Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaà lle Jean, C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D., Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada

Her predecessor once called herself the new Head of State. This Governor General believes that Rideau Hall is HER house and she is in command of Canada.

Michaelle Jean is hell-bent on changing not just the look but the texture and flavour of Rideau Hall as though it were her own private residence. In the process she wants to change Canadians. She is achieving that task in the name of Canada and Canadian art, though the motivation seems to fashion the Queen’s residence in her own image. Mostly, she is in the business of erecting a monument to herself.

The changes have continued, as a tour this week revealed, and are part of a deliberate effort by Ms. Jean to make the home more relevant, contemporary and a showcase for Canadian work that reflects stories about Canada. But as a result, Ms. Jean, who is an avid art lover, is highlighting paintings that draw less and less on the office's British traditions.

While the governor-general represents the Queen in this country, the increased emphasis on Canada means less on the royal family past or present. The Lemieux portrait is the only one of the Queen on display. "That's it as far as Her Majesty is concerned," said Fabienne Fusade, interpretation and exhibition planner at Rideau Hall. "We really want to create a Canadian interior. So some of the old furniture pieces, part of our history, they are very important, we don't want to get rid of them but … it is all about Canada."

The changes include a gradual shift to modernize the art that predates Ms. Jean's time in office. No longer in the residence: a more traditional portrait of the Queen, as well as images of the Queen's father, King George VI, and the Queen Mother that once graced the entrance. They are now in the Senate.

Where is the dignity of Jeanne Sauve, our fist woman governor general? Sauve showed that female governor-generals do not have to be consumed by personal preoccupations with fashion and interior decor. As usually, souls of significant depth do not concern themselves so highly with the world of appearance. Mostly, Sauve showed that a female GG does not have to be absorbed with oneself when one understand the purpose of the position.

Since Romeo Leblanc (who succeeded Mme Sauve), two consecutive Liberal prime minister have bequeathed to Rideau Hall, to the country, larger egos than our whole 10 million square kilometres of geography. Worse, these giant egos are closet republicans. Their republican souls render the last two GGs incapable of understanding the role of the Crown and Her Majesty’s position. They think of the Queen as arrogance, and arrogance is what they offer to represent her, so unschooled they are on what it means to serve, and how this Queen has lived her life.

Michaelle Jean the latest example: she is a half-breed born in Haiti. Today Haiti is the poorest and more backward country in the hemisphere, and it was no different then. She was born to privilege in a country where less black heritage usually implies better social status. There, her whiteness was emphasized, alongside a pretentious concern for the darker peasants. Now she is in Canada where more black is politically advantageous, unless one is driving a taxi in Montreal.

Jean was a separatist not all that long ago, but now she is Paul Martin’s legacy to represent our Queen. Jean is a chameleon with no recognisable publicly established image; she will change into whatever she needs to change in order to advance herself. As a separatist, she worked for the national broadcaster. As a republican, she represents the Crown in Canada. She now pretends to be concerned with the whiter Canadian peasant’s identity.

Jean thinks that by stripping Rideau Hall of British iconography and symbols she is going to make Canadians more Canadian. It presupposes that Jean knows what being Canadian means, of course, which she does not. Hers exhibits a republican attitude most typically found among Quebec dilettantes. It’s not distinctly Canadian. Being Canadian, for better or for worse, includes our historical ties to Britain as much as it does imperial France.

Being Canadian is in part being British; our very constitution is based on that premise. Not just the written one, but the one that accumulates our traditions and dispositions in our memories and actions. Jean’s project is a project that warps our collective civic memory, though there is a tradition of doing such things among Liberals since Pearson (fittingly we mostly name airports in central Canada after them). Her Canadian history probably goes that far. She ignores that a denial of our British heritage is a denial of our own selves.

Michaelle Jean’s understanding of being Canadian is not in keeping with the whole of Canada and is not in keeping with the political traditions upon which most of this country was based. The British Monarchy has been around for a millennium; Jean is a arrived in Canada in the late 1960s. Her arrogance toward Her Majesty and things monarchical is an arrogance against all Canadians who value our political traditions and historical roots. Jean’s souls is fundamentally trudeauvian: she would minimize the great institution of the Monarchy and the Queen herself in order to aggrandize her own self.

In the typical Canadian Liberal tradition, Michaelle Jean is a woman without tradition; she is a woman without a past; she is a woman without identity in search of making one up. In the absence of all these, much of what fills her soul is a concern for power. She suffers from what most condescending liberal politicians of this age are afflicted with: the assumption that they know better than the common Canadian peasant, a desire to improve us whether we want it or not, and a will to transform us or our country as a means to leave us “a legacy” –that “legacy” is a way to erect a monument to themselves in our warped civic memory.

More Michaelle and less Elizabeth amounts to less Canada. Monarchist and republican Canadians, we are all poorer for having self-importance incarnate presently dwelling Rideau Hall. It stands to reason that the man guided by nothing other than the single-minded aspiration of becoming prime minister would be the one who chose her to be our governor general. The void of substance recognized itself.

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And now for some political gossip.

This anecdote has been circulating Ottawa for months: When Alex Himmelfarb, Paul Martin’s Clerk of the Privy Council, had finished briefing the Harper Conservative transition team on the Hill, he said his goodbyes and well wishes, grabbed his coat and his hat and headed toward the door. As he had crossed the threshold, he turned around retracing a few of his steps into the room and said something like: “Good luck with that woman. She is the most difficult person to deal with in this whole operation.” Stunned, people in the room asked “Who?” The one in Rideau Hall, he said, and off he went. A pearl of wisdom! That was the Clerk for the very liberal prime minister who chose her. One can only imagine what stories Kevin Lynch and others will have to tell.