Expanded Draft. PM Mark Carney's Mandate to Govern Canada is Tainted
Carney Comes to Power on the Basis of a Very Serious Violation of the Parliamentary Confidence Convention
I received the comment below as a Substack response to the text of this essay before I slightly revised it moments ago. Susan Wilson sends out an alert indicating that there may be an operation underway to repress the proliferation of the text below. I can see why some Deep State officials might be uneasy with its contents. Pointing out that Canada’s new PM is already on unsound constitutional soil is serious business. So I’m sending out this revised version in response to the heads-up I received, warning me that dirty tricks might be underway.
Substack comment by Susan Wilson
I sent your essay to a friend--and the recipient could not open it because Norton said it was a suspicious link. Just so you know this is going on.
Response from
Author
Yikes! Well if you are part of some team trying to, for instance, get public opinion in line to go through the motions eventually leading to the annexing of Canada to the USA, then my essay might seem menacing. It might seem worthy of having the information being locked up and declared "suspicious." Carney is probably involved in lots of Deep State stuff working for powerful interests, not for the Canadian people who are quite evidently being cynically played right now. Thanks for the heads up.
The Dark Side of the Liberal Party’s Coronation of Mark Carney as the PM for All the Canadian People. He Lacks a Mandate from the People.
Mark Carney does not have a legitimate mandate from the Canadian people or from the House of Commons to rule Canada, even though he recently won the leadership of the Liberal Party by a landslide. The Liberal Party of Canada forms a minority government without a majority of seats in the House of Commons in Parliament.
Carney does not have a stable mandate to rule Canada as Prime Minister because of a faulty ruling of the Governor General of Canada. This anomaly comes about because the movers and shakers in the Canadian parliament, but especially within the Liberal Party, have little genuine regard for the constitutional rules concerning how Parliament is supposed to function.
On January 6 Justin Trudeau explained to the Governor General his “intention” to resign after a future leadership convention which, early in the new year, had yet to be organized by the Liberal Party. In stating his intention to resign, Trudeau also asked the Governor General of Canada to prorogue Parliament, to shut down the core institution at the centre of Canadian democracy, such as it is.
The Governor General is the top Crown official in the constitutional monarchy of Canada. No law becomes legitimate without the signature of the Governor General. The Governor General is supposed to be completely non-partisan. GG Mary Simon is supposed to rise above politics. She is supposed to situate herself outside the realm of competitive politics and to play a role comparable to a referee in sports.
The Governor General is responsible to see that the Crown rules of conduct, apply equally to all political parties and to all elected officials. Unfortunately, Mary Simon let Canada down when she deviated from this requirement by politically favouring the Liberal Party. Of course the Governor General, a Liberal Party member herself and an Inuit politician from norther Quebec, is in a politically awkward position. She was chosen for the job in 2021 by Justin Trudeau. That makes the GG essentially a political appointee of HER Prime Minister. What is wrong with this picture?
As a constitutional monarchy and as member of the British Commonwealth, Canada has a very different kind of government than does the United States. In Canada and other Commonwealth countries, citizens do not vote directly for the Prime Minister except when voters happen to reside in the electoral constituency of the PM.
The Prime Minister gets his or her authority to govern not directly from the electorate, but from a majority of elected PMs in Parliament’s House of Commons. As noted, the Liberal Party of Canada does not currently have a majority of MP’s in Parliament. Nor did Trudeau, when he sought prorogation, even have majority support in his own Liberal Caucus.
The basic principle at the core of my main contention here is articulated below
Here is the source of this statement about the Confidence Convention, a convention that emerged from an evolutionary process of hundreds of years of governance in the British Parliament.
The Confidence Convention should have been applied to the response to Justin Trudeau’s wish list that he placed before the Governor-General early in the new year. The Confidence Convention is an essential aspect of what is known as “responsible government” in Canada. The Confidence Convention should have been placed front and centre when Justin Trudeau appeared before King Charles’ top official in Canada to state his prime ministerial intention to resign at a future date.
Along with that notification of this intention to resign, came the PM’s extravagant request to the Crown to stop the proceedings of the House of Commons through prorogation. Mary Simon gave her royal blessing to that request creating the basis of the constitutional uncertainty that now permeates Mark Carney’s prime ministership.
The GG is meant to have a major role particularly in dealing with complexities of minority governments and fairness in electoral processes involving the timing of elections. Both situations apply in spades here. Important precedents on these matters were set by parliamentary events that took place in 1921-1926 in the King-Byng affair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%E2%80%93Byng_affair
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Balfour-Report#ref1238122
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/king-byng-affair
A Canadian Governor General refused to follow the directives of a Canadian Prime Minister in calling an election. It came at a time when minority governments created coalitions with smaller parties to command “the support and confidence” of a majority of MPs in the House of Commons.
