This week saw a freshly sworn-in President Biden revoke the presidential permit for the Keystone XL (extra large?) pipeline. This week saw Pfizer-BioNTech announce that Canada would not receive any vaccines from them this coming week.
No soup for you!
This week also saw Julie Payette resign as Governor General (GG) after an independent inquiry into allegations of workplace harassment, testing journalists’ understanding of the word “unprecedented.”
There was outrage and angst aplenty on all these topics, but my favourite comment was on the GG thing and on the lighter side. Sort of.
The overall political damage to the government
will likely be minimal,
simply due to the chronic civic illiteracy of Canadians,
many of whom no doubt responded to the breaking news
of Payette’s resignation as governor general
by asking who Payette is and what’s a governor general.
– Matt Gurney, National Post
Isabel
That Payette was not a suitable Governor General seems to be the case. But that’s no reason to dispense with having a Governor General. There have been a few poor ones, but there have also been notable exceptions – David Johnston and Jeanne Sauve are two that come to mind.
I am not, in any sense, a monarchist – in fact, I think the monarchy anachronistic – but as long as it’s still in place, and as long as we are connected in that way, I think the Governor General is an important institutional part of our government.
Tom
Tom – Yes, that sounds right. You’ll be pleased to know that you agree with a professor of constitutional law who said this week that most countries separate the head-of-state and head-of-government functions (America being perhaps the most-notable exception). Whether we remain as a constitutional monarchy or not, we would still likely have someone in this sort of function, although we might give it a different title.