Matt Gurney: Not choosing an Albertan to be GG is an alarmingly obvious missed opportunity
Mercury. Venus. Earth. Mars. Jupiter. Saturn. Uranus. Neptune.
By: Matt Gurney
Mark Carney’s announcement of Louise Arbour as Canada’s next governor general led me to a somewhat alarming realization this week: I might be one of the only Canadian media commentators who does not have particularly strong feelings about the woman. But I don’t. I certainly remember some of her work on the Supreme Court and some of the positions she was known to support. I remember her name floating around for a while when the former prime minister was musing about finding an eminent Canadian to look into foreign interference. But that’s basically it.
As to her selection for the top job, I guess she’ll be fine. I don’t intend that as damning with faint praise. I’m being sincere — she seems fully capable of discharging the responsibilities of the job in a competent and credible manner. Some of her older comments, such as the military being a bunch of “white boys who like guns but don’t like women or anybody who doesn’t look like them,” are just a bit awkward given her new status as Canada’s incoming commander-in-chief of the armed forces. But I suspect the military will find a way to carry on, as shall the rest of us.
What does bother me is what this selection tells us about decision-making at the highest level of our government. Arbour’s selection is a massive missed opportunity, and I’m not sure how many of those the government is going to get before it starts to regret it.
Because the next governor general should have been from western Canada. Alberta, specifically. And the fact that the PMO either didn’t realize this or couldn’t find someone to be that person ain’t a good sign, friends.
As I see it, the country faces three broad threats right now. There’s a lot of specific things that worry me, and there’s no shortage of problems that need targeted solutions, but at the macro level, there are three major issues that the Carney government must be managing.
The first is the geopolitical ramifications of the hard pivot by the United States. Even if a subsequent U.S. administration corrects back toward something resembling the baseline we’ve enjoyed since the Second World War, the damage to our confidence in the United States will be real and enduring. Canada simply has to adapt to a very different world. That’s job number one, and it’s a massive job. We aren’t moving nearly fast enough, but I think Carney gets the importance of this.
The second is the probable return of an active Quebec sovereignty movement to the front burner. Provincial polls in Quebec have tightened up a bit lately, and it’s possible a growing number of Quebecers are themselves deciding that now is not a good time to inflict another referendum on the country. But a win by the Parti Québécois is likely, based on the polls today, and they’ve been blunt about their desire to hold another referendum. This is a threat the federal government must be ready for and engaged with. For what it’s worth, given the Liberal party’s deep roots in Quebec, I suspect that if it becomes necessary to fight this fight, they will have real bench strength upon which to draw. And the prime minister will be able to receive trusted advice from people who know what they’re talking about.
And then there’s the Alberta separatism thing.
I know that the PMO is aware of the problem. You can see in some of their public statements and actions that they get it, at least a little bit. I also know from private conversations that they take it seriously, and that they think they’re on top of it.
But I’m not sure that they are. I do not think the federal Liberals have nearly the bench strength in Alberta that they do in Quebec. I don’t think they understand the lay of the land nearly as well. And I don’t think they are as engaged with the problem as they should be.
Because if they were, and a rare opportunity presented itself to make a largely symbolic appointment of a single person to represent the entire country domestically and on the global stage right as a separatist movement was flaring up in a part of the country where the federal government, especially a Liberal one, does not have the luxury of particularly impressive presence or admiration, you’d think the PMO would have seen, to quote the Trailer Park Boys, a chance to get “two birds stoned at once.”
Appointing an Albertan to be governor general has got to be just about the best bang for buck the Carney government could have gotten here. All the better if it was an overtly federalist, bilingual woman. This is just extremely basic politics. The actual physical embodiment of the Canadian state could have been from a part of the country that feels, rightly or wrongly, largely alienated from the Canadian state.
Arbour, to put it mildly, is not that person. Again, I think she’ll do a perfectly good job, insofar as governors general go. But not only is her appointment an enormous missed opportunity, it is also a real signal that despite a major projects office and an MOU to get a pipeline built, the Carney Liberals still see the world through, well, very Laurentian Liberal eyes.
You won’t hear me saying much against Laurentian elites. I am one. And I’m not into self-loathing. I have other vices.
But even I can see, from deep in the heart of Toronto, that appointing Arbour is, to borrow a hockey metaphor, like losing a four-point game. Not only did you not get the win you needed, you lost the points you needed to the team you’re trying to beat. In appointing a retired Supreme Court justice from Montreal, not only has Carney missed the opportunity to appoint an Albertan federalist, he has appointed someone who will confirm a lot of the suspicions the Alberta separatists already had about him, his worldview, the people around him, and the country in general.
It’s a major missed opportunity and one that might not come again for years. This was handed to the government on a platter, and yet. This leaves me alarmed because I don’t know if the thought of appointing an Albertan simply didn’t occur to the prime minister and his advisors, or if it did and they either couldn’t think of someone or chose Arbour, anyway.
None of these options is particularly reassuring. It makes me worry that, despite what I truly believe is a high-level recognition among the PM and his top advisors that the world has changed and Canada must change with it, they’ll still fall victim to path dependency and keep doing the very safe, predictable things that a Liberal PM would have done five, 10 or 20 years ago, almost out of political reflex. And might only realize belatedly, if ever, that they should have maybe done something else instead.
But hey, I guess the good news is that no one will be demanding we recite the planets in order of their orbital distance from the sun any time soon. And that ain’t nothing, I guess.
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Doubtful that an AB GG would have moved the needle much with aggrieved Albertans who've made feeling hard done by a core part of their identity.
Goalposts on wheels.
Never would have crossed their minds and would have been swiftly condemned in Montreal if it did.