As we close in on the one-year mark of the global pandemic, it has become clear that there is a pervasive belief that the prime minister has super powers or rather, that he should, if he just wishes hard enough for something to happen.  As it turns out, there's a term for this in the United States known as the Green Lantern Theory, stemming from the comic book character (and film of the same name, starring Canadian Ryan Reynolds) whose green ring is capable of creating green energy projections whose only limits are the wearer's willpower and imagination.  The political theory, of course, is that a president can achieve any political or policy objective if he only tries hard enough or uses the right tactics.  Sound familiar in our own context?

The theory, articulated by Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan, actually comes in two variants the Reagan version, and the LBJ version.  In the former, if the president can only communicate well enough, the public will rally to his side; in the latter, the president only needs to try harder to win over congress to vote through his agenda.  Neither of those are quite specific enough to the current Canadian context, where prime minister Justin Trudeau only needs to try hard enough to magically solve the problems facing this country.

For example, if you listen to the Conservatives, if Trudeau simply tried harder, he could make Pfizer's vaccine plant retooling happen faster, or immediately solve Moderna's supply chain issues, and we could have enough vaccine for the entire country in the blink of an eye.  Or if he tried hard enough, he could force President Biden to change his mind on the Keystone XL pipeline (though the Conservatives also seem to believe that the prime minister also needs to throw more public temper tantrums, and make performative displays of screaming and crying to show the Americans, or pharmaceutical company CEOs for that matter, that he's really serious).

For the NDP, they seem to believe that if Trudeau tries hard enough and exerts more willpower, he can overcome any barrier in the constitution and override provincial jurisdiction, whether that's on rent, paid sick leave, pharmacare, dental coverage, or long-term care.  It's not that it would be unconstitutional, or that it would poison the well of federalism, or that he would be declaring war on the provinces he simply doesn't care enough about those issues to exert that much willpower that his green ring will make these magical policies happen.  And so on.

While Green Lantern Theory emerged in the US as part of the popular imagination that the executive is far more powerful than it actually is (structurally, it's very weak because of the way their constitution was framed), in Canada, that doesn't quite hold because our executive is far more powerful most especially if there is a majority parliament, though that isn't the current make-up of the House of Commons.  Nevertheless, in the current pandemic context where all of the attention has been focused on the prime minister (to the detriment of premiers, who should be held to greater account given that they have much more responsibility for healthcare and lockdown orders), Green Lantern Theory seems to be emerging out of frustration with federalism, particularly given that we are bombarded with constant demands for Trudeau to invoke the Emergencies Act to take over areas of provincial jurisdiction.

Of course, just as Green Lantern Theory falls apart in the US once it comes into contact with the realities of their congressional system, so too does it fall apart in Canada when confronted with the fact that even though our executive is stronger, the number of levers available to the federal government are particularly limited.  There is no invoking the Emergencies Act because, aside from going to war with provinces who want no part of it, we haven't even met the basic threshold in the definition in the Act of what constitutes a national emergency, which is that the urgent and critical situation endangering the lives, health or safety of Canadians "is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it."  The capacity or authority of the provinces has not been exceeded.  The only thing that is lacking is the political will of premiers to take the necessary actions, whether it's rent relief, paid sick leave, or instituting proper lockdowns to prevent transmission of the virus.

Because Trudeau has demonstrated a willingness to do what is necessary to get Canadians through this pandemic, and spend any amount of money, there seems to be a belief that this can somehow extend to all areas, even those outside of his jurisdiction.  And to his credit, he has certainly attempted to fill gaps where they appear, such as kludging together the federal sickness benefit where provinces won't implement paid sick leave, or similarly in kludging disability benefits from what few levers he has available.  But because he is bound by those few levers the federal government has at his disposal, he has raised expectations that he can do more if he simply has enough willpower, which isn't how this works.  The constitution is a very real thing that prevents him from reaching into provinces' areas of jurisdiction.

The prime minister doesn't have unlimited powers, and it would be a very bad thing if he did.  He is not constrained by the limits of his willpower he is constrained by a constitution and a federal structure that is one of the most decentralized in the world.  Falling into Green Lantern Theory is both delusional in believing that politics works in a way that is divorced from reality, but when employed by opposition party leaders, it is also a cynical exercise in trying paint the government as being unwilling to take actions that they simply cannot do, and is making promises that these other leaders could not keep.  Justin Trudeau does not have a magic green ring we need to stop pretending otherwise.

