Russ Kuykendall outlines the delaying measures Paul Martin's government has taken to avoid a formal confidence vote. On two occasions in the past the Governor General, as the Monarch's representative, intervened — or simply declined to follow instructions — to guarantee the constitutional principle of responsible government. These were in 1896 and 1926. Much more recently, in 1975, the Australian Governor General, Sir John Kerr, dismissed Prime Minister Edward Gough Whitlam's Labour government over a budget deadlock.
My guess is that we will not be seeing Canada's Governor General, Mme Adrienne Clarkson, intervene in the current crisis. Why? At one time our governors general were appointed by London and were usually British nobles or even members of the royal family. They were, in short, neutral outsiders who could convincingly claim to be above the partisan politics of the country to which they were assigned.
Since 1952, however, our governors general have been Canadian born or, in Clarkson's case, longtime residents. They are effectively appointed by a sitting Canadian prime minister, even if the appointment is officially extended by the Queen. This means they usually have ties to the governing party. Clarkson was appointed by Martin's predecessor, Jean Chrétien. One could argue that the governor general's office has evolved over the years into a less-than-effective constitutional check on the government of the day. Thus we are unlikely to see Her Excellency take action in the present crisis.
Madame Adrienne Clarkson
Later: Alexander Panetta reports that Mme Clarkson is indeed paying close attention to the current political chaos in Ottawa. From Panetta's report:
A senior government official said the prime minister won't be taking any direction from Clarkson. "The Governor General receives advice from her first minister. She doesn't tender it," the official said.
Not so, says Andrew Coyne:
Both [Panetta's] story and the "senior government official" are wrong. The Governor General most certainly has the right to advise her first minister. As [Walter] Bagehot famously put it, under the British constitution (of which we are the inheritors) the sovereign has three rights: "the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn." Ordinarily, it is true, the prime minister is not bound to follow her advice, but that is a different statement.
And while it is also ordinarily true that she is bound to take his, that is not true of one matter in particular: who should be her first minister. If the Governor General is of the opinion that the current prime minister does not command the confidence of the House of Commons, she has the absolute right to dismiss him and to call upon someone else, or to dissolve Parliament and call new elections. It is not the prime minister, acting on the Governor General's advice, who dissolves Parliament: it is the Governor General, usually on the prime minister's advice but not always. Byng's refusal of King's request for dissolution was entirely correct in law, even if it later provided King with a campaign issue.
The Governor General will naturally be inclined to give the prime minister every benefit of the doubt. So long as she is assured he will do the constitutional thing and seek the confidence of the House at the first opportunity — as he is obliged to do, if not to resign outright, after a defeat such as the government suffered on Tuesday — she need not immediately dismiss him. But he is already in dereliction of that duty, as the Opposition have been reminding us, and every day he delays only makes matters worse. At present we have no government, at least not one whose right to govern is broadly recognized, and yet the prime minister proposes we should remain in this state of constitutional limbo for another week, with no guarantees that the situtation will be resolved even then. That must be of concern to Her Excellency, and if the prime minister does not relent — Harper has lately proposed Monday as a compromise date — will demand her intervention.
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