Privileges
Two official residences are provided to the prime minister—24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa and Harrington Lake, a country retreat in Gatineau Park—as well an office in the Langevin Block, across from Parliament Hill. For transportation, the prime minister is granted an armoured car and shared use of two official aircraft—a CC-150 Polaris for international flights and a Challenger 601 for domestic trips. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police also furnish constant personal security for the prime minister and his or her family. All of the aforementioned is supplied by the Queen-in-Council through budgets approved by parliament, as is the prime minister's annual salary of CAD$317,574. Only about half of this income is specific to the role of prime minister, the remainder being the normal salary of a Member of Parliament.
Should a sitting or former prime minister die, he or she is accorded a state funeral, wherein their casket lies in state in the Centre Block of Parliament Hill. Only Mackenzie Bowell and the Viscount Bennett were given private funerals, Bennett also being the only former Prime Minister of Canada to die and be buried outside the country and Bowell the only whose funeral was not attended by politicians. John Thompson also died outside Canada, at Windsor Castle, where Queen Victoria permitted his lying-in-state before his body was returned to Canada for a state funeral in Halifax.
In earlier years, it was traditional for the monarch to bestow a knighthood on newly appointed Canadian prime ministers. Accordingly, several carried the prefix Sir before their name; of the first eight premiers of Canada, only Alexander Mackenzie refused the honour of a knighthood from Queen Victoria. Following the 1919 Nickle Resolution, however, it was against non-binding policy for the sovereign to grant such honorific titles to Canadians; the last prime minister to be knighted was Sir Robert Borden, who was premier at the time the Nickle Resolution was debated in the House of Commons. Still, Richard Bennett was in 1941, six years after he stepped down as prime minister, elevated to the peerage by King George VI as Viscount Bennett, of Mickleham in the County of Surrey and of Calgary and Hopewell in the Dominion of Canada.
The Canadian Heraldic Authority (CHA) has granted former prime ministers an augmentation of honour on the personal coat of arms of those who pursued them. The heraldic badge, referred to by the CHA as the mark of the Prime Ministership of Canada, consists of four red maple leaves joined at the stem on a white field ("Argent four maple leaves conjoined in cross at the stem Gules"); the augmentation has, so far, been granted either as a canton sinister or centred in the chief. To date, former prime ministers Joe Clark, Pierre Trudeau, John Turner, Brian Mulroney, and Kim Campbell were granted arms with the augmentation.
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Famous quotes containing the word privileges:
“We have been weakened in our resistance to the professional anti-Communists because we know in our hearts that our so-called democracy has excluded millions of citizens from a normal life and the normal American privileges of health, housing and education.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“The Gospel of the army is cunning, as of all other human activities. The wisdom of the snake under the meekness of the sheep is what wins out.
The first Commandment is—never let them get anything on you—
The second: Graft—get privileges others haven’t got—worm yourself into confidence
The Third—seem neat and prosperous—as if you had money in the bank—”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges ... which are employed altogether for their benefit.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)