Are the UK and Canada republics or democracies?
At this point, the Queen is nothing more than a vestigial organ. (as an example, did the Queen come out for or against the Brexit vote? Have you ever seen a head of government remain so quiet about such an important event?)
I disagree with little of the above, but I wonder how much of it is due to 'Liz 2 in particular. I can imagine a different monarch exerting a great deal more influence. They'd be perfectly able to do so. The UK's armed forces are loyal only to the monarch and not the government, for example.
Well, I would hope the move is towards more democracy, but it seems people everywhere are eager to vote against democratic freedoms these days.
Since there is, more or less, no other type of democracy around when a colloquial English speaker says "democracy" they mean representative democracy. Everything else is a pointless annoying semantic game.
Representative democracy is a perfectly acceptable term. Trying to shoehorn monarchies into the term "republic" is absurd.