God save the … Liberal Party

The prime minister of Canada had to reassure his nation this week that the woman he has chosen to act as the pinnacle symbol of Canadian unity does not in fact favor breaking up the country.

Whether she had at one time espoused this, he did not say. He could nevertheless unreservedly declare to Canadians that now that she has been offered the job of governor general of Canada (with a household and travel budget that runs around $20 million a year) she finds herself – in her own words – "proud to be Canadian" with "the greatest respect for the institutions of our country."

TRENDING: Is America having a near-death experience, or is this the end?

If Americans find the above too absurd to be believable, that's because they do not understand their neighbor to the north. Up here, the citizenry have long learned not to doubt reports on the doings of their government at Ottawa on the mere grounds that they're preposterous. And every time they assume that their government has reached the lowest possible pit of asininity, they shortly discover they were wrong. This latest extravaganza, however, will be difficult to outperform.

It has to do with an office for which there has been no equivalent in America since colonial days. The colonies were administered by governors sent from England. So too was Canada after it became a British colony in 1763. After the Revolutionary War, however, the office of state governor in the U.S. became elective. But Britain continued to appoint Canadian governors. Even as by stages it made Canada self-governing, a "governor general," as he came to be called, was sent out from Britain to sustain the surviving, if ever more tenuous, connection to the British Crown.

From 1952 onward, however, the office went to a Canadian, and since 1967 the Canadian prime minister chooses the appointee. This individual continues to represent the person and office of the British Monarch, thus embodying the sovereignty of the country. The appointee must therefore be pre-eminently non-political both in fact and in public image.

That last necessity imposes a serious strain on the always shaky integrity of Liberal prime ministers, for whom pretty well everything is political. Four of the last five governors general, for instance, all rose to prominence through government-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, leaving the impression that the CBC is the only place left where reliably genuine Canadians can be found.

The candidate must also incarnate the Liberal vision of the New Canada by representing the multi-cultural. Hence the current incumbent, CBC hostess Adrienne Clarkson, was born in China. Her successor, announced this month by Prime Minister Paul Martin, is CBC hostess Michaelle Jean, who was born in Haiti and is married to France-born film producer Jean-Daniel Lafond.

In total, therefore, Ms. Jean has superb Liberal qualifications. She is not Canadian-born. She's part of Montreal's smart-set intellectual community, where support for the Liberals has been dolefully low. And she represents a province where the separatist Bloc Quebecois has gravely eroded Liberal support in the last five general elections. She's the perfect candidate.

Well, not quite perfect. Soon after the appointment was announced, a publication that favors Quebec's exodus from Canada began running stories about the new representative of the Queen. She had been an enthusiastic Quebec separatist, they said. Her husband had made films favoring the separatist cause. He was in fact a crony of the gang that in 1970 strangled to death a Quebec Cabinet minister.

The denials and denunciations from the prime minister's office were prompt and vitriolic. Ms. Jean had been thoroughly checked out. So had her husband. They were being savaged by nasty people intent only on embarrassing the government. There was no evidence to back up any of these charges.

Again, the government had fallen into a trap. There was indeed evidence, namely Lafond's films. In one, his wife is shown making a toast to Quebec independence. In a book on the making of that film, her husband identifies Quebec as a victim of "the transnational technocratic Mafia." He concludes: "A sovereign Quebec? An independent Quebec? Yes, I applaud with both hands."

Last Saturday, the prime minister's office issued Martin's assurances of his appointee's unfailing loyalty. However, in a public statement issued Wednesday and intended to clear her name, Her Excellency-to-be denied none of the evidence against her, leaving no doubt whatever where her sympathies once lay.

But they've changed, of course. She's come to appreciate what Canada truly means – a magnificent country, and an even more magnificent expense budget.