Among the many, many files piling up on Justin Trudeau's desk in the coming months, one of the biggest and most pressing is the search for the next governor general as David Johnston's term having already been extended nears its end.  And not only Johnston four provinces are also due to have their lieutenant governors replaced this year as well.  This includes PEI, Nova Scotia, British Columbia and Saskatchewan, and in PEI's case the lieutenant governor has already passed his five-year mark in August with no announcement that there is even a process underway to find a replacement.  (The current LG, Frank Lewis, indicated that he was interested in extending his time until at least the sesquicentennial celebrations in July, but we'll have to wait and see).

The process is the first question that we're waiting to hear an answer on.  Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper quietly appointed an ad hoc advisory committee that recommended Johnston's name to him, and when that process was deemed to have worked out well enough, he formalized it as the Vice-Regal Appointments Committee, which was headed by the Canadian Secretary to the Queen, and two other permanent panel members, who brought two ad hoc provincial members on board every time a lieutenant governor's term was nearing its end.  The process worked and largely brought forward some good names to the PM, and with only one exception, the names were received with fairly universal praise.  (There was grumbling around the nomination of Janice Filmon in Manitoba, as her husband had served as the Progressive Conservative premier of that province from 1988 to 1999, as though she had no merits of her own to judge her by).

But since then, the Committee's term has expired and it no longer has any members in place.  As well, the Canadian Secretary to the Queen is on his way out, and almost certainly not going to be around to head the Committee on the assumption that it will be reconstituted.  That's a fairly safe bet, mind you, as it's the model that has since been adopted for senate appointments with the federal and provincial members, and Justin Trudeau has told the media that he's not looking to reinvent the wheel, but would see what other transparency measures can be put into place.  Like the Senate and Supreme Court of Canada appointment processes, I'm guessing that a future vice-regal appointments committee will publish reports at the end of each process to give some kind of statistics to show the kinds of candidates that were being considered, and particularly under which diversity criteria they were selected.  The previous process under Harper did appoint a majority of women to these vice-regal positions, which is progress, but it's been a while since we've had a visible minority LG in this country, and to date, we haven't had one who is openly LGBT.

What does concern me is that under the various appointment processes that Trudeau has put into place to date, be it for the Senate or the Supreme Court of Canada, the emphasis has been on people to apply rather than the have the panel canvas communities and organizations to find suitable candidates that would be nominated.  As we saw with the Senate appointment process, thousands of people applied and needed to be weeded out, and one can only imagine the number of narcissists that would apply to a vice-regal position where they would serve in only a largely figurehead capacity.  The position is not a figurehead, mind you, and a person filling it would need to be able to understand the nuances of our constitutional structure as well as act in both a non-partisan capacity while still having frequent conversations with the prime minister or province's premier to "advise and to warn" the government of the day no small task.  But how many people know that going in when they think the only job is to attend a few tea parties, give a few speeches and sign the occasional bill into law.  (I'm being a bit facetious here because our vice-regal actors tend to have rather gruelling schedules, but I doubt that the average citizen would know that).

You can almost guarantee, however, that when the process to find a new GG does start, we'll start hearing many of the same kinds of complaints we heard during the Supreme Court nomination.  In particular, the tradition since Canada started nominating our own governors general instead of Westminster has been that we alternate between an Anglophone and a Francophone in Rideau Hall, and we're coming up on a Francophone spot.  At the same time, there will be a lot of agitation for an Indigenous GG this time as well, since we have not yet had one, and this is the era of reconciliation where the Trudeau government has been placing a great deal of emphasis on seeing more Indigenous Canadians in high-profile positions.  While I'm sure we'll hear all manner of platitudes about there being no shortage of eminently qualified Francophone Canadians who would be well-suited for the position, but I have to wonder how deep the pool really is that will tick all of the right boxes for the kind of message that the Trudeau government wants to send.

On a similar note, I have no doubt that whatever new committee gets struck with the vice-regal appointments, that they will face a greater challenge than their predecessors precisely because Trudeau will be looking to show that "it's 2017" in his choices, most especially because there will be a greater desire to highlight not only reconciliation but diversity of all kinds in the sesquicentennial year, to show that the people in these posts are really the new face of Canada, and not just another old white guy (with apologies to Johnston).  It's going to be a lot of work, and Trudeau had better get the ball rolling sooner rather than later.

Photo Credit: CTV News