It is common for the occupants of political institutions to expand the importance of their office. Speaking in Paris at an executive meeting of UNESCO last month, Michaëlle Jean referred to herself as Canada’s head of state. Her predecessors, Adrienne Clarkson and Romeo Leblanc – he in Morocco a decade ago – apparently had said the same thing in describing themselves. At best, this is careless; at worst it is hubris. Excessive speech comes easily in a foreign setting where others may not know exactly who you are or what you represent. Self-puffery is inconsistent, however, with Canadians’ reputation for self-deprecating modesty.

To be sure, the office of the Governor General, like the prime minister’s office and Parliament itself, is constantly evolving. Successive federal governments have moved to Canadianize it, beginning with the appointment of the first native-born Governor General in the 1950s. They used the occupant afterwards to represent the government in the Arctic and abroad. To promote a Governor General to head of state, however, is beyond the authority of the Governor General and even of the government and Parliament. According to the Constitution, it would require the concurrence of all ten provincial legislatures.

Governors General should stick to speaking in glittering governor generalities and stay as far away as possible in public from the partisan fray and constitutional issues. Jeanne Sauvé was woefully offside two decades ago in urging recalcitrant premiers to get their legislatures to ratify the Meech Lake Accord. Many Canadians, certainly Stephen Harper and his party, opposed it. Michaëlle Jean was offside in Paris.

Jean, as the prime minister’s office correctly noted, is in error in referring to herself as head of state. If she believes herself to be head of state, she ought to inform the Royal Canadian Mint that an imposter graces its coins and bills. She is in fact the Queen’s representative. If she is the “de facto” head of state as her backtracking spokeswoman claimed, then she could describe herself as that and nothing more. Better yet, why does she not simply settle for what she is: the Queen’s representative. Honduras also has a “de facto” head of state, but neither Canada nor any other state recognizes him as the legitimate head of Honduras.

Jean lowers herself and falsely elevates her office by inflating her résumé. It is particularly ironic that she referred to herself as the head of state in a foreign country because when she is abroad she is not even the de facto head of state, if indeed there were such a thing. The Constitution provides that, just as the Governor General acts for the Queen in her absence, the “Chief Executive Officer or Administrator” (usually the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court), acts in the Governor General’s absence. That is precisely why Jean aborted her trip to Prague last December and returned to attend to Harper’s request for Parliament’s prorogation. Abroad she was powerless to grant it.

Historian Michael Bliss has offered a peculiar interpretation of the Governor General’s relationship to the prime minister. Bliss has claimed that, had Harper’s government been defeated in Parliament last December and had Jean refused his request for a new election, he could have asked the Queen to dismiss her. “There is no possibility,” opined Bliss, “that the Queen could deny such a request from her Canadian prime minister.” This scenario’s upshot is highly questionable.

A convention governing British-Canadian relations, dating back to the 1860s, is that the British do not meddle in Canada’s constitutional affairs. That is why the British rebuffed requests from the Quebec government and Aboriginal groups to withhold assent to the patriation of the Canadian constitution in 1982. Another convention, dating back to the 1870s, is that the British will only respond to a Canadian request for constitutional change is if it comes by way of a resolution from both houses of Canada’s Parliament. Had Jean dismissed Harper, he would not have been in a position to address the Queen for he would no longer have been prime minister nor would he have had a Parliament to back him up.

Jean had agreed to Harper’s request for an election in violation of the fixed election date law that his government sponsored, that Parliament passed, and that she signed. Constitutionally, Parliament “made” his government by passing Jean’s Throne Speech. It could “break” it by defeating it. The Governor General could have taken a request from Harper for another election so soon after the last as an abuse of his office. She could have dismissed him and called on the leader of “Her Majesty’s Official Opposition” – his job description says that he is there to form a government if a sitting government falls – if he could have assured her he had majority support in Parliament. Stéphane Dion could have done so since she had a letter from a majority of MPs to that effect.

Just as Jean was offside in Paris, Harper was constitutionally offside last December in arguing that a new government requires a fresh election. He may want to read up on how Arthur Meighen and the Conservatives came to power in the King-Byng affair of the 1920s.