COLUMN: Louise Arbour at Rideau Hall — The Judge Who Brought the Butchers to Their Knees Becomes Canada’s Guardian

Nine years on the nation’s highest court

1999. She returned to Canada. Jean Chrétien appointed her to the Supreme Court. She served there until June 2004. Her rulings bore a hallmark: the absolute primacy of fundamental rights, even when the state invokes national security.

Suresh decision, January 2002. A unanimous ruling by the Court signed by all nine justices, including her. Canada cannot deport an individual to a country where they face the risk of torture, except under exceptional circumstances. Five months after September 11. The Court stood firm. Arbour stood firm.

We often speak of political courage. We rarely speak of it in the context of judges. Yet, to write in January 2002 that torture remains prohibited even against suspected terrorists was to alienate half of North American public opinion. She did so without hesitation. This woman does not waver.

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights: 2004–2008

Kofi Annan called her. She left the Supreme Court. She led the UN’s human rights efforts for four years. She denounced Guantanamo. She denounced the Israeli strikes in Lebanon in 2006. She denounced the enforced disappearances in Chechnya.

And yet—and this is what makes her who she is—she also denounced human rights violations in Iran, China, Sudan, and North Korea. Her moral compass has never been tied to any particular side. She has brought ambassadors on both sides of the political spectrum to tears.

Carney’s Canada Needs Moral Authority

Mark Carney took office in March 2025 in a country under pressure. Donald Trump is threatening Canada’s economic borders. Quebec is closing ranks over its language. Alberta is talking about secession. Canadian unity is faltering.

A governor general has no political power. She holds symbolic authority. And in times when the social fabric is tearing apart, the symbolic carries more weight than the constitutional. Carney chose someone whose very presence reminds the country of what it claims to be.

Want to know what difference a Governor General like her makes? It means that the next time there’s a diplomatic crisis, when a foreign dictator comes to shake Canada’s hand, he’ll have to shake hands with a woman who indicted Milošević. That handshake isn’t neutral. It’s loaded with meaning.

Quebec Nationalists and the Monarchy Controversy

The Bloc Québécois has already announced that it will refuse to attend the swearing-in ceremony. Yves-François Blanchet called it an “unacceptable anachronism.” The Parti Québécois goes further: Paul St-Pierre Plamondon calls it an “insult to the nascent Quebec Republic.”

And yet. Arbour was born in Quebec. She studied at the University of Montreal. She taught at Osgoode Hall but has always kept an apartment in Outremont. Her appointment cannot be reduced to a federalist gesture. She is as much a part of Quebec as she is of Canada.

The Arbour Report on the Armed Forces

May 2022. She submits a 414-page report to Anita Anand on sexual misconduct in the Canadian military. 48 recommendations. In it, she denounces an institutionalized culture of silence, complicit chains of command, and a military justice system incapable of adjudicating its own abuses.

Three years later, in 2025, barely half of the recommendations had been implemented. Arbour publicly expressed her disappointment. “My report was not a suggestion,” she said in an interview with Radio-Canada on February 12, 2025. The statement has stuck with me.

That’s what strikes me about Arbour. She says yes, she takes the job, she agrees to represent the Crown—even though the government she represents has ignored half of its own recommendations. And yet she goes ahead with it. Because she knows you can’t change institutions from the outside. You change them from the inside, one push at a time, in silence, until they give in.

The UN, Migration, and Criticism from the Right

Between 2017 and 2018, she led the UN Global Compact on Migration. A perfect political target for the global identitarian right. Trump had withdrawn the United States from the process. Trudeau’s Canada had signed on. In Quebec, Maxime Bernier had made it his key campaign issue.

Arbour responded calmly during a parliamentary committee hearing in Ottawa on December 4, 2018: “The pact is not legally binding. Those who claim otherwise are lying.” She did not raise her voice. She simply spoke the truth with the gravitas of a woman who has seen mass graves.

A Governor General Who Has Previously Presided Over Heads of State

The role is primarily ceremonial—except in the event of a constitutional crisis. And that’s where Arbour’s profile becomes truly remarkable. If, for example, a prime minister were to attempt an improper prorogation, she would be the one who would have to say no.

Yet this woman has already said no to sitting presidents. She has already signed indictments against heads of state. She is not afraid of men in suits who think they have all the power. No Canadian prime minister will dare attempt anything irregular during her term.

That is Carney’s real choice. Not a figurehead. Not a cultural icon. A bulwark. Someone who, in the event of a storm, holds firm. In an era when democracies are being eroded by men who no longer respect anything, Canada has just placed at Rideau Hall a woman who has spent her life preventing the powerful from doing as they please.

The impact on the country’s

1.1 million Francophones outside Quebec. A community that felt abandoned for five years by a governor general who could not deliver a speech to them in their own language. Arbour changes all that with a single appointment.

She will speak in Caraquet just as she will speak in Saint-Boniface. She will welcome dignitaries in French in Ottawa. Institutional bilingualism is no longer a polite fiction. For the Acadians, Franco-Manitobans, and Fransaskois, this marks the end of a long period of symbolic neglect.

A country that remembers what it does best

Canada has long been known for producing leaders like Louise Arbour, Roméo Dallaire in Rwanda, Stephen Lewis at the UN, and Maurice Strong in Rio. A tradition of international engagement on a human scale, in a country with few weapons but many words that carry weight.

And yet, over the past decade, this tradition had been eroding. Appointments had become political, identity-driven, and focused on public relations. Merit took a back seat to the message. Carney is reversing that logic. He reminds us that we can still choose someone because she is the best, not because she fits a certain mold.

At 79, she could have refused. She could have stayed on her couch in Montreal, writing her memoirs, serving on the boards of foundations. She said yes. And that “yes”—at her age, after everything she has seen—is almost an act of faith in the country where she was born.

The nationalists will continue to protest. That is their right. But let them protest against the office, not against the person. Because that person has spent her life defending exactly what the nationalists claim to want to preserve: the dignity of a people to be heard in their own language.

And yet, I know these words alone will not be enough to quell the discontent. And that’s just as well. A democracy where no one grumbles is a dead democracy. But let those who grumble against Arbour first reread her rulings. Let them read the Akayesu decision. Let them read the indictment of Milošević. Let them read the report on the Canadian Armed Forces. Then, let them decide if they really want this woman as a symbolic adversary.

As for me, I believe Carney made the right choice. Not perfect—nothing is. But it’s a good one. And in an era when good choices are few and far between, we’ll settle for that. We’ll settle for that, because this woman at Rideau Hall is a living reminder that Canada can still produce giants.

Signed, Maxime Marquette, columnist