Jeanne Sauve as Speaker of the House of Commons

Carol Roach
Previously published in Examiner

To learn more about Canadian or Quebec politics, both McGill University and Concordia University in Montreal offer wonderful political science degrees, that you may want to look into.

Montreal's Concordia University has a wonderful women's studies program at the Simone do Beauvoir Institute

The duties of a governor general is to represent the ruling British Monarch in Canada. The governor general carries out administrative duties and also celebratory or festive activities. We will now look at the three female governor generals of Canada, two of which were from Montreal.


Jeanne Sauve house speaker

The early days as house speaker was a challenge for Sauve, she made mistakes. She made mistakes in the names of the MP's and the biggest "gaffe" as we would say in french in Montreal, was that she even addressed the Prime Minister of Canada as the leader of the Opposition Party. This no doubt caused Trudeau to be sharp with her. The Members of Parliament also were also up at arms with her, claiming she allowed liberal Members of Parliament more question time than the other parties MPs. Sauve responded during a CBC interview, that it might have been so for the first two to three days, but evened out over the course of time.

Jeanne Sauve's accomplishments

Sauve revamped the portfolio for House Speaker budget by installing a new program that was aimed at cutting expenses, excess personnel, bureaucracy, and other needless costs. Sauve saved the government 18 million dollars in annual expenses with the installation of her program.

Jeanne Sauve's other duties included presiding over two debates on the constitution. These debates took on points of order and filibusters (the delay on a bill). These were trying times with controversial issues such as the National Energy Program to make Canada self-sufficient. The Conservative Party Whip held up the bill for two weeks by refusing to come to the House of Commons to report that the Conservatives were ready to vote. Sauve was pressured to intervene and break the deadlock; but she refused. She maintained that the parties had to talk it out and come to an understanding amongst themselves.

Source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Sauv%C3%A9

Published by Carol Roach

Carol Roach holds a masters in counselling psychology. She worked as a therapist at the Douglas Hospital in Montreal before becoming a professional writer.Carol is the author of the book Picking Up The Piece...  View profile

3 Comments

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  • Martin Kloess9/4/2011

    well written - thank you

  • Michele Starkey8/23/2011

    I've made my fair share of "gaffes" through the years! cheers :)

  • Harriet Steinberg8/22/2011

    Another great one!!

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