as celebrity narratives second. She consistently ties high-profile events and family dynamics to questions of cost, governance and the use of taxpayer funds, while still tracking the human and symbolic dimensions of succession and image. Her reporting offers a structured, numbers-conscious view of the monarchy that is grounded in detailed examples and expert commentary.