The Trudeau government’s revolving door
So it turns out that there is a bit more to it than simply following the scientist. Character, competence, civility and the Constitution matter.
With the resignation of the Governor General, Julie Payette, the Trudeau premiership has gone far beyond what anyone would have ever thought possible in our Canadian constitutional monarchy.
Indeed, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s self-admitted and significant failures in judgment have led to a series of resignations possibly without precedent in the entire history of Westminster parliamentary democracies.
He fired his attorney general, Jody Wilson-raybould, for properly resisting political pressure in prosecutorial decisions. She then resigned from cabinet. So, too, did the president of the treasury board, Jane Philpott, in protest of the prime minister’s shabby treatment of Canada’s first Indigenous justice minister. So egregious was the prime minister’s interference with the justice system that his principal secretary, Gerald Butts, also resigned. To cap it off, Michael Wernick, the country’s most senior civil servant as Clerk of the Privy Council, resigned for pressurizing raybould at the prime minister’s behest. Theretofore it was not really thought possible to bungle things so badly as to lose the clerk.
Then the conflict-of-interest fiasco over the WE paid-volunteers program brought forth the resignation of the finance minister, Bill Morneau.
To lose the governor general though is a history-beating standard. And all because he could not be bothered to learn about allegations that Madame Payette was cruel to her workplace subordinates, allegations already known before she was selected for the vice-regal post.
In fairness, it is possible that neither Trudeau nor anyone else thought to ask her beforehand whether she intended to meet the minimal requirements of representing the Queen, like living in the official residence, giving royal assent to legislation and, on occasion, meeting Canadians. He did have reason to ask her whether she planned to continue her practice of berating, bullying and publicly humiliating her staff. Or maybe he did, and thought it was worth a few days of good publicity.
The single memorable utterance from Payette’s disastrous tenure was in November 2017, when she insulted religious believers in a public speech. Her prejudice and disdain was no surprise, coming as she did from that cramped intellectual world of scientifically brilliant but philosophically illiterate secularists, but it was a shock that she was so mean-spirited in public. Now we know that she was just being true to herself.
Just how acidic is Payette? In her bitter resignation statement she — certainly with malice aforethought — used the exact language the prime minister himself employed when attempting to explain his own harassing
behaviour in the infamous case of the “Kokanee grope.”
“We all experience things differently,” she wrote, finally doing one thing governors general are supposed to do, namely to articulate the position of the government. I suppose he deserved that, unbecoming as it was.
unbecoming behaviour in the crown does damage to the Constitution, for a constitutional monarchy depends upon the sovereign not being subject to the political branch. That doesn’t mean that the crown is not accountable, but it means that, in practice, it is of utmost importance that the crown never do anything for which she needs be held to account.
Payette’s reign of nastiness meant that the Privy Council Office — the prime minister’s secretariat — had to investigate her, employing an outside firm to do so. That is not the way our Constitution works. The prime minister is subject, in extremis, to the crown, not the other way around. And now we have the gross anomaly of the prime minister “receiving” the governor general’s resignation. It is a defining aspect of our Constitution that the crown receives the prime minister’s resignation. That constitutional inversion will now have to be righted.
Who shall Her Majesty appoint to salvage this mess?
It cannot be, given the circumstances and under a minority government, anyone who has ever been a partisan Liberal. It would be helpful in general, and necessary in this particularity, to have someone who has affection for the crown and the Commonwealth and a deep understanding of its essential role in our public life. It would be good to have a common touch. A leader who is both civil and competent. After the dour Payette, a sense of humour would be nice.
In 2005 Paul Martin chose Michaëlle Jean to replace Adrienne Clarkson at rideau Hall, on the grounds that if the English CBC got to have a governor general, then fairness meant that the French CBC got one, too. That same summer he elevated Hugh Segal to the Senate, a cross-party appointment of unusual quality. He got the man right but the office wrong; it should have been Segal at rideau Hall. It is not too late to correct that.
AFTER THE DOUR PAYETTE, A SENSE OF HUMOUR MIGHT BE NICE.