While making his media rounds, mostly on Vancouver stations yesterday, prime minister Justin Trudeau was asked about the situation in Rideau Hall, and whether there would be any chance he’ll replace Her Excellency Julie Payette anytime soon, especially given that there is currently a workplace investigation after more than twenty current and former employees have come forward with claims of bullying and harassment, not to mention the revelations about how her habits – especially her attempts to evade her own police protection – have cost additional millions of dollars unnecessarily. Trudeau responded that we currently have an “excellent” Governor General, and that the country is currently dealing with a health crisis and didn’t need a constitutional crisis to go with it.

It was a bit of a slow boil, but rest assured, dear reader, my head did explode.

The more I think about this, the angrier I’m getting. https://t.co/OZqVpWz3aL pic.twitter.com/yu5xHwIsnN

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) September 2, 2020

Payette has not been an “excellent” GG. Far from it. She is a brilliant and accomplished woman, but is wholly unsuited for the role that is largely ceremonial, and where the exercise of her powers is 99.95% automatic. A big part of her job is to act as patron to a number of Canadian organizations – something she balked at (and for which I have argued we should start getting actual members of the royal family involved instead), in some cases causing problems for those organizations. She has tried to take an active hand in things like Order of Canada nominations, where she is supposed to act, again, in a ceremonial capacity. Her insertion of her own talk about the “space-time continuum” in the last Speech from the Throne was a problem. And this is on top of the problems having the dubious honour of overseeing the most toxic workplace in official Ottawa.

The notion that there would be a “constitutional crisis” is also completely insane. It is literally a matter of advising the Queen to name a new GG to replace Payette – that’s it. Trudeau is not in the midst of a confidence crisis in his government. There is no question as to the legitimacy of his advice to the Queen for such a replacement. There would be no crisis. Trying to pretend otherwise is disingenuous, plain and simple.

But Trudeau can’t acknowledge any of this, because that would mean owning the fact that he once again screwed up in not doing the actual work of due diligence required with the appointment – having disbanded the vice-regal appointments committee – and that it was a bad appointment. Beyond that, there is some speculation in certain circles here that Trudeau is not put out by the fact that Payette won’t do her job, because it allows him to step in and do more of the ceremonial stuff, which he’s not supposed to do as head of government, but something he has nevertheless tried to do more of. That’s a problem, and one that I suspect we can’t solve so long as Trudeau remains in office. (Chrystia Freeland, on the other hand, seems far less taken with Payette, and has moved to distance herself, so there’s that).

Good reads:

• Trudeau also dismissed calls to fully decriminalise simple drug possession saying it’s “not a silver bullet,” when it’s merely politically uncomfortable.
• Trudeau is also vowing not to back down in the softwood lumber dispute as Canada has scored another victory.
• Here’s a look at how the government believes it can get priority access to potential COVID-19 vaccines for Canadians.
• Here is more about the software at the centre of the dispute on getting data on solitary confinement practices in federal penitentiaries.
• The government has Gazetted regulations that will mandate that railway locomotives have voice and video recorders in place by 2022.
• Erin O’Toole has outlined his leadership team, which includes naming Candice Bergen as his deputy leader, and Richard Martel as his Quebec lieutenant.
• Chatelaine tries to assess O’Toole’s feminist credentials.
• Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column looks at the ways the opposition parties are trying to carry on the committee work of investigating WE during prorogation.
• Chris Selley charts a path where Erin O’Toole may make common cause with Quebec nationalists in opposition to their common bitter enemy – Trudeau.

Odds and ends:

A Sir John A. Macdonald re-enactor rightly worries that the first prime minister is being degraded into a one-dimensional cartoon racist character.

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