Julie Payette’s Past Is a Non-Scandal, But Justin Trudeau Should Say That

Canada's next governor general, Julie Payette, has been to space. She is also a divorcee who accidentally killed somebody with her SUV and briefly faced a second-degree assault charge that was immediately dropped and expunged from the record. These are the Coles Notes of Julie Payette's life that were dropped into the public eye this week.

Does any of this matter with regards to her appointment as the Queen's representative in Canada? I am inclined to say no. But it's late July so everybody's talking about it.

Ironically, the controversy is largely due to Justin Trudeau's refusal to talk about it. The prime minister and his office have so far repeatedly refused comment when asked directly if Trudeau has any thoughts about Payette's background, the extent to which she was vetted, and whether or not anyone actually bothered to tell the prime minister about it.

Given that the government is choosing to avoid answering a relatively simple and straightforward question ("did you know about this, and does it impact your decision?") instead of giving an equally simple and straightforward answer ("yes we did, and no it doesn't because Payette's record is clean"), it's likely that the PMO was caught off guard by this. Since they don't appear to have any plans to kill the appointment—the one thing Trudeau has confirmed he knows about the situation is that "Mme. Payette will make an extraordinary governor general"—they will either keep their silence and hope the story eventually goes away or release an explanatory press release.

Not that this can't be a teaching moment in other ways. CBC columnist Robyn Urback has suggested that Trudeau's nonchalance about Payette's past reveals a double-standard when compared to his forcefulness about the sexual harassment allegations facing Liberal MPs Massimo Pacetti and Scott Andrews in 2014. It's an illuminating point of comparison, even if I'm hesitant to join Urback in drawing an equivalence between on-going (at the time) sexual harassment allegations and a context-less, withdrawn assault charge from years before. She is right to note, though, how profoundly weird Trudeau's silence is here, especially since Payette's situation is settled in the eyes of the law. Chalk it up to another case where a politician trying to ignore a story actually makes it significantly worse.

It's also a good occasion to think about how the process of appointing Canada's governor general is actually really weird. The mechanics of our constitutional monarchy are often goofy and archaic, and the effort to reconcile our system's autocratic tendencies with the demands for democratic governance is an underappreciated part of Canadian political life. It is the prime minister's prerogative to choose the governor general (who is then appointed by the Queen, because the Fathers of Confederation thought the best way to dignify the brute reality of political power would be LARPing feudalism). Under Stephen Harper, an ad hoc committee was grafted onto the selection process, similar to the appointment process for new Supreme Court judges. The hope was that it would make the appointment of Canada's constitutional enforcer less obviously partisan.

Of course, the committee is ultimately non-binding, and in this case Trudeau opted to go ahead appoint Payette without it. Had he played by the honour system and gone through the committee, this problem would have likely been avoided. There is always the option of either making the committee (or some kind of independent oversight) mandatory, but changing the way the Crown works in Canada would require reopening the constitution and LOL no.

Oh, the many joys of constitutional theory in a system where almost none of the rules are written down.

Anyway—Julie Payette's misadventures in Maryland six years ago are a tempest in a teapot as far as her viceregal office goes. But in the future, Trudeau might want to spend more time taking advice and reading his briefing notes, and less time avoiding (presumably) easy questions.

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