Ex-astronaut to be nation’s next GG
Former astronaut Julie Payette is reported to be the next governor general.
The 53-year-old Montreal native will be introduced Thursday as the Queen’s new representative, CBC News said.
“Oh my goodness, you know a lot more than I do,” Payette told a CBC reporter who tracked her down at a downtown Ottawa hotel.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to make the announcement outside the doors of the Senate with Payette by his side.
Payette is a computer engineer who participated in two flights to the International Space Station after she was selected in 1992 as one of four new astronauts with the Canadian Space Agency.
She served as the agency’s chief astronaut for seven years, starting in 2000.
A francophone who speaks six languages, she is also an athlete and musician. She acquired a commercial pilot licence in preparation for her space mission.
She is married and has two sons.
She will succeed Gov. Gen. David Johnston in the post, which pays $290,000 a year and comes with a residence, Rideau Hall.
Sources say Trudeau informed the Queen during an audience with her last week of his recommendation to the post.
Johnston’s term is set to expire in September, after Stephen Harper extended it by two years ahead of the 2015 federal election.
The identity of his replacement had been a closely guarded secret with few in Ottawa in the know about who would become the 29th person to hold the position.
Traditionally, the viceregal job rotates between anglophones and francophones.
Johnston, who had a long career in academia, was chosen for the position off a short list presented to Harper by an ad hoc committee of experts struck with the express task of selecting a non-partisan person with constitutional knowledge.
At the time, Harper had a minority government and so who held the post of governor general was essential to maintaining the stability of government.
The names of those on the selection committee weren’t published until after Johnston’s nomination, but Harper would go on to make the committee a permanent body, saying a process to ensure a non-partisan approach to appointments was important.
When asked late last year how he’d pick the next governor general, Trudeau was noncommittal about what process he would use.
“I’m not going to change things just to reinvent the wheel,” Trudeau said in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press.
“If there is a good process that we can improve by making (it) more open and transparent and more diverse, that I will probably do.”