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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the federal government will take another look at its process for nominating governors-general, in the wake of Julie Payette’s resignation last night.
Ms. Payette, an accomplished pilot and astronaut who took office in 2017, has had a rocky tenure and appeared to have struggled with the public demands of the office. An independent investigation of her office, which the government ordered last year and received this week, appeared to validate concerns of harassment in the workplace.
Mr. Trudeau was asked at his midday news conference whether Ms. Payette should have been vetted more carefully for the job, given she had earlier left a position at the Montreal Science Centre in a similar cloud.
“For all high-level appointments, there is a rigorous vetting process that was followed in this case,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters. “Obviously we will continue to look at that vetting process to ensure that it is the best possible process as we move forward.”
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
The drop in Pfizer-made COVID-19 vaccine doses coming to Canada is set to worsen, but the pharmaceutical company insists it can still catch up by the end of this quarter.
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And here is your weekend reading: Power Gap, a new Globe and Mail series by investigative journalists Robyn Doolittle and Chen Wang that gives a data-driven examination of how and why so many women are held back from positions of power and prestige in the workplace. While so much attention is paid to women in the top-most positions, the series explains how the real issues are at all levels – particularly middle management.
Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on the original appointment of Julie Payette as governor-general: “Less than four years ago, she was Mr. Trudeau’s celebrity pick. A former astronaut, an accomplished woman, bilingual, someone who already had schools named after her. On the surface, she was the very image of the modern governor-general the still-newish Trudeau Liberals wanted. But we now know that proper vetting might have shown her temperament was ill suited for the job.”
John Fraser (The Globe and Mail) on changing the appointment process: “Whatever anyone thinks of Stephen Harper and his Conservative administration, it had developed a good system for searching out and vetting possible candidates for all the vice regal positions in Canada – the lieutenants-governor of the provinces, as well as the governor-general. It was rejected by the Trudeau PMO, although officials there liked the system well enough to adopt it for appointments they made to the new-style Senate.”
Shachi Kurl (Ottawa Citizen) on repairing the office’s public image: “In 2021, at a time when worries about being seen as too elitist have the Prime Minister himself too scared to fix the house in which he’s supposed to be living, and given that Payette herself refused to even reside at Rideau Hall, should a home and all its associated domestic trappings still come with the job? Would Canadians be better served if the whole building were opened up to them, as a gallery, or museum, or place of learning?”
Andrew Coyne (The Globe and Mail) on Canada’s slow pace of vaccinations: " Vaccinating as many people as we can isn’t just a matter of saving lives – although the faster we do it, the more lives we will save. It’s also a matter of some economic urgency. The country that emerges quickest from the pandemic, and from the curbs on activity most countries have adopted in response, will not only save that much more in lost GDP.”
Robyn Urback (The Globe and Mail) on making lockdowns more targeted: “At this point in the pandemic, we should know better than to extend curfews to homeless people, close down skating rinks and issue fines to mothers in pursuit of childcare.”
Bria Hamilton (The Globe and Mail) on why the healthcare system needs to build more trust with Black Canadians: “My grandmother, my mother and I have all had extremely negative experiences with Canadian medical care. The most atrocious story was the removal of my grandmother’s uterus without her permission during unrelated surgery.”
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Chris Hannay