Tuesday, March 16, 2004

I SECOND THAT

The Governor General has been in the news again this week as she was on CBC Radio to defend her increased budget. So many Canadians seem angry about the money she has been spending and Bourque continues to take not-so-subtle jabs at her eitorializing under titles such as 'Queen Adrienne defends Lavish Budget.' As I went about my day I was composing snipets of a post in defence of Her Excellency. I find however that The Middleman has already said most of what I would have. An excerpt:

Since becoming the Queen's representative as head of state for Canada, I have actually noticed that she has spent lots of time with our troops in the field and with Northerners, and that she has organized state trips to the circumpolar regions, including Russia and Finland, accompanied by the finest representation of Canadian commerce, critical thinking, and culture. Having a refugee, turned landed immigrant, turned multilingual Canadian citizen, turned head of state is a pretty inspiring symbolism for me.
...
Now if this were a discussion about the ridiculous constitutional monarchist tradition that we uphold as a thin façade for one-party Prime Ministerial primacy, then I would be happy to engage in that debate. But as long as we are asking for a symbolic figurehead to spread a little bit of Canada around the world on the cheap and represent the best of what we claim to be... I would give them all the money it takes to make us look and feel much better about ourselves than we really do

Don has a good point in the comments as well.

I would say that the increase in Her Excellency's spending is a direct reflection of what an outstanding job she has done in her position. She has been the best Governor General in many years, her replacement will have large shoes to fill, not to mention a large, redecorated, modernized official residence.

Posted by Matthew @ 9:57 p.m.