Time to scrap money-wasting GG position

DEAR EDITOR:

Finally, we are rid of Julie Payette, who has abdicated her job as Governor General of Canada. And, remarkably, the world still keeps on turning.

Can we hope that there will a courageous person of substance, to question this dinosaur of a position, that has cost taxpayers billions over the years? And especially Julie, who seem to lack any human/decent qualities for such a job, and who gets $143,000 a year to the end of her life? And not to forget the enormous bureaucracy of 157 staff.

Actually, there once was a courageous person, John Ralston-Saul, who seemed very concerned when he wrote in 1996 in MacLean’s,”Corporatism reduces civilization to the sum of its interest groups. We are all reduced – culture, public education, childcare and Medicare – to warring with each other for crumbs from the public purse and for charity from the private purse. If we accept that formula, we are back to the public good as nothing more than a beggar at the tables of the kings and the rich.”

Sadly, Ralston-Saul later forgot about us, when he joined the “privileged” and dined with the kings and the rich, when his wife, Adrienne Clarkson, became

Governor General of Canada.

In view of the problems that we are facing, any leader in academia, business or politics should live and lead by example, with a new global ethic, “Do not expect from others to live with less than what you’re willing to live with.”

That would determine anybody’s integrity. Remember, we come with nothing and leave just the same