Imagine if the Governor General had responded on January 6 as I believe she would have and should have by taking into account key constitutional conventions that she is supposed to uphold and enforce. GG Simon should have told Justin Trudeau that she was not in a position to approve a verbal promise that he would resign sometime in the future.
Imagine if GG Mary Simon had told Trudeau,
“I’ll accept your resignation here and now. I will accept your resignation immediately but I will not accept your request to prorogue Parliament. I you chose not to resign immediately, then head back into this parliamentary session and we’ll see if you can command the support of a majority of MPs in the House of Commons as is required by the Confidence Convention. If the Liberal MPs with you at their head cannot command such a majority in a parliamentary confidence motion, then I will immediately call an election.”
Such a response from the Governor General might have not been advantageous for the Liberal Party. But such a partisan consideration should be of no concern to the Governor General who has the responsibility to enforce Canada’s British-based constitution, some of it written and some of left unwritten in the realm of convention. If the situation had gone forward as it should have, true winners of a federal election would have emerged. They would have commanded a true electoral majority to govern Canada and give strong constitution-based representation to the Canadian people.
Currently the Liberal Party Prime Minister of Canada does not have any mandate whatsoever from the Canadian people to govern and to engage in crucial negotiations with President Trump. The Liberal Party itself is on precarious constitutional ground right now. Trudeau generally messes up everything he touches.
Such a genuine and stable mandate to govern from a snap election would have served Canadians well at this time of such important interactions with the Donald Trump government in the United States.
As it is, Mark Carney as well as the current Liberal Party MPs in the House of Commons cannot say they truly represent the Canadian people or its parliamentary representatives. Carney’s Liberal Party does not have “the support and confidence of a majority of Members” in the House of Commons.
Carney is being put in that position because the GG of Canada allowed Trudeau to play fast and loose with the Confidence Convention. At no time after January 6 did Trudeau have “the support and confidence” of a Parliamentary majority. It remains to be seen if Carney can obtain such a vote of confidence in the House of Commons.
Carney would NOT now be PM if the GG had refused Trudeau his request for a constitutionally dubious prorogation. Trudeau used much of his time throughout the prorogation period to run off repeatedly to Europe to back his friend Zelensky. Zelensky also rules from outside the constitutional and election rules of Ukraine. His term as President ran out several months ago in Ukraine. Zelensky does not want to face Ukrainian voters.
In his last two months in office Justin Trudeau basically declared war on the Trump government. This declaration of war extends beyond the economic realm to Trudeau’s disgusting sabre rattling directed at Trump for his changing the USA’s relationship with Russia. Trudeau makes it very clear he has a deep and profound hatred of Russia as does the Canadian-Ukrainian Banderist, Chrystia Freeland.
Our former PM Trudeau, who is very closely allied to Carney, attacked the US President for seeking a peace in Ukraine that would draw to an end the US/NATO proxy war against Russia. The lives of Ukrainians are being sacrificed in this war being waged on cultivating a vicious form of Russiaphobia throughout the NATO countries.
Somehow maintaining the war aimed at overthrowing the current Putin government in Russia has become an obsession for the governing class. Its ruling members recently forced on their own people almost uniformly, a harmful regime of masking, lockdowns, mandatory jabs and ruthless disinformation. This round-the-clock lying in the Legacy media is now permeating its toxic misrepresentations of Ukraine-Russia-NATO interactions. What a mess.
In rushing to Europe to join Kier Starmer’s and the EU’s crusade of military solidarity with Ukraine, Trudeau handed over many more $billions to the corrupt regime of Volodymyr Zelensky. Moreover Trudeau made many long term commitments on behalf of the Canadian government during a period when this violator of the Confidence Convention did not command the support and confidence of the House of Commons.
My constitutional interpretation here is similar to that of Professor David Livingston, a significant voice at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. In the Institute’s journal Livingstone writes.
“Would the appointed governor general have been acting undemocratically by refusing Trudeau’s request in this case? Not necessarily. In fact, she would have compelled the government to face the democratically elected legislature, which is sort of the whole point of “responsible government.” Had the Liberals lost the expected confidence vote, we would have gone to election much sooner instead of the entire nation being put on hold. Whoever was elected would have begun to govern with a clear, democratic mandate. Arguably, the governor general should have put the nations’ interests ahead of the Liberal Party’s interests.”
Canada’s constitutional monarchy has been a way of distinguishing Northern North America from the United States. Both Canada and the United States are definitely in need of some re-engineering. Why not create a context where the people of both polities can work together on formulating a new plan?
Haven't read your article yet but I will. That said, I suspect Mark's regime will be Keir Starmer on steroids. Brace yourselves.