Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

Can you name your Lieutenant Governor? I can’t. Moreover, I don’t care. Do you? Does he/she matter anymore? These people are a complete and utter waste of space, time, and money.

People in the Maritimes have trouble paying their heating bills, and these “representatives” sit around in mansions paid for by the “common people.” Oh yes, they work – they work cocktail parties, ceremonies, and boring government functions – things for which we pay.

The recent visit by Governor General Michel Jean to see the squalor of Vancouver’s Downtown east side is a case in point: there she was, in all her stilted, privilege-dripped over-enunciation, shielded by security, talking about the little people and how being told to #@& — off by residents over the shoulders of her entourage was simply a “manifestation” of their frustration”.

I am sure that she holds the same bemused, hollow, words of distanced empathy for others less fortunate: “Isn’t that a shame they live that way?” Tsk, tsk, my, my, too bad”.

It is not her fault, she is an elitist. The system will always create a privileged class; however, their deportment, and our systemic, structural support for them is another matter.

And we have to stop it. The position of Governor General is a provocatively useless waste of resources that merely serves to further illuminate class divides.

Michel Jean’s recent visit to Vancouver’s mean streets as part of a camera opportunity was a disgraceful sham. If she was serious about either concern or empathy she would have gone there with only one or two bodyguards late at night, unreported, not drawing attention to herself in televised daylight while using homeless people as live backdrops.

People will speak to me of “tradition.” It was also traditional for women not to vote, to have slavery, to have landed gentry, to have dictatorial monarchies. It was also traditional to have duel with wheellock and flintlock pistols during disputes in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth centuries.

I, personally, would like to have duels with the Governor General and the provincial representative, the Lieutenant Governor, but I just can’t remember her name. And I don’t even know what she looks like.

I bet you don’t know either. Nor do you know what you are paying for.

And you never get an invite to the cocktail parties either, do you?