Former Governor-General Clarkson says Canada has redefined citizenship

Adrienne Clarkson is a former governor-general and is co-chair of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. She came to Canada in 1942 as a young child with her family, who left Hong Kong as refugees. Ms. Clarkson is delivering this year’s Massey Lectures, broadcast on CBC Radio and published by House of Anansi Press.

The title of your lecture series is Belonging: The Paradox of Citizenship. What does that mean?

In other countries, citizenship in the traditional sense is a label of expectations imposed on the person who becomes a citizen. We allow people to become what they are. We don’t say you’re going to fit in to an idea of “the citizen.” In effect we have redefined what citizenship is. We are a country of people who have come from all sorts of places with different experiences, what I call, borrowing from [Canadian literary critic] Malcolm Ross, ‘the impossible sum of our traditions,’ and that is what makes us different and special.

Clarkson taps taxpayers for secretarial help

OTTAWA—Former governor general Adrienne Clarkson has billed taxpayers more than $500,000 in administration costs since leaving Rideau Hall, government records show.

The payments, revealed in public accounts documents, are for secretarial help.

Clarkson’s office defends the spending, saying that as “Canada’s most active and involved governor general” she is still flooded with mail and requests related to her time as the Queen’s representative in Canada.

But NDP MP Pat Martin called the funding “ridiculous” and said it should stop.

“She was fairly compensated for her services rendered. The Canadian taxpayer shouldn’t be on the hook for her subsequent expenses,” Martin said in an interview.

“I don’t see any justification for a continued obligation after the governor general leaves office, other than a pension.