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Why Mark Carney Picked a War-Crimes Prosecutor for Rideau Hall

Louise Arbour’s appointment as governor general reflects the anxious political moment Canada now inhabits

Last month, John Fraser published a book about Canada’s governors general. It’s a topic that seems so preposterously dull that even Fraser’s own publisher said, “Better you sell me a book on the softwood lumber industry.” But what Fraser eventually turned in—twelve “personal and undoubtedly arbitrary” portraits of the various crackpots and savants who have held the post since 1952—is a delight and, with Louise Arbour’s appointment last week, timely to boot.

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Arbour is one of the country’s most famous legal minds. A former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, she served as chief prosecutor for the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, where she pursued cases against political and military leaders accused of atrocities. She was later appointed the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights. In Canada, she led major public inquiries, including a landmark review into sexual violence within the Canadian Armed Forces.

Arbour doesn’t appear in Fraser’s book; she hadn’t yet been tapped when he wrote it. But his spirited defence of Canada’s “ludicrous, weird, and utterly antediluvian” custom of letting the Crown choose its representative head of state extends to her. Fraser appreciates the way the office exists above parties, elections, and ideological churn. For him, the value of the “viceregal mantle” stems from its role as constitutional backstop: a nonpartisan authority capable of checking abuses of power. “Canadians should be down on their knees thanking Almighty God,” he writes, “for the luck of having a system that protects them from dysfunction or malfeasance.”

I called him up by Zoom to get his take on the Arbour announcement.

Are you happy with the choice?

I’m happy at the initial announcement of all appointments. But time will give the answer. When Adrienne Clarkson was first........

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