Letters.(Letter to the editor)

Sir:

Thank you for the invitation to comment on the prorogation of parliament by the Governor General in December 2008.

The position is an unprecedented one. The governor-general stands in place of the Queen as Head of State but, since the Imperial Conference of 1926, it has been recognised that a governor-general is not the monarch's representative (in terms of acting on instructions from the monarch) but serves as the equivalent of the monarch, and acts on the advice of ministers. However, as Vernon Bogdanor notes in his book, The Monarchy and the Constitution, 'The Imperial Conference did not ... lay down any guidance as to the precise circumstances in which the sovereign or the governor-general was expected to act on advice, and the circumstances in which they enjoyed a discretion to use their reserve powers.'

On occasion, a governor-general has used the reserve powers, as with Sir John Kerr's dismissal of the Whitlam government in Australia in 1975, but generally such powers remain--as the name indicates--in reserve. There is a constraint operating in respect of a governor-general that does not apply in respect of the monarch: a governor-general may be dismissed (on the recommendation of the government) whereas the Queen may not. Had Gough Whitlam advised the Queen to dismiss Kerr before he had a chance to exercise his reserve powers, Kerr would have been removed. In the event, he moved first and dismissed Whitlam: Whitlam then had no standing in relation to the governor-general since he was no longer prime minister.

In the Canadian case, the governor-general was essentially between a rock and a hard place. There is (as far as I am aware) no precedent and no guidelines for agreeing to a prorogation in such circumstances. Had the request ...