The new Lieutenant (pronounced lef- tenant) Governor of
Alberta has recently and needlessly provoked outrage among the “conservatives”
in that province, that is to say, Albertans who are small-l liberals in the sense
that term conveyed in Canada in the days when Sir Wilfred Laurier led the big-L
Liberal Party. When asked by a
representative of the fourth estate, whether she would sign royal assent to
Danielle Smith’s Alberta Sovereignty Act, she said that she would consult
experts about the constitutionality of the bill before doing so. Few
of those who took immediate umbrage with this answer, seemed to notice how
strange it was that the question was asked in the first place. While the conclusions of inductive reasoning
are not infallible, the fact that bills that pass the appropriate legislative
body, provincial legislature or Parliament, have always, or the next thing to
it, received royal assent in the past means that it is rather silly of a
reporter to ask such a question unless there is reason to think that it might
be different this time. There was no
such reason to think this until the Lieutenant Governor answered the way she
did.
Before proceeding to look at some of the criticism this answer
has received, let us back up a bit and provide some background information. The Lieutenant Governor of a province, as
you may have deduced if you did not already know, is the provincial representative
of our Head of State, Queen Elizabeth II, corresponding provincially to the
Governor General in the Dominion government.
Just as the Governor General, assuming the Queen is not present to do so
herself, summons Parliament together and dissolves it, and appoints on the
basis of who commands the support of Parliament, the executive ministers of
Cabinet, so the Lieutenant Governor does with the provincial Legislative
Assembly and the provincial Cabinet.
Just as all bills that pass Parliament – the House of Commons and Senate
– become law when the Governor General acting on behalf of the Queen signs
royal assent, so with the Lieutenant Governor and the bills that pass the
provincial Legislative Assembly.
The Alberta Sovereignty Act is not a bill currently before
the Alberta Legislative Assembly. It is
something that Danielle Smith has proposed as part of her campaign to become
the next leader of Alberta’s United Conservative Party. The UCP needs a new leader because of the
abysmal job that their current leader Jason Kenney has done as party leader and
provincial premiers, especially during the bat flu in which he attained the
dubious distinction of being the premier who locked up the most Christian
pastors for doing their duty and obeying God rather than man. Danielle Smith, who is the frontrunner in
the race to replace Kenney, was formerly the leader of the Wildrose Party of
Alberta which merged with the provincial Progressive Conservatives to form the
UCP in 2017. The Alberta Sovereignty
Act is the reason why she is frontrunner.
It is not, as some might mistakenly conclude from the title, a proposal
of formal secession of Alberta from the Dominion of Canada. It is rather a proposal that Alberta claim
for herself the same position, vis-à-vis the Dominion government, that the
province of Quebec already enjoys, that is, the right to ignore the Dominion
government on matters that she thinks are her business, and not Canada’s. Smith maintains that this would be done
within the limits of the Canadian constitution, and, indeed, would be merely
reclaiming what is allotted to the province in the constitution. Since the Act has not even been drafted yet,
it is rather premature to opine on whether it meets the lofty goals of this
rhetoric or not.
Those who objected to the way Alberta Lieutenant Governor
Salma Lakhani answered the strange question, objected to both the content of
what she said and to what we might call the context in which she said it. Like the Lieutenant Governor herself, they
were partially right and partially wrong.
“We are a constitutional monarchy and this is where we keep
checks and balances” she said. “I’m what
I would call a constitutional fire extinguisher. We don’t have to use it a lot,
but sometimes we do.” While many of the
objectors, including some who really ought to know better like Rebel News
founder Ezra Levant, took exception to these words, there is nothing in the way
of content here that is not fundamentally correct. There is a constitutional as well as a
ceremonial importance to the office of the Queen and that of her vice-regal
representatives. Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary
famously told American President Teddy Roosevelt that his role as monarch was
to protect his people from their governments.
The Fathers of Confederation saw the role of the monarchy in similar
terms, as the final check on the danger of Prime Ministerial dictatorship. The
greatest constitutional expert our country has ever had, the Honourable Eugene
Forsey, called this “an absolutely essential safeguard of democracy”. The
problem is not with the principle of what Lt. Governor Lakhani said, but with the
application. The most important power reserved to the Crown
in our constitution, is the power to dissolve Parliament/Legislature, call an
election, and if need be dismiss the Prime Minister/Premier. Forsey’s dissertation on the subject, later
published as a book, was entitled The
Royal Power of Dissolution. The fire extinguisher is indeed an apt
metaphor for this, but it is only to be used when there is what would be the
equivalent of a fire in this metaphor.
The Alberta Sovereignty Act as proposed by Smith is not such a fire. It may be unconstitutional, it may not be -
this can only be determined when the text is made available. From the proposal, however, if it proves to
be unconstitutional, it will not be in a way that corresponds with a fire, but
in a manner in which the courts are the appropriate venue to deal with the unconstitutionality.
What would constitute a fire?
