This week there were two transfers of power in North America. One involved direct and real power, while the other was more symbolic.
As my colleague Catherine Porter reports, the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as President of the United States on Wednesday is expected to bring a resumption of US-Canada relations after four tumultuous years under former President Donald J. Trump.
[Read: Justin Trudeau Gets Call From Biden as Canada and U.S. Mend Relations]
While many Canadians have felt a wave of relief from the power transition, not everyone was enthusiastic about the transfer, including Jason Kenney, the prime minister of Alberta. As was widely expected, one of Biden’s first acts was to destroy the Keystone XL pipeline that would link Alberta’s oil sands and, eventually, the Gulf Coast refineries that have a thirsty appetite for the heavy crude oil they produce.
[Read: Biden to Cancel Keystone XL Pipeline in Inauguration Day Executive Order]
Kenney pledged to continue fighting for Keystone XL, which his government kept alive last year through investment and loan guarantees valued at just over 7 billion Canadian dollars. He also demanded that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau effectively imitate Trump’s manners and use trade sanctions in retaliation for Biden’s action. But several people I interviewed this week said that there was probably no legal or commercial channel that could reverse the new president’s decision.
[Read: Keystone Rejection Tests Trudeau’s Balancing Act on Climate and Energy]
But unlike the Biden pipeline action, no one predicted that Governor-General Julie Payette would step down this week. We will probably never know the precise reasons for her sudden departure, although it was clearly triggered by an independent human resources review that, based on what Mr. Trudeau and others vaguely indicated, suggested that she and her main assistant were among the worst bosses from Canada.
[Read: Canada’s Governor General Resigns Amid Reports of a Toxic Workplace]
Citing privacy reasons, the government is not publishing this review. But for months, Ashley Burke of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has been producing a constant stream of horror stories in Rideau Hall, the governor general’s official residence and workplace. Other reports have questioned several actions by Ms. Payette since she, a former astronaut, took office in 2017, giving the impression that she had a serious case of buyer remorse for becoming Canada’s head of state as representative of the Queen Elizabeth II.
Although Mr. Trudeau cannot be blamed for the way Mrs. Payette acted when she took office, it was clearly his decision to put her there.
Barbara Messamore, professor of history at the University of Fraser Valley in British Columbia and author of the definitive book on how the general system of governors developed in Canada, was among the many people who told me that Mr. Trudeau could have been spared a phone call. probably uncomfortable with the queen on Friday if in 2017 he he had continued to use a non-partisan advisory panel to help select his Canadian replacement. This system was introduced by Stephen Harper, its conservative predecessor.
Given that Trudeau introduced a similar advisory panel to choose who to nominate for the Senate, his decision to return to the old way of keeping the selection of the governor-general largely within his office is even more intriguing.
On Friday, Mr. Trudeau acknowledged what was apparent: “The verification process that was in place has been followed, but obviously we will also look for ways to strengthen and improve the verification process for high-level appointments.”
He was, however, less accessible when it came to questions about whether that verification process had discovered, as journalists found, that Ms. Payette’s allegations of abusive behavior had arisen elsewhere. And Mr. Trudeau offered little when asked if he had ignored any warning that emerged from the process.
“It’s Canada’s most important nomination,” Robert Bothwell, a Canadian history professor at the University of Toronto, told me. “It is really the fault of the Prime Minister. This is really something he has to endure ”.
Some people, including Professor Bothwell, told me that they hoped that Mrs. Payette’s departure would finally lead Canadians’ minds to rethink the role of British monarchs in Canada.
For information, Frank Graves, president of the research firm EKOS Research, said his research showed that the monarch was now “a modest source of national identity, which has been declining for the past two decades”.
Professor Messamore said that, regardless of the current mess at Rideau Hall, “there is a vital reason for the office”. She said Canada enjoyed stability by separating its head of state, the queen through the governor-general, from the head of political government, the prime minister. Whether a monarch in London is needed to achieve this goal is an open question.
It seems unlikely that while Queen Elizabeth is still alive there will be much interest in carrying out reforms that would require the Herculean task of obtaining agreement from all 10 provinces. But Professor Bothwell said that when the queen dies or resigns, “I don’t think anyone knows what we’re going to do.”
Trans Canada
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When Robert Waldner, 17, got lost while riding a snowmobile on Mica Mountain in central British Columbia, reports Dan Bilefsky, he didn’t panic, he started digging.
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Winnipeg’s fashion mogul Peter Nygard used to portray himself as a multimillionaire and modern Juan Ponce de León, who had found the fountain of youth. Catherine Porter reports that while he is now seeking bail in a Winnipeg court pending a hearing for possible extradition to the United States in connection with sexual crimes and other charges, Mr. Nygard is being classified as old, sick, broke, lonely and probably die in prison.
Born in Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has been reporting on Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.
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