During the election debates of 1984, Brian Mulroney attacked John Turner for not stopping several Trudeau patronage appointments to the senate. He called it "an avowal of failure".
It helped to win the election for him.
But once in office, Mulroney made the chamber his own 'reward miles' program, with Marjorie LeBreton handing out senate seats to those who puckered up the most, paying homage to her boss's derriere.
And these appointments became both a curse and a blessing for Jean Charest when he became party leader. They were broke and broken:
The reality was that there were just two MPs in Parliament and the party was $5 million in debt. ..... The only place the federal Tories had any real bench strength, a significant block of parliamentarians with staff, research money, phone lines, airline passes, and experience, was in the Senate. The roll call of senators so close to the former prime minister must be daunting to Charest: David Angus. Eric Berntson, John Buchanan, Guy Charbonneau, Michel Cogger. Trevor Eyton, Dunc Jessiman, Jim Kelleher, Marjory LeBreton, John Lvnch-Staunton, Michael Meighen, Pierre Claude Nolin, and Fernand Roberge. These are the individuals on whom Charest must depend, the same people who are, to a great extent, responsible for much of the mess the party is in today. Maybe there is just too much baggage for a Tory recovery in the foreseeable future. (1)
Now we find ourselves decades later in a similar situation with senate baggage. Stephen Harper has made the most patronage senate appointments in the history of this country, and most were not qualified to run a lemonade stand, including a former hockey coach who can't even read or write.
And what's worse is that if he remains prime minister to the end of November, he may have control of the Senate.
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper will soon lay claim in the unelected Senate to what he does not have in the House of Commons: a majority.
But this won't be a 'Tory' senate control, as suggested by the media, but a control of what Harper himself refers to as a party "where evangelical Christians and business rule in an unholy alliance" after Red Tories are "jettisoned from the party". (2)
In other words, Republicans.
And what will it mean for Canada?
It means that even if we can get rid of this government before they completely destroy us, we will not be able to overturn their list of horrendous bills, and Parliament will be essentially controlled a gaggle of Reformer fundraisers and party faithfuls. Harper will continue to control us from a distance.
Add to that a Fox News North and we will officially be an American colony.
This is not good.
Sources:
1. On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, By Stevie Cameron, Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1994, ISBN: 0-921912-73-0, Pg. 486-87
Stephen Harper already held the record for the most patronage appointments, but I guess he wants to make sure his record can never be broken.
Clearly it's not who you know but who he knows.
The latest appointments went y with little notice in the media, possibly because it has become almost business as usual, possibly because it got lost in Twitter and the relentless cycle of web page news and blogs. But over the past two weeks Prime Minister Harper and his cabinet named Mr. Silye, a former Calgary Reform Party and Progressive Conservative MP, as chair of the board of the federal Museum of Science and Nature in Ottawa. Ms. Skelton became a member of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, responsible for civilian oversight of Canada's spy agency—the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Her government appointment resume lists her pre-political job experience as a coordinator for Canadian Blood Services, with experience in organizations ranging from 4-H to the Royal Canadian Legion.
Silye is also on the board of Jason Kenney's old haunt, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
It's no wonder the Reformers don't believe they could be ahead in the polls. How can we trust them when they don't even trust themselves?
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has appointed Toronto-area realtor and former Conservative candidate Salma Ataullahjan to the Senate to fill a vacancy for Ontario. Ataullahjan, who immigrated to Canada from Pakistan in 1979, lost to Liberal MP Navdeep Bains in the southern Ontario riding of Mississauga-Brampton South in the 2008 federal election.
OTTAWA -- The Harper government approved 148 appointments to federal boards and agencies, long used as rewards for supporters of the party in power, as the election neared, The Canadian Press has learned. Cabinet handed out the posts in three rounds, the first only two days before Parliament recessed for the summer, the second on July 30, at peak holiday time for politicians and political journalists, and the third less than a week before Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the election for Oct. 14.