Photo Credit: The Things

This week, the government is expected to announce the process by which they will be selecting the next Governor General something which I find a bit shocking that it's taken this long for them to even announce, given that they should have gotten started on this months ago when the writing was on the wall about what was going on in Rideau Hall under Julie Payette.  Of course, Payette's departure has led to a rash of polls about the future of the position and of the monarchy in Canada in general each worse than the last.  It raises the question as to whether we are capable of having an adult conversation about the Crown in Canada and it looks increasingly like we aren't.

The polls themselves were patently misleading, to the point of shenanigans.  Case in point was the Leger poll, whose questions pertained to the "British Monarchy," which has not been the legal Crown in Canada since the Statute of Westminster in 1931, when the Canadian Crown came into being as a separate entity.  It also deliberately invokes the spectre of a "foreign monarch," or false notions of our "colonial past," as though that were a feature of constitutional monarchies around the world.

All of Leger's questions were loaded and civically illiterate:

Would you say that you are personally attached to the British monarchy?

In your opinion, is it urgent to replace Julie Payette, who has resigned as Governor General of Canada?

Should the federal government take advantage of Julie Payette's resignation as Governor General of Canada to question the place and role of the monarchy in Canadian institutions?

If a referendum were held on abolishing British monarchy positions in Canada (Governor General, Lieutenant Governor, etc.) would you vote in favour of maintaining the monarchy or abolishing the monarchy in Canada?

It's not the British monarchy in Canada.  The replacement of Payette should be fairly urgent as we have a hung parliament and it's not ideal to have the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court filling the Administrator role for very long.  Questioning the role of the Governor General and the Monarchy would mean rewriting the entire Constitution, since the Crown is the central organizing principle, and asking people to consider an abstract without any notion of what might replace it is a giant hurdle that Australia could not get over when they considered abolishing their monarchy (and the tide has since turned the other way).

Likewise, Angus Reid's poll was not only loaded, but farcical in asking people to suppose that they were a "hiring manager," and whether they would review the role of the GG before they reposted the position.  A hiring manager?  It's the second highest state office in the country, and you want people to pretend that it's a gods damned middle manager?  Are you kidding me?  But wait it gets better.  Angus Reid then appealed to Canadians' mean sense of hairshirt parsimony to ask whether they feel the GG's compensation is too generous, which of course people will say it is.  They also asked whether the selection should be made by the PM alone, or a "committee of Parliament."  No.  The vice-regal appointments committee was arm's length out of the Privy Council Office, so that it ensured that the prime minister remained accountable for the final choice something that a parliamentary committee could not do, and would in fact launder the accountability.  Did nobody pay any attention to the debate that followed the failed Nadon appointment to the Supreme Court?

Angus Reid asked also about the relevancy of the "Royal Family in Britain," which again, is not the same thing as the role of the Crown in Canada; about supporting recognizing the Queen as our head of state; and about continuing as a constitutional monarchy again, all without any acknowledgement that this would require a complete rewriting of the Constitution, and all that it entails given the political climate in Canada, where provinces would have their own demands when that happens.

The Bloc, meanwhile, decided to take their own decided unserious approach to the Payette situation by having one of their MPs table a Private Members' Bill that would reduce the GG's salary to $1 per year, and strip them of their pensions.  This is the same tactic that the NDP tried a few years ago with regards to the Senate, because each party apparently believes that only the truly wealthy who should be the ones holding these kinds of offices, or that they should be left vulnerable to those who would buy them off.

Of course, Justin Trudeau himself has not exactly shown himself to be one who can treat this office with any particular sense of seriousness after he reduced it to something of a shiny object that he put Payette into as a reflection of what he wanted to showcase a Francophone woman who excelled in the STEM fields, and on paper, Payette was too good to pass up.  It's also something of a reflection of how Trudeau and Harper have both treated our institutions while Harper was reverential enough of the vice-regal positions that he put in place the appointments committee to strengthen the process, he made a series of terrible Senate appointments, almost certainly out of contempt for the institution.  Trudeau, meanwhile, did away with the vice-regal committee possibly out of spite for Harper and made that appointment without any degree of seriousness, but set up a process for Senate appointments that claimed to care so much about the institution while he still managed to screw it up for a generation, if not more.

The lack of basic civics and respect for our institutions, coming from pollsters, parties, and our political leaders, very much makes it seem as though we can't handle a grown-up conversation about the future of these institutions.  The GG has an important role to play especially in keeping the ceremonial and symbolic powers out of a prime minister's hands and yet we can't be bothered to learn the first thing about what the position actually entails.  It makes us look increasingly like we're not a serious country, which starts to explain the state our political leadership is in right now.

Photo Credit: CBC News