Christopher Dummitt: Governor General betrays constitution by letting Liberals escape Parliament

The government doesn't have the confidence of Parliament

Published Jan 06, 2025  •  4 minute read

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, and Gov. Gen. Mary Simon depart after Dominic LeBlanc was sworn in as finance minister during a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, on Monday. Photo by Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

With all the uncertainty about just exactly who is leading the Liberal party, and when an election might be called, one thing is crystal clear: Governor General Mary Simon was wrong to approve Prime Minister Justin’s Trudeau’s request to prorogue Parliament. She should have flat out refused.

Why?

It’s based on a simple but easily misunderstood reality: the Liberal party is not the government. The whole issue of the Liberal leadership selection is irrelevant. Our government is headed by the prime minister Justin Trudeau and his ministers. These are the people who must hold the confidence of Parliament. And at present, they obviously do not.

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Every single other party in Parliament has now announced publicly that they no longer have confidence in the current government. This might not matter if the Trudeau government had a majority. But, of course, they do not. They have been a government in a minority situation and at the whim of the other parties, mostly the NDP.

The leader of the NDP has announced that party will no longer support the government. The Bloc Québécois has said the same. And the Conservatives have been trying to vote the government out at every opportunity. This is what matters in a Parliamentary system — the confidence of Parliament (or absolute lack of it).

This isn’t even to speak about the public opinion polls which put the current government’s popularity somewhere along the deep ocean floor alongside the Titanic. We are talking near-Kim Campbell blowout levels of unpopularity.

So given what we know — given that the current government is on its last legs, that the other leaders in Parliament have announced publicly their lack of confidence — for a Governor General to prorogue Parliament and allow the Liberal government to escape a vote of confidence would be a betrayal of the very system of government the Governor General has been put in a position of authority to protect.

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Governors General have very few substantive powers. This is a good thing. Canada is a constitutional monarchy and has developed our democracy out of a long continuous tradition where we continued to provide mostly ceremonial roles to our ancient sources of authority. As the representative of the Crown and the nation, the Governor General has one major reserve power — to dissolve or prorogue Parliament, and to decide if a government can shut down that Parliament or delay meeting it.

Usually this isn’t an issue. A prime minister will come calling for a prorogation when the government clearly holds the confidence of Parliament. The same goes when they wish to dissolve Parliament to hold an election. In ordinary times the Governor General is just a figurehead saying yes.

These are not ordinary times. The prime minister’s request for prorogation permits him to flee Parliament. He would be trying to escape the wishes of the people and their representatives. This is the moment for which we provide the special reserve powers of the Governor General — to prevent a government running away from the will of the people’s representatives.

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But, you might ask, what about the Liberal party and its leadership selection process? What about the constitution of the Liberal party which dictates a certain process for choosing a leader?

That is irrelevant. The Liberal party’s constitution is not the concern of the Governor General. What’s more, even if it was, you can have a different party leader than a prime minister. It has been done before. When Mackenzie King retired in 1948 he was concerned with this succession (unlike, it’s almost impossible to say, the current Liberal leader). He arranged for a leadership convention which selected Louis St Laurent as the new Liberal leader in August or 1948

King stayed on as prime minister for several more months until November. He really wanted to beat out the record to be the longest serving prime minister ever in Commonwealth history and he did so.

In other words, Trudeau can step down as Liberal leader and the Liberals can go looking for someone else. The Governor General plays no role in this. If Trudeau and the Liberals claim she does, they are just in it for themselves.

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There is one precedent which Simon might have considered before granting the prorogation request, that could seem confusing but it needn’t be — the decision in 2008 of then-Governor General Michaël Jean to grant Stephen Harper a prorogation in what might seem to be a similar situation. Then too Harper was fleeing the censure of a Parliament that had announced its intention not to support his government.

At that time too, Jean arguably should have refused Harper’s request. That she didn’t do so is an embarrassment to her own knowledge of her role, and that of her advisers. But the situation today is also vastly different.

In 2008, the Canadian people had just been through an election. Harper’s party had won the most seats, if not a majority. And the alternative government to Harper’s would have needed the support of the separatist Bloc Québecois. All of this goes some way to making her decision more understandable if not correct.

In 2025, we are in a very different world. This is already an election year, with a historically unpopular government, and with calls not for a new government to take over, but simply for a new election — to go to the people. That should have made the the Governor General’s decision all that much more simple.

The Governor General’s decision to allow a prorogation is a betrayal of the essence of Canadian democracy. Intentionally or not, she has made herself and her office to be used as the Liberal party’s stool-pigeon.

Next time we select someone for this role, everything else — including sex and race — ought to be irrelevant. The only thing that should matter is their knowledge of and their respect for our parliamentary traditions.

National Post

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