Harper, who railed against Liberal patronage in the 2006 election, later failed to deliver on a campaign pledge to put an independent commission in charge of vetting cabinet appointments. He angrily shelved the idea after opposition MPs refused to ratify his nomination of Gwyn Morgan, a Calgary oil baron who is also a friend of the prime minister, as the commission chair.
It's difficult to determine exactly how many of the recent appointments went to members of the federal Conservative party or to provincial Progressive Conservative parties.
Many have had no comment on their new jobs, but interviews and public records outlining the backgrounds of others suggest Harper was courting the party faithful in a number of cases.
A retiring Halifax physician who was named to the Canada Pension Plan review board described how he received a call from a prominent provincial Conservative who asked him if he was interested in the spot.
The physician, Ronald Gregor, said he helped a prominent provincial Progressive Conservative candidate campaign in his neighbourhood in the last Nova Scotia election, but only for a week of door-knocking.
He described how his name first went to the office of Defence Minister Peter MacKay, the federal political minister for Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and then to the office of Human Resources Minister Monte Solberg.
A retired Ottawa lawyer who also received an appointment to the pension review board, whose members primarily hear applications for disability pensions, said he simply told a prominent Ontario Progressive Conservative he was looking for something to do in his retirement.
The lawyer, Murray Young, said he told longtime provincial cabinet minister Norm Sterling, who represented an Ottawa riding, that he "wanted something, a week a month."
Young said he doesn't know Environment Minister John Baird, the federal political minister for the Ottawa region, and has never met him. He said that after he spoke with Sterling he found a CPP board vacancy on a government web site, but he couldn't remember the name of the site.
The 148 appointments to low-profile but rewarding agencies -- including the pension review board, employment insurance referee boards, immigration and refugee appeal boards and port authorities -- were among a host of jobs filled by cabinet in the three rounds, government records show.
Other posts filled included superior court and national parole board vacancies, both of which involve a screening process, and higher-echelon nominations to federal commissions or Crown corporation boards.
Salary or other remuneration for some of the agencies, such as the CPP review board, are established by Treasury Board and not published. The port authorities, responsible for establishing their own levels of remuneration, likewise do not publish the figures.
But, as an example, Privy Council Office documents show that part-time members of the Immigration and Refugee Appeal Board receive a per diem between $480 and $560. Full-time members are paid between $95,500 and $112,300 annually.
The appointees included a 2007 director of the Vancouver Quadra federal riding association, Marlie Oden; a past defeated provincial Tory in Newfoundland and Labrador, Wilson Wiseman; and a Sudbury, Ont., woman, Lyne Demers, who worked for the whip's office in the Ontario government of Mike Harris.
Others included in the Harper appointments were Brian Ketcheson of St. Andrews, Man., who lost an election bid for the provincial Tories in 1995; Faith Collins of Victoria, who ran unsuccessfully for the federal Progressive Conservatives in 1993; and David Saxton of Yarmouth, N.S., a provincial Progressive Conservative supporter and donor.
A Conservative party spokesman played down the significance of the appointments.
"We don't believe political involvement should preclude people from serving in these capacities," said Conservative party spokesman Mike Storeshaw.
Storeshaw also dismissed the extent of the appointments and the fact they were made as the government was likely preparing for an election call, contending that a snap election could have occurred anytime with a minority Parliament.
But the Canadian Taxpayers Federation criticized Harper for not carrying through with his promise to change the patronage system. "It's business as usual, rewarding party faithful," said Adam Taylor, acting national director of the federation.
For a party that came into power, claiming to want to clean things up, they have certainly muddied the waters. In fact, they have officially made more patronage and cronyism appointments than any government before them. They should be so proud.
The Immigration and Refugee Board tailored job competitions to favour former political appointees who sat on its tribunals, a breach of the hiring principles for a non-partisan public service, an audit by the federal staffing watchdog says.
The Public Service Commission audit found eight of nine former political appointees received "preferential treatment" to help them land permanent public service jobs at the board. All had held positions on tribunals that had expired within a year of being hired.
