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Norman Spector

Advice to the GG: let the people decide

Last Updated: Tuesday, December 2, 2008 | 1:03 PM ET

By Norman Spector, special to CBC News

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is said to be examining his parliamentary options to delay the day of reckoning for a crisis that he brought upon himself and the country.

Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean and Prime Minister Stephen Harper in June 2008. (Canadian Press)

However, if his government is defeated on Monday, when the next confidence vote is scheduled, he will have to decide whether to request dissolution and an election from the Governor General. Last week he indicated he would do just that. But Harper may change his mind upon further reflection.

For example, he may conclude that the proposed Liberal-NDP coalition, with the backing of the Bloc Québécois, will be disastrous for the Liberal party over the near term and will eventually land the Conservatives a majority government.

Or, should the coalescing opposition find favour with Canadians and agree not to run candidates against each other, he may conclude that he cannot win an election at this time.

The GG's dilemma

Another reason Harper may decide not to request dissolution is that it would place Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean in a very difficult position.

Only once in Canadian history — the so-called King-Byng affair in 1926 — has a governor general denied a prime minister's request for dissolution and an election. Adrienne Clarkson's musings about what she would have done had Paul Martin lost the confidence of the House were just that, musings.

The fact that Harper, as Opposition leader in 2004, tried to dethrone Martin by signing a memo of understanding with the NDP's Jack Layton, simply leaves him open to accusations of hypocrisy — the same charge that can be levelled against the Liberals who took the contrary position back then.

But it does not change the powers of the Governor General. No one is suggesting that Her Excellency does not have the authority to deny a request for dissolution. However, since the circumstances this time are different from King-Byng, the Governor General also has the discretion to accede to such a request as well.

And let's not forget either that the only time the GG's power was used this way in the past led to the crisis of 1925-26 and a rather nasty election.

A question of legitimacy

Because the circumstances then were so different, the precedent most often cited these days is the 1985 accord that brought Liberal David Peterson to power in Ontario, supported by the NDP.

In discussing this incident, however, few people mention that then Conservative premier Frank Miller did not request dissolution after he was defeated on his inaugural throne speech.

Indeed, in his letter of resignation, Miller suggested that Peterson would be able to gain the confidence of the legislature and that he should be asked to form a government. The Lieutenant-Governor accepted that advice.

That situation was different, too, in an important way: Peterson's Liberals were just four seats shy of Miller's Conservatives and could govern with the direct support of one party, the NDP, which had, incidentally, offered its same formal conditions to the Tories (though probably not very seriously).

How Gov. Gen. Jean could possibly decide now that a coalition led by an interim leader and so lacking in democratic legitimacy could provide stable government to Canadians is beyond me.

On October 14, Canadians selected a minority Conservative government. While more people voted for the three opposition parties than for Harper, no one voted for the coalition that it is being proposed; indeed, all three parties explicitly denied during the campaign they would ever consider it.

If Jean were to decide to hand power over to a Liberal-led coalition under Stéphane Dion, many Canadians would feel that this is precisely the outcome they rejected barely two months ago.

Conservative voters would be furious. Many Western Canadians would feel that the government had been stolen from them. Outside Quebec, there would be strong resentment against a party dedicated to breaking up Canada having such a key supporting role in governing the country.

An uncomfortable position

We also shouldn't overlook the fact that Michaëlle Jean was appointed to her position by former prime minister Paul Martin and therefore the optics of her restoring Liberal rule would be terrible.

Critics would not just stop there. At the time of her appointment, she also held French citizenship, which she wisely renounced in the ensuing controversy.

There was also considerable controversy over whether she and her spouse, Jean-Daniel Lafond, had harboured separatist sympathies; in his case at least, few of those who know him believed the denials.

Having written three supportive columns in the Globe and Mail in the thick of the controversy surrounding her appointment, I believe now that it would be in her personal best interest and in the interest of the office of Governor General to accept the prime minister's request for an election to clear the air, should that be his choice.

More important, I also believe it would be better for Canada if this were the case.

An election, while costly, would present Canadians with a clear choice between Stephen Harper's Conservatives and the coalition being proposed by the three opposition parties.

The alternative is the very real possibility of a paralyzing political-constitutional crisis in the midst of an international recession.

In an interview ten days ago in La Presse, the Governor General was asked whether her relations with Prime Minister Harper were "generally good." She replied: "They are what they must be between a governor general and a prime minister. That's to say: mutual respect. Because this is part of respect for democracy. The people choose their government."

Let's hope for the sake of Canada that Her Excellency keeps that principle at the forefront of her deliberations in the coming days.

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