James Bartleman For GG?
He's already done the job, provincially. He's got every other qualification one can think of. And since Vanier, Sauvé, Clarkson & Jean have all broken new ground, recognising the diversity of our country, maybe we could get around to having someone of First Nations' status in the 2nd top job in the country (technically - top is Queen of Canada, of course) - I know it's only been 400+ years since permanent European settlement, and one shouldn't rush into these things, and call me wildly impulsive, but why not now, and not in another 400 years? Maybe a helpful role model and reminder given the problems and opportunities of First Nations and Canada: if their education and jobforce integration rates were similar to general population, that would help a lot, and relieve need for quite as much immigration, with consequent integration troubles, as we note, currently. Canada started with the First Nations, and they are Canada's future. They are our once and future kings. Maybe one of them should get the job, for a while, eh?
posted by Eugene Forsey Liberal @ 5:14 PM
2 Comments:
At 6:01 PM,
Eugene Forsey Liberal said…
Another kind of thing I would do is serve as an alarm, to alert people to upcoming situations, and so try to affect the for the better, as I saw it. As I tend to have PPE type things rumbling around in my head, sometimes this or that occurs to me before some. In this case, after the Fall-Winter-Spring drama of Afghan detainee documents, I was thinking about next steps, and what would happen if an election was forced and another minority, as seemed likely at the time, came to be. Harper might try the same prorogation-type tactics he used to stall the previous coalition attempt. In such a case, the position of Governor General would have been crucial. This led me to reflect on the fact that GG Jean's term must be coming to an end, so while the GG appointment is by the Queen on the PM's advice - essentially executive prerogative - if I could alert people to this possibility, enough pressure might be put to, if not affect the choice, at least affect the appointee's positioning as regards such consitutional questions. And in my case, I am always looking for ways to advance the cause of aboriginals. As a result, I wrote this, the first person to implicitly note GG Jean's term was coming to an end (I took it for granted), and to raise the question of her successor, pushing for an aboriginal. There was a pause (people were checking to see if GG jean's term was indeed coming to an end?), and then a flurry of stories on the topic, also halped by the fact that politics was quieting down for the Summer, so there was more space for the issue than usual. The potential aboriginal angle was picked up by many, among others, Lawrence Martin: An aboriginal G-G would bring glorious closure to painful history
In the event, Harper picked David Johnston as GG, and many kicked up a fuss about it, though perhaps none as early, intently and vociferously as me. Firstly, for basic reasons: David Johnston Would Be All-Time Worst Choice as GG
. Secondly, knowing it was highly unlikely the decision would change, so as to put into motion enough uproar/pressure so as to possibly have some effect on the GG's attitude, conduct, on the relevant constitutional questions. And Johnston, who is by all accounts a good man (doesn't change my view of appointment, for reasons cited), did go on to convene a panel of consitutional experts to go over these questions and made public statements (re-)affirming the basic principle that the criteria for being the government was the ability to command the support of the House, whatever form that might take (coalitions, accords, 2nd party maintains confidence of House after 1st party loses confidence on Throne Speech, etc.). Thus here I helped serve as an alarm bell, and then as polemicist, was able to help stir up some uproar (the fullback thing), that may have helped get our GG to reaffirm basic principles. Since the CPC won a majority, the point was moot, but at least I had done what I could to create the conditions for the respect of the basic tenets of parliamentary democracy. And the polemicist-fullback thing also served a purpose in saying out loud what many couldn't. It opened space for them to make similar, but more polite, observations: That 'Baffling' Andrew Coyne Quietism re. Johnston GG Stitch-Up, In Full
So this is the kind of thing I did, helping bend things a bit, perhaps.
At 6:09 PM,
Eugene Forsey Liberal said…
It is rather fun that in the blog post cited above "David Johnston Would Be All-Time Worst Choice as GG", I noted I had also been the first person to posit David Johnston as GG, knowing what Canada is like, in a comment on the Macleans post "Towards an understanding of the understanding (II)". I quoted my comment in my post, which is a good thing, since Macleans got rid of all those old comments.
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