{"id":88586,"date":"2024-04-22T03:00:56","date_gmt":"2024-04-22T07:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=88586"},"modified":"2024-04-21T12:24:28","modified_gmt":"2024-04-21T16:24:28","slug":"canadas-governor-general-is-supposed-to-be-above-politics-not-immersed-in-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/04\/22\/canadas-governor-general-is-supposed-to-be-above-politics-not-immersed-in-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada’s Governor General is supposed to be above<\/em> politics, not immersed in it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colby Cosh<\/a> says — quite correctly — that the issue with the Governor General indulging in partisan politics isn’t that people noticed and objected:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada on a visit to London in June, 2022.
Detail of a New Zealand Government official photo via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

All week I’ve been thinking about the sheer number of people who must have known about this event and who apparently didn’t anticipate a potential constitutional problem<\/a>. Hey, what could go wrong? Surely no Liberal cabinet minister would show up, press the flesh all day, head back to the office, and plunge moronically into auto-campaign mode, sharing snapshots of how “we discussed … our Online Harms Act<\/em>“<\/a> at the palace over oolong and scones.<\/p>\n

The GG’s own materials describing the event are careful to characterize it as a fundamentally sociable get-together with no relationship whatsoever to a government agenda. Attendees to the event insist that legislation now before the House of Commons wasn’t explicitly discussed by any of the speakers.<\/p>\n

As Colleague Sarkonak pointed out in her hair-raising Tuesday column on the scandal<\/a>, the symposium included a panel discussing “Emerging Solutions for a Safer Digital World”. In any other setting it would be weird and surprising to have such a discussion without involving any “solutions” that are legislative in nature. But maybe the attendees were careful to talk exclusively about technological and social solutions to online abuse: such a thing is certainly possible. Those of us whose invitations were lost in the mail are left to make maximally charitable assumptions.<\/p>\n

It’s just that, logically, we can’t be charitable to both the Governor General and Justice Minister Arif Virani in this case. Their stories conflict, in a direct and consequential way.<\/p>\n

Anyway, none of the excuses being made really cut much ice. It’s true that a governor general has some freedom to engage in philanthropy, oratory and social organizing that have no visible partisan aspect. It’s also true that if a GG’s social agenda coincides awkwardly with the House of Commons order paper, you’re playing Russian roulette with the Constitution. On Tuesday the government introduces a bill outlawing soda pop; by the end of the week the Gov-Gen is inviting diabetics and nutritionists to chat about their “lived experience” of Mr. Pibb addiction. And, most likely, when anyone at all objects, you get a familiar barrage of “conservatives pounce” stories<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colby Cosh says — quite correctly — that the issue with the Governor General indulging in partisan politics isn’t that people noticed and objected: All week I’ve been thinking about the sheer number of people who must have known about this event and who apparently didn’t anticipate a potential constitutional problem. Hey, what could go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84,28,53],"tags":[715,396,458,413],"class_list":["post-88586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-media","category-politics","tag-constitution","tag-monarchy","tag-parliament","tag-scandal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-n2O","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88588,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88586\/revisions\/88588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}