Is Our Governor General Up to the Job?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

“Since our Governor-General made her critical decision on prorogation 2½ weeks ago, there's been a sustained regal silence. Nary a word from the celestial Michaëlle Jean to explain it.”

So wrote Lawrence Martin, a columnist who can usually be relied upon to view politics through a fairly Liberal prism, in a Dec. 22 Globe and Mail commentary.

“We don't know what the PM told her, whether it was accurate, whether he torqued the separatist threat, whether he raised the possibility of legal recourse. We don't know whether her decision came with any strings attached or how she determined it was consistent with the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy,” contended Martin.

Canadians have not worried all that much about the role of our constitutional stand-in for the head of state, Queen Elizabth II. Even those who think the office archaic and a relic of colonial times have reassured themselves that, after all, it’s a job consisting mainly of ceremonial functions.

So in recent decades it became a patronage appointment, just another plum, like a seat in the Senate. Recent Governors General have been retired politicians and CBC personalities. Who really cared?

But we’ve now been reminded that in a Westminster system of parliamentary government, the Crown, in the person of the Governor General, can wield important reserve powers. It would have been within Jean’s right, legally, to have installed Stéphane Dion as prime minister, without benefit of another election.

And should Stephen Harper’s minority government fall next month, we might see a man who last October wasn’t in the running for the job – or even leader of his party – become our head of government.

Michael Ignatieff would be the beneficiary of behind-the-scenes decisions which we, the other 33 million Canadians, would not be privy to.

So Martin’s concerns are well-founded. Given that we’re in a period where minority governments are common and the Governor General’s discretionary powers are therefore large, he wants Jean to publically disclose the reasons for her action on Dec. 4.

But is it possible she herself can’t quite articulate the constitutional rationale behind her decision? Here's the real problem: our Governor General is an inexperienced former TV announcer placed in the job by a besotted former prime minister.

She herself may have had no idea what to do when Harper arrived asking her to suspend parliament, and may therefore have relied completely on unnamed “experts.” In effect, our constitutional monarchy has now become the equivalent of a regency, where a monarch too young to rule leaves governing to others.

A Letter from Jerusalem – Circa 1972

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish-Tribune

Recently a friend in Montreal mailed me a copy of a letter – one of those old aerogrammes -- that I had sent to him in August 1972, when I spent the summer at the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, while I was a student at Brandeis University. (No e-mail back then!)

The letter is indeed a piece of history all in itself. I was amazed, given the relatively low cultural state of students today, that I could write to him that I was reading at the time books by the Soviet novelist Mikhail Sholokov, the American writer Sinclair Lewis, and the American Communist supporter Waldo Frank, among others – and not because I “had to,” for a course, but simply out of interest. (Who today even remembers these authors?)

I spoke in the letter about going along on demonstrations with the left-wing Matzpen people, a now defunct and forgotten Israeli socialist organization. They were among those protesting an expropriation that had taken place by the Israeli government back in 1948 of two Arab Christian villages, Birim and Ikrit, whose land near the Lebanese border had later been taken over by kibbutzim.

The inhabitants had not been able to return despite repeated rulings of the Israeli Supreme Court, so in the summer of 1972 they returned to their villages, and police had to use force to remove them. On August 13, a few thousand people in Jerusalem demonstrated on their behalf.

The leftists hung out at the Cafe Ta’amon on King George Street, and I used to spend time there. I looked for it on the Internet and the place still exists, though it looks a lot fancier today.

Well, what can one say about all this? It was a different era; many of us still lived in the zeitgeist of the sixties. It’s all such ancient history now.

In 1972, I could walk by myself down from Mount Scopus through the Old City and into West Jerusalem, even late in the evening, without fear.

Who would do that today? No one had yet heard of al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the host of other groups around the world who are today mortal enemies of Israel.

Between the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, we Jews lived in a fool’s paradise -- it was probably one of the few times in our history when we forgot that we are weaker, not stronger, than our enemies.

But when Yasser Arafat spoke to the UN a year later, in 1974, and then when the “Zionism is Racism” resolution was passed by the General Assembly in 1975 (on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, no less), we began to live in today’s “epoch.”

Even the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of Communism as an attractive ideology hasn’t really changed things all that much, in terms of the ongoing offensive against Israel.

The “anti-Zionism” these leftists advocated, we now understand, had nothing to do with “socialism,” because all the nonsense peddled by the Soviets, and by China, is history now -- except, of course, for the anti-Israel strand.

And today it’s not the Russians or Chinese who are behind it, but an amorphous worldwide “left,” which has really become little more than an anti-Semitic “Internationale.” I’m sure, for instance, that many leftists will defend the destruction of the Chabad Jewish Centre in Mumbai, India, by terrorists, because it was an “outpost of imperialism.”

So though much has changed in 36 years, even more has not. But as for that 1972 letter, I guess the Jerusalem postmark alone is worth saving it for.

Bye Bye Parliamentary Legitimacy

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

In the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, our own political system is in turmoil.

Stéphane Dion’s Liberals, Jack Layton’s New Democrats, and the separatist Bloc Québécois led by Gilles Duceppe have cooked up a deal whereby they will overthrow Stephen Harper’s newly-elected Conservative government and form a coalition to replace him.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has announced that she too supports this political troika. In fact she’d like Dion, the presumptive prime minister, to appoint her to the Senate -- so much for the Greens being “different” than the old-line parties.

