Category: Government

A Simple GG Selection Process

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that in the coming days the government will release the selection process for the new governor general. Here is my recommendation for a streamlined but thorough process.

  1. Pick up the phone and call Queen Elizabeth II.
  2. Ask her how she is doing and politely inquire about the Duke’s health.
  3. Ask her who she wants to be governor-general.
  4. Once the conversation is over, conduct the most thorough background check this country has ever seen.
  5. If the candidate passes the initial background check, ask them for about one hundred letters of recommendation from previous employers, co-workers, and subordinates.
  6. If they still look like a good candidate, report back to the Queen and her advisors with the results so she can make the final call.
  7. Repeat this process as many times as necessary until someone is selected.
  8. Once the new GG has been selected, make the results of the background check public, or at least release a summary. Or bury it so deep at LAC that ATIP will never find it.

That’s all. Note that the PM has no role in this process. He may be the highest-ranking elected official in the country, but I find it weird that he gets to choose his boss’s proxy.

The Payette Regret

On June 26, 1926, Canada experienced its greatest constitutional crisis when Governor General Lord Byng refused Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s request to call an election, thus triggering the King-Byng Thing. On January 21, 2021, Canada underwent the Payette Regret when Governor General Julia Payette finally accepted that she is unsuited for the job. In Canada, constitutional crises have to rhyme. The GG is a job without a formal job description, so we cannot objectively say she was unqualified, but her repeated refusal to act in a manner befitting a royal rubberstamp made it clear that her personality and method of operating did not work in Rideau Hall.   

Her successor will have to be exceptionally regal, in a humble way, to undo the damage that Payette has done to an office that struggles to justify its existence in the best of times. The GG once played a central role in Canadian government, but it is now an anachronism of our past and a necessary side-effect of our monarchial government system. We don’t need a GG, but so far it has been easier to keep the role around than get rid so it, and I doubt Canada is ready to become a republic.

So I think that the most effective way to undo the damage that Payette did is to abolish the position of Governor General and instead have Queen Elizabeth actually carry out her job as the head of state. She has an exceptional track record of showing up for work, doing her job, being nice, and not causing problems. Before you tell me that she doesn’t have time to actively reign over two realms, let’s look at what the job entails.

In 2019, there were 105 bills that required Royal Assent. That means 105 signatures. After every election Ministers of the Crown have to the sworn in. That requires an afternoon of Zoom calls every few years. There are similar recommendations and swearing-ins for Senators, members of the Privy Council,  judges, and ministers in cabinet shuffles. That requires…..a Zoom call every few weeks or months. These things are managed by Parliamentarians, all Queen has to do is sign her signature or receive an oath. We could stop the charade of having a non-partisan head of state read the highly partisan Throne Speech and just let the PM do that. Same thing with the engagements that the Governor General currently does, let politicians have more public engagements. 

The bulk of the GGs signing responsibility seems to be the Order-In-Councils. If my paltry research is correct, there are about 1,900 Order-in-Councils a year. I doubt most of them ever require any second thought, which is the monarch’s nominal role. Let the PM sign them, and then hold him accountable in Parliament if it turns out to be a bad decision. You know, the way we have done it since 1841.

The only time that the Governor General or the Monarch actually exercises their authority is when choosing a Prime Minister in a minority situation, when proroguing Parliament, or refusing to grant royal assent and thus triggering an election. So think about who you want to exercise that power. A woman who has over sixty years of experience being a monarch and who spent eleven years training to be a monarch? A women who, along with her father and grandfather, has a track record of non-controversy since 1910? Let’s pretend Edward VII didn’t happen.  Or do you want an astronaut? A journalist? Whichever politician is most owed a favour by the PM? Like it or not, Queen Elizabeth II is the Canadian who is the most qualified to represent herself. She would be the best GG ever. So let’s throw off the vestigial remnants of our colonial past and instead fully embrace our modern monarchy.  

We the Governed

The United States is nominally founded on the ideal that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The American federal government exists because the people of the United States chose to allow it to exist. The Constitution and its amendments recognize that persons have innate rights, that the American people collectively possess sovereignty, and that the government can only exercise the authorities that are granted to it by the people.

Canada never had a “We the People” moment. The Crown that governs Canada has existed since the Middle Ages. The Crown is an abstract legal entity that possesses all sovereign authority in Canada. 1867 was not a revolution, but simply a transfer of colonial management from London to Ottawa. To remove the right to execute authority from the Crown (while the Crown remains the source of the authority) a document signed by the monarch is required, either through the form of a Constitution or legislation. The Canadian Constitution removes almost all execution of authority from the Crown and gives it to the three branches of government. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms limits what those branches can do. Individual pieces of legislation remove certain powers from the Crown and invest them in ministers. Collectively, the Cabinet and the PM govern like near-monarchs because they exercise all the powers of the Crown. They are likewise limited by the law, the Constitution, and the rights that are recognized by the Charter. Note that these documents do not grant power to the government on behalf of the people: they limit the Crown’s power. Americans have collectively entered into a social contract to establish a government; Canadians have entered into a social contract with their government.  

Why does this matter? In my patriotic opinion, too often American ideas filter northwards without being adapted to Canada’s unique legal and governmental structure. Canadians and Americans do not have the same rights. The two nations have different national narratives concerning rights. The British Loyalists moved north to maintain their British rights when the American Patriots rebelled to assert their American rights. My fellow Canadians are more than welcome to use their voice and vote to stand up for what they consider to be their rights, but they should know what defined rights they currently have.

Canada needs a Unified National Capital Region

Canada should create a federally managed National Capital Region that removes Ottawa-Gatineau from their respective provinces and places them under federal jurisdiction.

