Prime Minister Mark Carney named retired Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour as Canada’s next governor general during an announcement in Toronto on Tuesday. Carney said King Charles III approved the appointment on his recommendation. The governor general serves as the representative of the British monarch, who remains Canada’s head of state as a member of the Commonwealth.
Arbour, 79, will succeed Mary Simon — Canada’s first Indigenous governor general — when Simon’s term reaches the five-year mark in July, the Associated Press reported. Carney described Arbour as “a world-renowned legal scholar, judge and leader in human rights and justice,” noting she held judgeships on the Supreme Court of Ontario, the Court of Appeal for Ontario, and the Supreme Court of Canada.
Asked whether she considers herself a monarchist, Arbour said in French that she “doesn’t really know what that term is supposed to mean” but voiced support for the current system. “I will be the representative of the Crown in a constitutional arrangement that has served Canada extremely well throughout our history, even more in recent decades,” she said.
Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, told the AP that Simon’s lack of French proficiency drew criticism from many francophone commentators and that Arbour’s appointment comes at a politically sensitive time. The provincial Parti Québécois has pledged to organize an independence referendum by 2030 if it forms a majority government after Quebec’s October 5 general election. “Having a francophone as Governor General might help,” Béland said. He noted that Arbour is well known and respected in French-speaking Quebec.
Arbour’s international credentials are extensive. In 1996 the United Nations appointed her Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Her office secured the first conviction for genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention and issued the first indictment for war crimes of a sitting head of state. She later served as the U.N. Special Representative for International Migration from 2017 to 2018.
Carney indicated he expects a close working relationship with Arbour. “I will have an opportunity to have very in-depth conversations with Arbour in private on issues that affect Canada and the rest of the world,” he said. The governor general holds important constitutional duties, though the role is primarily ceremonial and symbolic.