No one is quite sure whether this power grab will succeed or not. Harper has managed to get the governor general to suspend parliament until the end of January.

“The highest principle of Canadian democracy is that if one wants to be prime minister, one gets one’s mandate from the Canadian people, and not from Quebec separatists,” he declared earlier in the House of Commons.

But one thing is certain. Canada is now leaving, perhaps forever, that small and happy group of countries such as France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, which have periodic elections that create stable governments.

We are now joining the Belgiums, Israels, Italys, Polands, Thailands and Ukraines, all those nations where parties come and go, where shifting coalitions create and break governments, where politicians seek power however they may seize it, and where, as a result, chaos reigns and no one quite knows who will be running the show the next week or month.

Their parliaments all look as though we were viewing them through a kaleidoscope.

Since Dion and Layton by themselves do not control enough votes in the House of Commons by themselves, Duceppe will now effectively be in the driver’s seat, making sure Quebec gets its fair share – and then some – of the goodies the coalition will soon be handing out.

No wonder former Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau has announced that he supports this deal. He called the Bloc’s inclusion in the three-party coalition agreement an “impressive victory” for separatism

“This victory sweeps aside any hesitation Quebecers might have had on the presence of the Bloc in Ottawa,” Parizeau said.

Yet Layton has remarked, with a straight face, that this deal will be good for Canada. Too bad we don’t have the equivalent of “Saturday Night Live” in this country. But then, this isn’t even funny, the way Sarah Palin was.

Can we assume, with the Bloc about to effectively become part of Canada’s government, that the Clarity Act setting out specific rules for Quebec’s departure from Canada (which I never thought was worth the paper it’s printed on anyhow) is now dead? Surely this will be understood by Dion and Layton as being one of Duceppe’s demands, even if unspoken?

I wonder what all those people on Prince Edward Island who vote Liberal, no matter what, think of Stéphane Dion embracing a party whose aim is the secession of Quebec.

Can we expect Liberal members of parliament who represent P.E.I. constituencies to break ranks with their party, as it moves forward in its unholy alliance with the separatist Bloc Québécois and the New Democrats? Or do they value power more than principle?

Is Stéphane Dion About to Become PM?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Hey, why should a little thing like losing an election stop Canada’s perennial rulers from resuming their rightful place as the government in Ottawa?

Don’t look now, but is Stéphane Dion about to become our prime minister?

This shift in power would be even more dramatic than Dion’s Green Shift, which went nowhere in October.

Apparently the Liberals have been making plans to bring down the Harper minority government by putting forward a motion of non-confidence in parliament to defeat the Conservatives and replace them with a coalition made up of themselves and the New Democrats, and perhaps even including the separatist Bloc Québécois.

And what is their flimsy excuse? Ontario MP John McCallum said they were seeking to replace Stephen Harper because the Conservatives failed to offer an economic stimulus package when the rest of the world had done so.

This Liberal ploy may be technically legal, but it almost amounts to a non-military coup d’état. No federal government has ever been replaced by a coalition of parties that lost an election (though it has happened provincially).

The Conservatives won a renewed mandate just seven weeks ago. They increased their numbers in the House of Commons by 19 seats, and in fact, with 143 seats, were just 12 short of obtaining a majority in the 308-seat House of Commons.

The Liberals, on the other hand, were not just defeated but trounced.

They lost 26 seats, and their share of the popular vote, at 26.2 percent, was their worst showing in over a century.

Yet now they are talking about a coalition with the NDP and maybe also the Bloc. “The three opposition parties agree on more things than they disagree upon,” one NDP MP has stated.

The Liberals and NDP would need the Bloc to be at least onside, because together the Liberals, with 77 seats, and the NDP, with 29 seats, don’t even come close to reaching the 155 seats needed for a working majority.

The Bloc holds 49 Quebec seats.

So, are we about to see our Liberal-appointed Governor General, Michaëlle Jean, ask Stéphane Dion, a man who has resigned the leadership of his own party, to form a government and become prime minister?

Or might it be Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff, neither of whom was even running for the job in the recent election? Neither man has even been elected leader of his own party, much less of the country.

And if this coalition were to include the Bloc Québécois, might Gilles Duceppe perhaps get a cabinet position? How about something like minister of national unity?

The chutzpah of Canada’s “natural governing party” is boundless. They really do think they have a divine right to rule Canada, and clearly see Stephen Harper as merely a usurper who has gained a temporary hold on government through some kind of electoral sleight of hand.

So, should the three opposition parties defeat the government, Harper should ask the Governor General to dissolve parliament and call new elections – unpalatable and expensive as that will be. Under no circumstances should someone else be allowed to form a government without going to the country first.

Why? Because, while it is true that the opposition parties won more seats and votes on Oct. 14 than did the Conservatives, the electorate was not in full possession of the facts.

How many people across the country who voted for the Liberals or NDP might instead have voted for the Tories, had they known these parties planned an alliance with each other and, more particularly, with the Bloc? We don’t know.

Liberal voters, in particular, might not want to be in bed with either separatists or social democrats. So let’s do it right this time: let the Bloc, Liberals and NDP run under their true collective colours, and if they beat Harper, fine, they can then form a government.

And, should the Liberals and NDP join with the Bloc and manage to overthrow the newly-elected Conservative government of Canada, they will in effect be saying that they consider the separatists more legitimate, and better for Canada, than the Conservatives. Wonder what Alberta, in particular, will make of this.

Should this come to pass, the road to Canada's dismemberment will become a superhighway.