The political drama surrounding Paul Martin's minority government awakened media observers to the significance of the governor general, an office long dismissed as a ceremonial vestige of colonialism. There are remarkably few works that might enlighten them about the role. In general, one must seek for such understanding piecemeal through historical studies. This lays a heavy burden of responsibility on any new work purporting to, as Edward McWhinney puts it, define “contemporary ground rules for the exercise of the reserve, discretionary powers of the office” (19). In this not-so-crowded field, a work by a political scientist of McWhinney's considerable reputation could well emerge as the authoritative work on the subject. McWhinney offers it in this spirit, even appending some “Rules of Constitutional Prudence for a Contemporary Governor General.” But a note of caution is in order.

Besides seeking to define evolved conventions, McWhinney proposes a means of severing Canada from what he persists in referring to as the “British” crown. Even as he acknowledges the infrequency of conflict in the existing system, the remarkable flexibility of our evolved constitution, and the fact that a change to the monarchy is not a priority to Canadians, McWhinney urges a backdoor route to constitutional change. By simply not proclaiming Elizabeth II's successor, Canada could, he suggests, break the final link to its head of state, substituting a reconstituted, perhaps elected, governor general or president. Granted, he notes, any form of election would confer extra legitimacy on the governor general and perhaps encourage greater activism. He makes no compelling case as to the desirability of such a change.

Beyond any critique of McWhinney's proposed constitutional remedies, however, issues with the book's basic reliability hamper its usefulness. Some issues are minor and do not touch the essential point at hand: France's Fourth Republic collapsed in 1958, not 1968. Other points are more substantial. Treatment of the 1926 King-Byng controversy is a case in point. Mackenzie King was not defeated in the Commons, as McWhinney claims; in fact, a motion of censure was still under debate when King resigned after Byng refused him a dissolution. Further, King did not win “a clear majority of seats” in the ensuing election. The Liberals won 116—exactly the same number Arthur Meighen's Conservatives had won in 1925—but then went on to negotiate the support of Progressives and others. This casts some question on McWhinney's reflections on the “constitutional principle flowing from the decisive electoral disposition of the conflict” (61).

Other elements of McWhinney's treatment of the historical evolution of the role are problematic. He refers to the 1867 British North America Act as “creating” the office of governor general. This is true only in the most narrow, technical sense. Despite the change in nomenclature, the duties of the captain general and governor in chief changed little in 1867, and indeed the incumbent since 1861, Lord Monck, carried on in office. The real watershed had been the advent of responsible government in 1848. McWhinney attaches great significance to the 1952 innovation of selecting Canadian governors general. Yet the 1931 Statute of Westminster was what severed the already tenuous link between Britain's cabinet and Canada's governor general. The fact that, after 1952, only Canadians would be appointed did not mean that the governors would be any less or more inclined to intervene in a constitutional crisis. He or she is still meant to be an impartial arbiter, a protector of the constitution. “Should the 1926 Canadian example not be deemed inapplicable” on the grounds that it occurred “when the governor general was still a British official?” (17) McWhinney wonders. The fact that Byng was a British appointee did not inform his handling of the dilemma.

Even while he raises this question, McWhinney maintains that constitutional precedents drawn from post-decolonization republics retaining the Westminster system, notably India and Pakistan, might be relevant to Canada. He suggests a “transferability” that “transcends traditional political-territorial borders” (71). Yet surely the transferability of constitutional norms from a state that has deliberately repudiated a once-shared monarchy is suspect. McWhinney admits that Pakistan has had frequent recourse to “naked power” while in Canada peaceful gradualism has been the rule.

There are other areas in which the book is misleading. Employing an ambiguously passive phrase, McWhinney refers to the “claimed convention” that the governor general will call upon the party leader with the most seats to form a government, and cites a number of examples. But the salient point is the wish of an incumbent prime minister. In a minority government situation, he might exercise his right to meet parliament to see if he can command support. McWhinney acknowledges that neither Louis St. Laurent in 1957 nor Pierre Trudeau in 1979 chose to do this. He also draws a false analogy between the 1936 abdication crisis of Edward VIII and the Prince of Wales's 2005 marriage, remarking that the silence of the dominions on the latter reveals that any such input would have been “irrelevant and out-of-date” (148). He overlooks the key fact that Edward VIII was a reigning monarch whose proposal for a morganatic marriage would have required dominion as well as British legislation. He asserts that the royal prerogative of [refusal of] assent “perhaps persisted a little longer” in Britain than in the dominions. Indeed, the opposite is true. Canada's governors general were expected to peruse legislation to guard against any intrusion into imperial jurisdiction—a reflection of the duality of the vice-regal role before the Statute of Westminster. By contrast, the British monarch's prerogative of refusal of assent was effectively dead by Queen Anne's reign.

With respect to recent Canadian controversies, McWhinney correctly points out that criticism of Adrienne Clarkson's regime should have been answered by the government in office; by convention the Crown does not respond even to baseless criticism. He muses that this convention might be updated. Rather than throw the dignity of the Crown overboard, however, a more sensible option might be to remind the government of the day of their duty to deflect criticism aimed at the sovereign's representative. McWhinney asserts that “nothing in the pomp and circumstance of the Imperial era” could have prepared a governor general for such “intense public scrutiny” and “personal indignities and humiliations.” Nothing, indeed, but a study of history. Lord Elgin's critics pelted him with rotten eggs and paving stones; successors withstood abuse in editorials and political cartoons. Criticism is endemic to the office, a reflection of its complexity. Despite McWhinney's attempt to reduce it to ten simple rules, the viceregal role requires insight into history and the shifting nature of party politics, a principled commitment to neutrality, and the intangible personal qualities of tact, flexibility and grace.