The office of governor general is a curious one. It is a historical anomaly, a relic of colonial times, a surrogate for a foreign head of state and a constitutional irrelevancy, which it has mostly been since Mackenzie King won the 1926 election on the back of the GG of the day, Baron Byng of Vimy.
That the office endures is less a testament to its authority or its utility and more an admission that no one can figure out what, if anything, to do with it. (In that sense, it is a bit like the Senate of Canada.) Canadians know they do not want a powerful, elected American-style president. Nor, it seems, are they entirely content with an appointed figurehead whose legitimacy rests on a tenuous connection with a hereditary monarch across the Atlantic.
Be that as it may, the purpose of this small essay is not to call for the abolition of the governor general (or even the Senate, tempted though I am). My purpose is a more modest one: to comment on The Golden...
Geoffrey Stevens was a former Ottawa columnist for The Globe and Mail, a former managing editor of both the Globe and Maclean’s, and the author of several books.
Advertisement
Advertisement