Chris Selley: How can the Liberals possibly be this awful at picking governors general?

Prime Minister Mark Carney and Canada's next governor general Louise Arbour leave a media availability announcing her appointment at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa May 5, 2026. Photo by Blair Gable /Photo by Blair Gable / Postmedia

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They did it again. It’s absolutely extraordinary. The Liberals have appointed another opinionated Type A personality from the most central realms of Central Canada as the next governor general, and it’s Louise Arbour — former Supreme Court justice, International Criminal Court prosecutor and United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

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It is divisive from the get-go, which is the No. 1 thing a governor general is not supposed to be. It’s entirely possible she might be really good at it: stranger things have happened. But at 79 years of age, she is starting the job in a hole the government had no reason to dig.

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Arbour’s controversies are mostly long in the past, at least: praising the Cuban tyrant Fidel Castro for his “unprecedented positive engagement with the UN human rights system”; praising communist China for its “commitment to the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” after Beijing donated not really very much money to her UN office; seeming to condemn Israel more than she has the various global actors who would prefer Israel be wiped off the map.

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I’m not going to dispute Arbour’s opinions here, because that really isn’t the point. She is entitled to those opinions, and it would be weird if someone as accomplished as her didn’t have them. But it’s too many opinions on record for a governor general — or a monarch, for that matter, which is why King Charles’ pre-coronation nonsense about homeopathy, organic farming, “real ale” and the carnivorous ecstasy of mutton was so perniciously annoying.

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Monarchy is hereditary, however. There’s nothing you can really do but hope for the best. Rideau Hall isn’t hereditary. We can pick anyone we want. And we keep screwing it up. And by “we,” I mostly mean “the Liberals.”

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I hope Arbour could be great at the job. No one thought Michaëlle Jean would be good at it when it turned out she was a Quebec separatist, then tried to deny it, and then it turned out FLQ terrorist Jacques Rose had built Jean’s husband Jean-Daniel Lafond a bookcase and … well, best not to dredge up old grievances.

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The point is, Arbour doesn’t tick the right boxes, which is more important than anything else in a figurehead position like GG, except for being a reasonably pleasant person who likes other people (the Liberals haven’t always gotten that part right either).

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The Liberals know how to tick boxes better than almost anything else. It’s so much easier than following through on anything. And yet, they keep buggering this office up.

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The next governor general was always going to be francophone. After the Mary Simon debacle, that much, even the Liberals probably couldn’t screw up … although North Vancouver MP Jonathan Wilkinson, soon to be Canada’s ambassador to the European Union, decided to say this crazy thing recently about Simon: “I know there were some controversies with respect to (Simon’s) French over the course of the past while, although I will say for (her) she spoke an Indigenous language, which I think is fair game in Canada.”