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The new Canadian effective chief of state (aka Governor-General)

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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20050804/ca_pr_on_na/governor_general_3

And, as usual, Alberta is pissed off. That'S nothing new, of course, the way Albertan loudmouths views it, the capital of Canada should be Calgary and/or Edmonton, immigration should be banned, blacks are an inferior species, women are a very inferior species, and so forth. (Oh, and anything from Québec is automatically a cesspool of absolute heathen corruption). Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for Decency, Common Sense and all those things), there are about 2 900 000 Albertans to 7 500 000 Québecers (and another 11 500 000 Ontarians who tend to agree with Québecers on liberal thinking. Being outnumbered 6 to 1 spells doom for Alberta :-D)

On the other hand, most of the rest of Canada, while they are still asking "Do we really need a governor-general?, has pretty much been happy with the latest choice. Not only does the represent exactly the sort of society we're aiming for (open, multicultural, gender-equal, modern - she has a six years old adopted daughter, etc), but she's also an excellent communicator (she worked as a news reader for the past few years on Radio-Canada, the french CBC), a woman who has been known to champion good causes (single mothers, children's rights, etc) over the year, etc,

And of course, not taking away from anything in the least, she is one damn good looking woman, 48 or not. http://www.radio-canada.ca/rdi/distribution/fr/rdi_info/decembre2004/images/ph_michaelle.gif
 
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Certainly a better choice than one of our recent GG's, who was outed over having covered up allegations of sexual assult by Anglician priests while he was still Archbishop of Brisbane. So much for seperation of Church and State...
 
Adrienne Clarkson seemed nice, and this one is okay as well. What do Governor Generals do, anyway? (Except spend our money on expensive trips and whatnot? o_O)
 
Generally, handle all the "ceremonial" parts of being a chief of state (like, you know - official ceremonies, New Years message, all that stuff), and leave the PM free to deal with the actual governing.
 
So is this pretty much just the face of the government? Or does she have any actual power? Is she the chief-of-state in that she handles all of the national matters (like what falls under the President's chief-of-state powers)? Or does it mean something else in Canadian?
 
She is the representative of our Queen for this country. She doesn't really do anything, except for what Damian mentioned.
 
Oh, so she's like the American Vice-President (present VP excepted).
 
If you consider the Queen to be akin to the President, then I suppose. Is the President able to exercise purely executive functions, or is he also a member of the legislature, as Prime Ministers are in Commonwealth parliments?
 
Archaic said:
If you consider the Queen to be akin to the President, then I suppose. Is the President able to exercise purely executive functions, or is he also a member of the legislature, as Prime Ministers are in Commonwealth parliments?
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The US President's duties are purely executive. The Vice President acts as President of the Senate, but has no vote except as a tiebreaker.
 
Actually, the US president has far more effective power than the Queen and/or the GGs. The Queen and the GGs are ceremonial chief of states, mostly.
 
The duties they perform thesedays are mostly ceremonial, yes, but they do still have the power to fire the parliment if they wish. The only real restriction to their powers is the court of public opinion. There's a limit to what they could do before people complain.
 
Why did they pick some actress? It seems like a veteran politician would be a wiser choice for such a position.
 
Girafarig_Magcargo said:
Why did they pick some actress? It seems like a veteran politician would be a wiser choice for such a position.
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It would have been a stupid choice, actually. Giving the post to a veteran politician would have been :

1)A waste of a politician, remember the job is primarily ceremonial.
2)A good way to break the country apart over political party lines : picking a (relatively) politically neutral figure tends to make for a more unanimous leader.
3)Stupid, as people have to trust their leaders in some measure, and "politician" and "used cars salesman" are the two less trusted categories of people in Canada, according to polls.

Giving the post to a well known public figure (such as a TV journalist) who never really stirred controversy is a good way around all those problems.
 
Archaic said:
The duties they perform thesedays are mostly ceremonial, yes, but they do still have the power to fire the parliment if they wish. The only real restriction to their powers is the court of public opinion. There's a limit to what they could do before people complain.
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So basically, they have a lot of power, but if they ever use it, they'll lose it?
 
I believe that's called a constitutional crisis, when the head of state invokes reserve powers without the advice of her government.
 
Is there a reason that Canada hasn't appointed, say, Gretzky yet? A hockey star seems like a better choice to me than some newsperson...

(Then again, we have a good chunk of the nation hoping a peddler of fake news will run for president on the democratic ticket here in the states... He IS a much better choice than hillary, though.)
 
Yeah, mostly the fact that we want Gretzky to train our national team for olympics, etc.

Hard to do that and be Governor-General at the same time.

(Also, Canada and Hockey is a cliché, so putting a hockey player in charge would be a bit stupid. We already have an ex-goalie as minister (sports, I think), and I think that's enough).
 
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