Governor General has role to play
When I first started writing this column, I never imagined that I would discuss the role of the Governor General as often as has become necessary. When I started teaching over 20 years ago, the role of the Governor General was an important part of discussing Canadian politics for sure but we mostly harkened back to a famous incident that happened in 1926 between Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and the Governor General Julian Byng in which the Governor General refused to dissolve Parliament and call a new election as King had requested.
Briefly, the issue was that King had lost the 1925 election to Conservative leader Arthur Meighen.
The seat count was close: 101 Liberals, 116 Conservatives and 28 Progressives, Labour and Independents. Now most people would assume that the Conservatives would have won with the most seats. But just like recently, in the B.C. provincial election, the sitting government gets the chance to form government if they can maintain confidence in the House.
If King could draw on the 28 votes from the Progressives, Labour and Independents then he could maintain confidence as so King remained prime minister.
In the ensuing months, it looked likely that the King would face a vote of non-confidence which included a censure dealing with a scandal that had plagued his administration. Before the vote could be called, King asked Byng to dissolve Parliament and to call an election, Byng refused and said that Meighen should be given a chance to form government. He did so but lost in a vote of nonconfidence shortly thereafter. The King/Byng Affair was important in our constitutional history because it opened the very serious question about the role of the head of state to direct the politics of the day by deciding who should have a chance to govern.
I know that I have told the story before in this column that, when I was an undergraduate, I was taught by one of the foremost scholars on the role of the Governor General who used to ask us: “Can the Governor General be replaced by a stuffed teddy bear?”
He wanted us to consider the King/Byng Affair and to think about whether the role of the GG is really just ceremonial or whether the role really is a critical part of our constitutional structure.
Over the last number of years, scholars have been challenged more often than ever before on that question. For example, Stephen Harper asked Michaëlle Jean to prorogue Parliament in order to avoid a vote of nonconfidence and recently Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon was asked by Christy Clark to consider calling a new election rather than giving the B.C. NDP the chance to form government.
On issues of procedure then, the Governor General does appear to have power. But still the Governor General acts on the advice of the prime minster and cabinet and that has meant that they are theoretically to be politically neutral in their opinion on government policy.
A few days ago, our new Governor General, Julie Payette, was welcoming scientists to a conference and in her welcome speech, she expressed her hope for a world in which scientific literacy would become the norm in society.
She argued that science should be “part of the tools” we have to make decisions based on evidence and that social media has allowed us to exist in an “echo chamber just listening to what we want to hear.”
Since that speech, she has come under a great deal of criticism for framing her agreement about scientific literacy by suggesting that too many people rely on unscientific approaches to understanding the world. Her examples included climate change deniers and the belief in “divine intervention” in creation. The argument is that she should not comment on the values and beliefs held by Canadian citizens but rather represent all the opinions that make up our nation. In this view, the GG should be like a teddy bear presiding over ceremony without comment.
But for those who think that the Monarchy and the Governor General are outdated elements of our liberal democracy, it is possible that the GG’s remarks are welcome and that she has decided to show “some real bear teeth” (as my friend calls it). It is difficult to ask a scientist to take on a leading role in a country and then ask her not to speak about science. Yet Payette will have to learn to show her teeth with a more polite smile because mocking people is no way to start a healthy dialogue.