The closest thing to it that Canada has ever seen has been
the behaviour of the current Prime Minister in Ottawa. At the beginning of the bat flu, when fear
was at its zenith and rational thinking at its nadir, he seized the opportunity
to unburden himself of accountability to Parliament. Having been reduced to minority status from
a huge majority in a humiliating Dominion election the year previous, almost immediately
after the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, he sent Parliament
home, calling them back together temporarily to ask them to approve a measure
that would in effect have suspended the Magna Carta for two years, giving him carte
blanche to tax and spend as he saw fit without having to account to
Parliament. While he was only given
part of what he wanted, he nevertheless proceeded to govern from in front of
the television camera before the front door of his cottage, while Parliament
remained in suspension. A year into the
bat flu, he called a snap vanity election, which merely returned the status quo
ante, but in the course of campaigning decided to take the dangerous and
provocative path of demonizing and scapegoating a portion of the Canadian
public that turned out to be much larger than he thought. When, after the first two years of the bat
flu, he began imposing new restrictions while the rest of the world was abandoning
them, he found himself faced with a massive but peaceful protest. Indeed, the protest was far more peaceful
than any other mass movement of the last two years, many of which have been
called “peaceful” or “mostly peaceful” despite being essentially riots
characterized by violent language, violent behaviour, property destruction,
looting and vandalism, none of which could be found in the truckers’
protest. When defaming the protestors didn’t
work, he evoked the Emergency Measures Act, giving himself the kind of powers
designed for use when the country is besieged in war, to crush the
protest. He has continued since, to use
law enforcement, the revenue agency, and other such branches of government to
inappropriately attack his personal and political enemies. If there is anything lacking to qualify his
premiership as the sort of “fire” for which the reserve constitutional powers
of the Crown are the “fire extinguisher” it is only the refusal to relinquish
power after losing an election.
When it comes to what I have dubbed the context of the Lt.
Governor’s remarks, her critics are on firmer ground. The Alberta Sovereignty Act, whatever its
merits and demerits might be, is not the sort of thing for which the reserve
powers of the Crown are intended, and, worse, is a multilevel political matter.
What I mean by that is that it is at the
present time at the heart of one political contest, the race for the leadership
of a political party, the UCP, but should the person proposing it win that
race, it will then become a bill to be debated in the Alberta Legislature
between the various parties represented there and potentially an issue in
another political contest, the next Alberta provincial election. There is yet another level on which it is
political in that it is of such a nature as will almost certainly generate
contention between Alberta and other provinces and between Alberta and the
Dominion government. A Lieutenant
Governor should not be involving herself in such matters.
One of the foremost benefits to the institution of
hereditary monarchy in the age in which we live, is that a hereditary monarch
is above politics in the partisan sense of the word. For an example of what can happen when the
head of state is not above partisan politics but is elected to office by
running as the representative of a faction, we need look no further than the
republic to the south of the 49th Parallel. Last Thursday, the current occupant of the
White House gave an intemperate rant at Independence Hall in Philadelphia about
how the approximately half of his country that voted for his opponent in the last
election were some sort of existential threat to the United States and
democracy. To make this speech, already
creepy enough, even more threatening, he delivered it from behind a lectern
stationed in front of blood red illumination, mingled with shadows, while
flanked by US Marines, conjuring up the images of dictators in general, Nazi
Germany in particular, and the devil in hell.
This is what you will eventually get, when you fill the office of the
head of state, the person who represents the entire country, by partisan
election. (1) Parliamentary government
under a hereditary monarch is much better.
Queen Elizabeth II herself, has always understood that since her office
is above partisan politics, she has a duty to that office not to descend into
partisan politics personally. Those
charged with representing her in a vice-regal capacity in Canada, whether at
the Dominion or provincial level, have a responsibility to follow this
example. Here, the Lt. Governor of
Alberta has clearly failed. Perhaps
this part of her duty was not made plain to her.
God Save the Queen!
(1) Totalitarian
countries have been, almost without exception, republics – the Cromwellian
protectorate, the first French Republic i.e. the Reign of Terror, every
Communist country (they generally call themselves People’s Republics), Nazi
Germany. The freest countries in the
world, with only a few exceptions, have had parliamentary government under a
hereditary monarch. Dictators are
fundamentally a democratic phenomenon. The
dictator claims absolute power over people, because he claims to speak for “the
people”. Whereas kings and queens are
the fathers and mothers of their countries, dictators are always Big Brother. Dictatorship like democracy, is all about
power, the ability to compel obedience.
Monarchy is about authority – the respected and recognized right,
derived from a number of sources including ancient prescription and
constitutional succession, to lead. This distinction is reflected even in the
difference between the two Greek suffixes of the words themselves. The
ancients understood democracy to be the mother of tyranny. Modern democracy has become more
totalitarian over time. The original
problem with democracy, as Alexis de Tocqueville spelled it out in the
nineteenth century in Democracy in
America, was the “tyranny of the majority”, i.e., the majority trampling
over the rights of the minority. The
original Modern solution to this problem was to temper democracy with
liberalism, in the sense of acknowledged, protected, rights and freedoms of
individuals and minorities with which governments, even with majority backing,
are forbidden to interfere. NB,
minority here means “the numerically less”, and not, what more recent liberals
and democrats seem to think it means, people of certain designated skin
colours, ethnicities, national origins, religions, sexual orientations, etc. More recently, replacing the majoritarian
principle with the consensus principle, has been the preferred solution. This, however, makes things worse. Under the consensus principle, a democratic
decision is not valid without universal participation and universal agreement. Universal agreement, however, translates
into “dissent will not be tolerated.”
This is why such present day liberal democrats as the current occupier
of the White House and the current Prime Minister of Canada are so absolutely intolerant
of all who disagree with them.
