A case for expanding the Governor General’s role in Canada

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Novelties test the stability and adaptability of institutions. Thus it will be this week with a new prime minister, for the first time never having held elected office. Not for the first time, the new PM is not an MP and, while anomalous, that is not at all a problem. There will be extra work at Rideau Hall this week, but not a whit of uncertainty about what to do.

It is opportune to think in these days about the Canadian constitutional tradition of Crown-in-Parliament — and to strengthen our constitutional institutions, including the role of the Governor General as the representative of Charles III, King of Canada.

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The Governor General will come to the fore in these days, accepting the resignation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his recommendation that she call upon Mark Carney to form a government in the name of the King. She will then call upon Carney to do so, soon thereafter swearing him and his cabinet in to the Privy Council and ministry. She will then take the new prime minister’s advice on whether to proceed with a new session of Parliament on March 24 as scheduled, at which point it will be seen whether Carney’s government holds the confidence of the House of Commons, as Trudeau’s did throughout the fall.

Some of that is laid out in the written Constitution Acts of 1867 (British North America Act) and 1982. Some of it is British constitutional tradition, inherited from London and shaped in Canada for more than 150 years, from the advent of responsible government under Queen Victoria to de facto full sovereignty with the Statute of Westminster under King George V.

As the world watches executive power run amok in Washington, where a bout of presidential distemper may affect the geopolitics of war and peace or the imposition of tariffs, the challenge of constitutional governance is brought into sharper relief.

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Any constitutional order must simultaneously enable effective executive action and restrain it. The American constitution employs checks-and-balances between three “co-equal” branches of government — the legislative (Congress), the executive (presidency) and judicial (courts). The Westminster system requires the executive (cabinet) to enjoy the confidence of the legislative (House of Commons). The Crown follows the advice of the first minister, if he enjoys the apparent confidence of the House.

That’s the legal constitution. In the Westminster tradition, there is also a constitutional ethos. For example, the deference of the appointed House of Lords or Senate to the elected House of Commons. That is not a legal requirement, but without proper restraint by the Lords or Senate in exercising its powers, a constitutional and democratic crisis would quickly follow. If the Conservatives win an election this year, that ethos of restraint will immediately be required of a Senate dominated by Trudeau appointments.

Part of the constitutional ethos maintained in London has been long abandoned in Ottawa: the regular weekly audience that the sovereign grants to the prime minister. It is part of the monarch’s right, in the consensus articulated by the Victorian journalist Walter Bagehot, “to be consulted, to encourage and to warn.”

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The weekly audience in not required legally, but by the constitutional ethos. All British prime ministers keep it. When King Charles first received his cancer diagnosis, the weekly audience with Rishi Sunak continued by phone. David Cameron spoke of it as one of the “most important hours of the week.”

The audience is strictly private, without aides. No notes are taken. No minutes are kept. Only two people know what was said, and over the generations, both have kept that confidentiality as strictly as the confessional seal. Harold Wilson said it was his only meeting where he knew the details would never be leaked.

It is a form of accountability, reminding the prime minister — who holds immense power in a majority government — that he must answer to someone, to someone intended to embody the heritage and endurance of the nation. To someone who stands for the common good beyond political calculation. At its best, that encounter might serve as an examination of conscience for the first minister, perhaps akin to the confessional in that way, too.

The audience has no audience — it is not a press conference, not a prepared statement, not a public debate. One can imagine, in the privacy of the audience, the prime minister not being able to hide, to be questioned forthrightly, and able to answer freely.

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The system is easier with a hereditary monarch. The prime minister is answering to a sovereign authority, completely above partisan politics. In Canada, it would be more difficult as the governor general is appointed by the King on advice of the prime minister. Likewise, the prime minister could recommend to the King that the governor general be dismissed. Thus the dynamic at Rideau Hall would be rather different than at Buckingham Palace. A British PM knows that the sovereign preceded him and will likely outlast him. A Canadian PM is responsible for recommending the appointment of the incumbent’s successor.

Nevertheless, a weekly appointment with the Crown in Canada could be good for the prime minister. It would likely lead to taking the appointment of the governor general more seriously. Stephen Harper set up a non-partisan advisory committee to make recommendations on vice-regal appointments, and it produced David Johnston, the most distinguished governor general in generations. Trudeau abandoned the practice and it led to the disastrous appointment of Julie Payette.

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If the prime minister faced a weekly encounter with the governor general, it might lead to a return to the calibre of appointments of the early Canadian governors general — Vincent Massey, Georges Vanier, Roland Michener and Jules Léger.

A prime minister spends most his time in environments designed to manifest the obeisance of those around him. Caucus discipline, cabinet solidarity and civil service deference all have their role, but inflate his sense of importance. Weekly obeisance to the crown would be salutary. It would be a psychological, even spiritual, restraint on the temptation to think of himself as holding absolute power.

Carney, who served as governor of the Bank of England, knows better the constitutional ethos of London than any of his recent predecessors. He would do well to restore some of that in Ottawa.

National Post

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