New lieutenant-governor may surprise Ontarians
Swearing the oath of office doesn’t mean taking a vow of silence on the job, says Ontario’s new lieutenant-governor.

thestar.com
Oct. 1, 2014
By Martin Regg Cohn

Shortly after Stephen Harper announced she would be Ontario’s next lieutenant-governor, Elizabeth Dowdeswell stood quietly outside the legislature last summer: No entourage, no security, not yet sworn in.

Unaccompanied and unnoticed. But not for much longer.

On a sunny late September day, she rode to Queen’s Park in an open landau escorted by a mounted honour guard - and ensconced by bodyguards who will shadow her for the next few years.

No longer alone, it almost seemed as if she had come out of nowhere.

Given her CV, she seemed an unlikely appointment by a prime minister suspicious of her ilk: Career public servant, UN undersecretary in the 1990s, environmentalist.

If Dowdeswell isn’t yet a household name, that’s because she is descended from that rarefied priesthood of bureaucrats and policy wonks who inhabit the world of government and global institutions. Now that she has ascended to the lofty perch of Queen’s representative in Ontario, does she have the requisite vice-regal common touch?

Swearing the oath of office doesn’t mean taking a vow of silence on the job, Dowdeswell tells me. Or cutting herself off from the public.

Nor will this be her first brush with bodyguards. Helming the United Nations Environment Program in Nairobi, one of the world’s most dangerous cities, she was protected by round-the-clock security and rode in a bulletproof car after staff killings.

“People are saying, ‘How do you respond to having the OPP drive you to wherever you’re going?’ ” Dowdeswell muses in her vice-regal suite. “I had at least two of my staff murdered at that time, so it was a difficult time.”

Heading the fractious UN organization was also politically perilous. The U.S. and U.K. criticized her publicly as she tried to reform the ossified environmental agency, before returning to Canada.

Now, at 69, she is capping a career as a non-partisan public servant and government consultant with a job description that requires her to remain above party politics. The Queen’s representative in Ontario doesn’t normally rock the boat, but Dowdeswell may yet make waves.

Unlike her predecessors, who embraced worthy but uncontroversial issues such as literacy or accessibility, the new lieutenant-governor has proclaimed no personal cause or public crusade. Not yet.

Instead, she promised to seek out Ontarians to hear what they wanted to talk about at ground level, rather than issue her own edict from on high. It was an unexpected point of departure, but Dowdeswell’s early circumspection won’t be the last word.

She left a trail of speeches during her UN tenure that leave little doubt where she stands on global warming (fighting it) and sustainable development (favouring it). If her fresh public consultations yield a consensus to push the environmental envelope at a time of political inertia, will she follow through?

The lieutenant-governor will walk a fine line, but not retreat.

“Part of the job of this office is to be a bit of a mirror back to society... and to raise that social consciousness about critical issues,” she says, choosing her words carefully.

“We transcend politics. We are not policy-makers.”

But a wise vice-regal representative learns to leverage the office.

Her consultations could help people “find avenues for taking action themselves,” Dowdeswell notes. “I also have the opportunity to shine a light on an issue, to create public awareness.”

A clue to where she’s going can be found in where she’s coming from - her past pronouncements on climate change going back two decades.

“The current situation has whispered a warning which we ignore at our peril,” she said in an early speech that predicted waves of “environmental refugees.” Taking over the UN Environment Program, she promised “constructive damage to the status quo.”

The daughter of a United Church minister, Dowdeswell married young and divorced early, working first as a teacher. Saskatchewan’s NDP government made her deputy minister of culture, but an incoming Tory government dumped her (and other deputies).

Hired by one party, fired by another - such are the rules of engagement (and disengagement) for deputy ministers, who serve at the pleasure of the crown, as Dowdeswell learned on the firing line. Now, she is the crown - or more precisely, the Queen’s representative in Ontario.

That means reading the perennial speech from the throne. But also keeping her ear to the ground.