And an editorial from today's Globe & Mail, shared in accordance with the "fair dealing" provisions,
Section 29, of the
Copyright Act.
The right to warn, but not to leak
If true, reports that Governor-General Michaëlle Jean pressed Prime Minister Stephen Harper to repatriate Omar Khadr, who is accused of being a terrorist, to Canada from Guantanamo Bay would not constitute an abuse of her office. As the British constitutional thinker Walter Bagehot famously wrote, "The sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights - the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn."
Ms. Jean has neither the great experience nor the moral authority of the Queen; she is, however, the representative of our head of state, she meets large numbers of Canadians and she does have the benefit of independence and detachment.
If anything, it is unfortunate that a strain exists across Sussex Drive. The Prime Minister would benefit from regular meetings with the Governor-General, which were once a custom in this country.
The scandal here is not that Ms. Jean may have privately advocated Mr. Khadr's return, but that such an exchange would have been leaked, seemingly to cause political embarrassment to Mr. Harper in Quebec during a federal election campaign.
Mr. Harper on Friday said the La Presse story was wrong, but focused on the report's suggestion that he was not entirely against an eventual repatriation, but had told Ms. Jean his caucus and party base would never accept such a thing. "This story is false. My position on Mr. Khadr is clear. He's charged with very serious crimes and we believe that he should face trial on those charges," Mr. Harper said. But he was cagey on the question of whether Ms. Jean had intervened over the Khadr case: "Obviously I would not get into any discussion that would attribute political opinions to the Governor-General." It is proper that the Prime Minister would take such a position. The question is whether his discretion has been reciprocated.
La Presse reported that Ms. Jean's intervention came after she and her husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, had consulted with experts in constitutional and international law, concluding that the government must repatriate Mr. Khadr to comply with Canada's Charter of Rights and international conventions on child soldiers. It is not the kind of information likely to have come from one of Mr. Harper's spin doctors. It happens to come a few days after Mr. Lafond, speaking in the context of the Conservative government's cuts to art funding, told The Globe "it's very safe for a politician to destroy culture."
If it is in fact shown that the Khadr leak originated at Rideau Hall, then questions would need to be asked about Ms. Jean's impartiality, and hence her ability to exercise her constitutional responsibilities.
