Mary Simon's instinct for unity, not division

National Post, 11 July 2021

Four significant things about Canada's new governor general.

The vice-regal appointment of Mary Simon has garnered wide support, an Indigenous governor general coming as a much-needed balm after the heightened tensions of the past weeks.

Given the catastrophe of her predecessor, Julie Payette, who was also hailed as a trailblazer on identity grounds, it is premature to predict success, but there is much surer ground for confidence this time around. Indeed, Simon was considered a strong candidate more than 10 years ago when David Johnston was appointed.

Before Simon takes up residence at Rideau Hall — that used to go without saying, but needs saying after Payette refused to live there — her appointment is significant in four important ways.

First, it is an acknowledgement that while Canada remains committed to English and French as official languages, as a functional matter Justin Trudeau has symbolically buried the dream his father had for Canada, bilingual from coast to coast. That dream was not widely shared, that English would be as welcome in Quebec as French would be everywhere else.

Quebec plans to amend the Constitution to ensure that French is its official language, and is ratcheting up its language policy to limit the prevalence of English. Trudeau is absolutely fine with that, as much as it would have horrified his father.

That Simon doesn’t speak French was noted, of course, but it is largely a non-issue. Canada has become, in recent years, more English-speaking than bilingual — just as Poland and Pakistan have become more English-speaking. It’s the age of the internet, and the internet is English.

The governor general, hardly a dominant public figure in English Canada, is truly marginal in Quebec. The only communities likely to lament that Simon’s bilingualism includes Inuktitut but not French are the minority French-language communities for whom federal protection for minority language rights is valued.

On the other hand, it will be nice to have a governor general who, when making land acknowledgements, does not need to have the proper pronunciations written out phonetically.

Second, it says something that Simon is the fifth governor general in the past 40 years to have worked at the CBC (Jeanne Sauve, Roméo Leblanc, Adrienne Clarkson and Michaëlle Jean preceding her). David Johnston, in a radical break with tradition, had simply hosted a show that aired on CBC Newsworld.

The CBC has a certain view of Canada, but it is not the only valid one. If alternative views are really welcome, Rex Murphy should be considered for a vice-regal posting, given his own long history at the national broadcaster.

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