National Post (National Edition)
Has any other government been so reduced and flattened, so wounded by the forced or chosen resignations of its major talent?
“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” — Oscar Wilde, The Importance of being Earnest.
There has been much commentary on the precipitous departure via resignation of Julie Payette from the Office of Governor General. The most telling, to my judgment, came from the always elegant laptop of Father Raymond J. de Souza in Saturday's edition of this paper.
It is the fate of almost every government which has earned some stay in office that scandal, incompetence, or just sheer fatigue will mean the loss of a minister or adviser. Some few will fall. Some few will fail. It's normal.
However the departure of a small herd of them, principals and major figures, most under the shadow of maladministration or scandal, is that which invokes the Wildean notion of carelessness.
It took Father de Souza to note the startling but — having it drawn to one's attention — the obvious consideration that “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.”
And what a range these resignations cover. It isn't, for example, as if Mr. Trudeau has lost or been abandoned by a couple of folks nestled in the lower valley of his various cabinets, or drifting in the outer orbits of his advisory cabal.
Nay. The “goners” are all high altitude, indeed with Ms. Payette's flight from the Rideau Hall she did not deign to (physically) inhabit, the very highest there can be. It's not like the current government misplaced, say, the Minister of Middle Class Prosperity.
Governors general, being the constitutional shadow of Her Majesty, the Queen, occupy the apex of our parliamentary democracy. They are the highest emblem in our political liturgy. To lose even one, if I may express it formally, is “a big deal.”
An even bigger deal however, if put into context and listed in the catalogue of those others who have found it necessary or expedient to bid adieu to His Wokeship, the PM. All — all of them — in their various roles were the highest of high flyers.
They also share the interesting characteristic that they came from the full spectrum — cabinet, civil service and political advisers — of this government. It may be said that those who have left illustrate as deeply as those who have joined the ranks of the Trudeau government that — I trust the phrase strikes a chime — diversity is their strength.
The good Father did a service in reminding us just how key all these players are or were. This government has lost a finance minister, and lost him in the midst of the wildest outflow from the national treasury in our history, the storm cloud of the WE scandal, and a time of plague to boot.
It has lost — though perhaps booted carries more precision here — an attorney general, a government's most signal guarantor of integrity and the rule of law. And not just any attorney general, but in Jody Wilson-Raybould, as Trudeau was so rightly proud of when he appointed her, a female and first Aboriginal to enter that cardinal portfolio.
The departure of Wilson-Raybould was not solitary. With her went perhaps the most admired personality in the Trudeau backbench, Dr. Jane Philpott. She took that sad hike — as Father de Souza noted — “in protest of the prime minister's shabby treatment of Canada's first Indigenous justice minister.”
The most outstanding figure in Trudeau's coterie of advisers, and a long time mentor, was Gerald Butts, in some minds offering our prime minister what the great Karl Rove offered George W. Bush, strategic and policy oversight. Certainly the PM's slackadaisical attendance on Canada's oil and gas industry owes much to Mr. Butts. The principal secretary is one now with the other departed.
Finally in this chain and catalogue of the high and mighty was the farewell of the country's most senior civil servant, the Clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick, who “resigned for pressurizing Raybould at the prime minister's behest.” (cf. de Souza)
In all of this it's not just who has left, how many have left, or that most if not all have left, because of, as said, maladministration or the scent of scandal (WE). It's that all are, rather were, at the very summit of their category, whether that was adviser, cabinet rank or membership in the civil service. I hesitate to say “the best and the brightest” but in the days when all were still participants in government, that is how they were regarded by the press and their colleagues.
Father de Souza's column was in this sense a very useful jolt, a reminder of how many “stars” have ceased to shine and have gone off to other galaxies. And it had this capstone reminder, that with the resignation of governor general Payette — highest of the high — the present administration may claim something unique: a governor general resigning to a prime minister. This, in a final quotation from my colleague, was a “gross anomaly of (a) prime minister `receiving' (a) 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.”
This is quite a sequence, a kind of mini-exodus for our time. Has any other government been so reduced and flattened, so wounded by the forced or chosen resignations of its major talent? Occurring either just preceding or during a combined economic and medical crisis, which is arguably the greatest challenge we have had since the Second World War?
To summarize (with appropriate thanks to Father de Souza), this government has been gutted of its major players in the worst possible moment. If there were a stalwart opposition party in Ottawa, this would cause both the public and the government considerable anxiety.
TO LOSE EVEN ONE, IF I MAY EXPRESS IT FORMALLY, IS `A BIG DEAL.'