The decision to spread the federal government across two poorly managed cities has created a situation where federal priorities, provincial politics, and municipal quagmires come into conflict five days a week. How many buildings that contain important functions to the country are in Gatineau? How many public service functions are disrupted by the regions inability to develop unified transit? What happens if the border is closed again? How many qualified candidates turn down a job, or move jobs, because of how disjointed transit systems are? In a worst-case scenario, what happens to those buildings and their contents if Quebec ever separates? Which police force has jurisdiction?

I doubt that Ottawa will ever develop a political class that is capable of governing the amalgamated Ottawa. Most Ottawa politicians are good people with honourable intentions who should never have been allowed to run a gamma-level city. The city of Ottawa appears determined to mismanage all things transit. Transit is technically a provincial responsibility, but the Ontario government (particularly the current premier) is focussed on the Golden Horseshoe.

Ottawa and Gatineau are bound together by the federal government’s decision to spread the capital across two cities. The daily commute of public servants is the most obvious manifestation of this union. Both cities appear to have been almost forgotten by their respective provincial governments. Creating the federal NCR would just be caving to the truth. Best of all, the NCC could be abolished.  

5 Reasons to Abolish the Crown

The Crown, and our current structure of government in which four levels of government manage the country, is at the heart of many of Canada’s most contentious issues. But when the Crown does get discussed, the discussion is about the more visible aspects of the Crown. like the role of the Governor-General, proroguing Parliament, the monarchy, etc. Other aspects usually escape the news and have to be found in academic literature, like the fact that the provincial governments have the same source of authority as the federal government. Or that no one really knows where First Nations governments fit within the federal-provincial-municipal structure.

A lot of people fixate on the fact that Canada is a democratic state with an unelected British Queen, but I don’t particularly care about that. The monarchy is just a symptom of the Crown-based system of government. Arguing that the monarchy is undemocratic is fair game, but the monarch has no real power left. They wave, sign papers, and spend the Sovereign Grant. Any recommendation to abolish the monarchy needs to include a discussion of what to do with the Crown.

I have read a thing or two about the Crown, and I do not recall anyone who recommended totally abolishing the Crown in Canada. Google “abolish the crown Canada” and you will find plenty of articles about monarchy, but none of them are explicitly about abolishing the Crown.

So here are my five reasons why Canada should seriously consider abolishing the Crown and find a new source of sovereign authority.

  1. The treaties with the First Nations are signed with the Crown. Eliminating the Crown would remove the shaky legal basis for Canada’s usage of its current territory. The Canadian government would have to come to the negotiating table with a fair and honest, or at least better, deal for the Indigenous peoples, and for once the First Nations would hold real bargaining power. Imagine what would happen to the economic situation of the First Nations if Canada had to pay market-rate rent.
  2. The Senate is composed of people who are undemocratically appointed by the Crown. Getting rid of the Crown opens the door to redesigning the federal government. The Senate can technically be abolished without abolishing the Crown, but they are both massive undertakings that require the consent of all ten provinces. We’ll get a 2 for 1 deal by lumping them together. The new federal government should be a fully elected, rep by pop, unicameral body.   
  3. The map of Canada should be redrawn to eliminate an entire level of government. Again, this could happen without eliminating the Crown, but it requires consensus from provincial governments who would lose their source of authority, so let’s make it a 3 for 1 deal. Divide up the country into about 30-40 provinces and get rid of municipal governments altogether. We’ll have two levels of government that have clearly defined areas of interest. The federal government will deal with matters of national interest, while powerful local governments that can tax, spend, and borrow will deal with local issues. Disagreements over resource development policy, transit, health care, etc. can never be eliminated, but at the moment there are simply too many levels of government and too many grey areas between federal and provincial jurisdiction. I’ll rant about that later.
  4. The office of the Governor General will be abolished. Is there any current need (forget historical reasons) for the governor-general? The PM will move into Rideau Hall and 24 Sussex will be turned into the Canadian Museum of Asbestos and Mould.
  5. I won’t have to listen to non-Canadians uninformed complaints about Canada’s monarchy.  

There are a few downsides to getting rid of the Crown.

  1. It could destroy Canada. The uneasy alliance of disparate provinces under Ottawa exists because creating a British-flavoured federal state in northern North America was preferable to the alternatives that existed between 1864-1949. Asking what type of government of Canadians prefer now opens the doors to the idea that Canada will never make sense. 1980 and 1995 would pale in comparison.  
  2. Canada loses important precedents. No Constitution can delineate powers in all possible eventualities, so we would have to restart the process of setting precedents.
  3. There is no guarantee of equitable treatment, no matter how we structure government. Ontario may still dominate the country, French Canadians may never feel like equal partners, pipelines may never get built, Indigenous rights may never be fully respected, and the territories will continue to melt.

Before any of this happens, the role of the First Nations in the decision-making process concerning the Crown needs to be settled. I could take a limited perspective and argue that, as nominally sovereign entities that have treaties with the Crown on a nation-to-nation basis, they are not involved in deciding whether that Crown should be abolished. Or I could argue that, as the Canadian citizens who have the strongest invested interest in the Canadian Crown, they must be seriously involved in the process. This is an issue for the 634 First Nations to decide themselves, which would be a massive undertaking.

Thomas Jefferson argued that prudence dictates that governments should not be disposed of for light and transient reasons. Abolishing the Crown because 41% of Canadians do not want King Charles III is a light and transient reason. Hopefully the country never hits a point where Canadians feel the need to violently overthrow the current system, but I wonder if a serious rethinking of our system could add value to “what to do” discussions.