Public Service Commission president Maria Barrados, whose job is to protect the impartiality of the public service, said a political appointment should not be "an entry route" into a non-partisan public service.
She said appointees should apply, compete and demonstrate merit like any other Canadian trying to land a job in the public service.
"They are appointed by ministers and there is no commitment to being non-partisan," said Barrados. "(Job) appointments through the Public Service Commission are merit-based and non-partisan and set up so they are away from the direction and influence of ministers, which is a key part of maintaining a non-partisan public service."
The audit has been turned over to the commission's investigation branch to determine whether it warrants a further probe. The commission has the power to overturn appointments or call new competitions.
The IRB is Canada's largest independent administrative tribunal, making 40,000 decisions a year on immigration and refugee cases. With a $113-million budget, it employs 925 public servants and 118 political or governor-in-council appointees to run its three divisions.
The immigration division is run by public servants, but all decisions at the refugee protection and immigration appeals divisions are made by political appointees.
The commission discovered concerns about "preferential treatment" during a routine audit. All told, it reviewed a sample of 54 appointments and found 33 didn't meet the requirements of the job or records didn't have a paper trail showing they did. In other cases, the competition for the jobs didn't meet the tests of being open, fair and transparent.
The audit, for example, found the IRB decided to recruit applicants who were former political appointees because they had the in-depth knowledge and experience with the tribunal's operations.
Barrados said experience gained as a politically-appointed tribunal member gives former appointees an edge no other candidates could match. Three of the political appointees landed jobs in a public competition, which called for specific tribunal experience. That requirement screened out 171 of the 174 people who applied.
When hired at a minister's discretion, these political appointees don't have to comply with any of the hiring rules or requirements expected of those recruited for jobs in the public service under the Public Service Employment Act. The decision to appoint rests totally with the minister or government of the day.
For public service jobs, however, candidates must not only meet the qualifications for the job, but the competition or process to fill the job must be open, fair and transparent.
In other cases, the former governor-in-council appointees either didn't meet the requirements of the job, the positions weren't advertised or records of their appointment were lacking. In one case, the bilingual requirements for the position were changed when the candidate failed language testing. Another was given a two-year appointment, which was extended even though the candidate was going on leave.
One of nine former governor-in-council appointees did qualify and meet requirements for the job.
In her April report, Auditor General Sheila Fraser highlighted the problems at the Immigration and Refugee Board, where high vacancy rates and high turnover of board members led to a growing backlog of cases and long delays in decisions on claims.
During the period of the audit, the IRB was swamped with cases, a workload it couldn't keep up with because the terms of so many political appointees had expired and replacements hadn't been appointed because of a series of changes in government. The audit was conducted on appointments between January 2006 and June 2009.
The IRB said the soaring number of claims coupled with not enough experienced decision-makers created a backlog of 42,300 refugee protection claims cases in 2007 -- more than double the backlog of 2006.
The audit also noted that former experienced appointees could have been hired for short-term stints to help fill gaps or retrain new appointees without breaching the act.
The Harper government made an election promise to create a Public Appointments Commission to ensure these political or GIC appointments went to qualified candidates rather than party faithful or cronies.
The federal Liberals slammed the governing Conservatives on Thursday for handing out government jobs -- some of which pay more than $100,000 a year -- to failed former candidates, party workers and financial supporters.
The Liberals went on the attack in the House of Commons in the wake of a report that Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed five judges with Conservative ties. Harper did so less than a week after slamming the Liberals for appointing "left-wing ideologues" to the courts and to the civil service when they were in power.
Liberals say they've identified 37 appointments Harper and his cabinet approved in the last six weeks, where the appointee had a demonstrated link to the Conservatives.
"It is an orgy of appointments," said Liberal MP David McGuinty. "How many more rewards does the prime minister intend to hand out to his Conservative flock?"
