Role of GG merits respect

Former governor general Julie Payette's resignation after revelations she was cruel to her staff should not on its own lead to calls to abolish the monarchy in Canada. To the contrary, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's flippant disregard for the viceregal appointment only highlights the usefulness of this country's Constitution.

And yet, whenever there is even a whiff of scandal or a hint of excess related to the Crown, those who are embarrassed by Canada's colonial origins, or are jealous of the giant republic to the south, declare the role of the governor general unworthy of a modern country. It would be one thing if such calls were informed by anything other than a distaste for a system underpinned by a hereditary monarchy, but it's not clear that they are.

Writing in the Toronto Star, Bob Hepburn called the governor general a “silly, irrelevant job filled with pomp and ceremony but nothing of real substance.” He dismissed the notion that the role was vital to Canada's democracy as “hogwash,” because it's been nearly a century since the King-Byng affair when then-prime minister Mackenzie King was refused a request to dissolve Parliament and the governor general instead invited the Opposition to form government.

Similarly, Vancouver-based columnist J.J. McCullough wrote recently that, “It's been 95 years since a governor general has made any decision of consequence in Canadian politics.”

It's true that it's been decades since a governor general used the office's enormous reserve powers, but that is not the indictment critics seem to think it is. It is precisely because those powers are so rarely used that they are effective.

Overuse of the authority to deny a prime minister's request for prorogation or to dissolve Parliament and call an election, of course, would render the office of governor general untenable. But the decades and counting since a governor general deemed it necessary to deny a request from a prime minister is evidence that the system protects democracy rather than diminishes it.

The legal scholar Robert E. Hawkins has argued that by “exercising the art of `not doing,' the Queen's representative safeguards his or her neutrality — deliberately, insistently and resolutely — so that in moments of genuine constitutional crisis, he or she can take on the important and active role of constitutional arbiter.”

Such times of crisis could be, Hawkins suggests, when a head of government refuses to call an election, refuses to leave after losing an election or suddenly leaves office without naming a successor.

Replacing the governor general with an elected head of state while keeping the rest of Canada's Parliamentary system intact would strip the role of that neutrality. This is why reforming how the office is filled so that it is non-partisan, and seen to be non-partisan, is necessary. The governor general does lack elected legitimacy but that only helps to constrain abuses of power. While a hereditary head of state is out of fashion, the fact that the Queen and her successors are chosen largely outside of politics is actually a bonus.

Creating a presidential system, similar to the United States or France, where legitimacy is derived directly from elections, does not ensure leaders will respect the will of voters or the constitution. Former U.S. president Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the election because of baseless fraud allegations involved a direct appeal to voters and a contempt for the constitution.

None of this is to suggest there is no room to improve the monarchy and its Canadian representative. A general lack of respect for the office of governor general is an unhappy result of how it evolved in Canada, what the political scientist David E. Smith calls the “invisible crown.” In a 2013 essay, he outlined how the Crown in England fits into government and explained why that does not apply full stop to Canada.

For England, Queen Elizabeth II is the state personified. “The use of the Crown lay not in what it did so much as in what it meant to people,” Smith wrote. “The Crown was its subjects.” Canadians do not hold the Queen in the same regard as the British, in part because of the relative youth of the country and because of the Queen's perpetual absence. Smith also cites the adoption, worthy as they may be, of a Canadian anthem and flag, as well as the patriation of the Constitution, as further reasons why there appears to be little respect for governors general.

Trudeau's apparent failure to vet Payette thoroughly and appoint her because it fit the Liberal brand can be seen as a direct consequence of this history.

So what do we do about it? An elegant solution that is suggested from time to time is to offer a crown to Prince Harry so that he and his heirs may perform the duties of a monarch and come to be appreciated, or at least not actively hated, by Canadians. But as that seems unlikely, at least at the moment, the challenge is to come to a solution that revives the role of governor general as one that is uniquely Canadian and respected.

EVIDENCE THAT THE SYSTEM PROTECTS DEMOCRACY RATHER THAN DIMINISHES IT.