In last year's Reflections On Canada Day, I cited all the things I thought our various PMs did right and all the things I thought they did wrong.
Now I regret not crediting Stephen Harper for setting up a process to vet candidates for Governor General. That system got us the gentlemanly David Johnston, a man who did the office proud. Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau ditched that process, and we ended up with a Governor General who allegedly created a toxic work environment that left staffers in tears and led to massive turnover at Rideau Hall, and allegedly blew off her duties on a regular basis.
Paul Wells wrote a terrific article about this. Here's one of the most relevant parts:
$1:
The only governor general in the last 20 years who didn’t have a mandate to modernize the office was David Johnston. He was tasked with being a good Governor General. He wasn’t against modernity! As president of the University of Waterloo, he had probably presided over more real scientific progress than, say, most astronauts. And it’s not even obvious that he was the best 21st-century GG. I was always impressed by Adrienne Clarkson. What Clarkson and Johnston shared, in fact, was great affection for the assignment. Welcoming people? Check! Hosting things? On it. Making good use of official residences? You bet. Knowing something about confidence conventions in a parliamentary system, so they won’t screw up if it’s unclear who won an election and the GG has to make the call? Clarkson spent much of the 2000 election campaign on the phone to scholars and observers, in case Chrétien’s Liberals lost their majority. Johnston produced a set of rules and principles for the aftermaths of tight elections that has already been used by lieutenant governors in British Columbia and New Brunswick after squeaker elections in those provinces.
There’s no requirement that the GG be an avatar or incarnation of a government’s narcissistic sense of itself as the nation’s guiding light into a more enlightened tomorrow. The GG just has to ensure that the vice-regal function is competently exercised, that ceremonial functions are exercised with grace, and that staff aren’t traumatized. Neither is there, of course, any need for the viceroy to be old, straight, white or male, let alone all four at once. The only real requirement is that the occupant be capable of seriousness in the execution of serious work. That attribute is widely distributed through the population, but we miss it when it’s absent.
...
A Prime Minister who had never been a cabinet minister, surrounded by advisors who had never worked for a Prime Minister, handled an important institutional appointment by managing to find a Governor General who had no curiosity about the job. That’s why I’m not too vexed about the mistake: second time around, they will almost certainly do better. But it’s still worth thinking about why it happened. This is not (or not only) the ill of the Trudeau Liberals, it’s a widespread ill of our age. When vaccine delivery suffered inevitable early difficulties last month, the Conservatives’ putative best mind on health care, Michelle Rempel, tweeted—of course she tweeted—that “we need a moon shot.” Apollo 11 landed seven years after Kennedy’s speech. A moon shot is probably not what we need. What we need is to get better at the sorts of things you need to do if you want to deliver vaccines, including the aforementioned supply-chain logistics and federalism, things you can’t fix on Twitter.
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