Five of the 37 appointments flagged by the Liberals were the judges referred to in Thursday's reports. Those judges were appointed Sept. 9. The Liberals are also counting seven senators Harper appointed on Aug. 27. The new senators included Harper's second-longest-serving aide, the Conservative party's past president, and the husband of Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, who was also Harper's director of political operations.
In the days between appointing some of his closest political friends to the Senate and making the judicial appointments, Harper gave a speech in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., in which he said the Liberals, had they won the government last fall, would be putting "left-wing ideologues . . . in the courts, federal institutions, agencies, and the Senate."
The Liberals say Harper is saying one thing and doing the opposite.
One of Harper's key campaign promises from 2006 was to create an independent public-appointments commission. But the Tories wanted one of their own biggest financial contributors, former oil and gas executive Gwyn Morgan, to head that commission. Opposition MPs who agreed with the idea of a commission objected to Morgan's appointment to run it.
"Only the government would expect a crony to stamp out cronyism. How ridiculous," McGuinty said in the House of Commons.
Political appointments are handled by senior political staff working within the Prime Minister's Office. More than 3,000 appointments have been made since the Harper government took office.
I don't know what is going on with Stephen Harper these days, but I think he's gone nuts.
First stacking the senate with some of the most blatant patronage appointments in our history. Jacques Demers can't even read or write. What in the hell is Harper thinking?
But as if that wasn't enough, he's rewarding even more friends with patronage appointments in the form of cushy government jobs.
Maybe he knows the writing is on the wall and he's on his way out, so is going to go out with a bang.
Everyone who worked so hard to take the Reform Party this far, must be so disappointed.
OTTAWA -- Weeks before Stephen Harper named some of his closest Tory friends to the Senate, his cabinet quietly approved a flood of appointments to federal boards that also rewarded party faithful. At least 20 of the 111 appointments made Aug. 4 went to identifiable federal and provincial Conservative donors and supporters. That includes a failed candidate in Vancouver, a top organizer with the Nova Scotia party, and a would-be Senate nominee from Alberta.
The postings come with per diems of up to $450 for part-time positions and salaries of up to $118,000 a year for full-time posts.
Some of the bodies involved were: the Immigration and Refugee Board, Canada Pension Plan review tribunals, employment insurance referee boards, the parole board, coastal pilotage authorities, port authorities and museum boards. Nearly a third of the posts were first-time assignments and the remainder were renewals of three-year terms set to expire in late October or November.
The rush of appointments followed a little-noticed series of judicial appointments to superior courts across the country in July. That round brought the total number of superior court judges appointed by the Harper government to 201 since 2006.
It also further fuelled opposition claims that the prime minister has abandoned election promises of transparency and merit-based public-service and judicial appointments.
Conservative appointments to courts, boards, quasi-judicial tribunals and Crown corporations now total an estimated 3,000 since Harper became prime minister.
The Tories are also closing in on the Liberals in the Senate after Harper's appointment of nine senators Thursday, including at least two close advisers.
Several of the earlier judicial posts went to lawyers with Tory connections.
Lawrence O'Neill is a former Progressive Conservative MP from Nova Scotia whose anti-abortion positions were the subject of controversy when he was named to the bench in 2007. And Ronald Stevens was a member of the Alberta Conservative party, a sitting member of the legislature, and former attorney general, when he was appointed in May.
Harper has yet to establish his promised Public Appointments Commission to set standards and criteria for cabinet nominations to federal posts.That despite the fact that Treasury Board documents show a four-person secretariat set up to support the commission has cost taxpayers a total of $3.6 million since 2006.
Liberal MP Dan McTeague said Harper should be concerned that voters will be wary of him following his failure to deliver on his accountability and transparency promises from the past two elections.
He added that the public should not have to dredge through Google or newspaper clippings to determine if there are political connections behind the scores of appointments the government hands out.
"These were things that were part of his pledge to make Parliament more accountable and the process to be more transparent," McTeague said.
"He has done everything that he has criticized. I think the prime minister and his team should be well aware of the fact that there frankly isn't a single pledge they can make now or down the road that the Canadian public can take seriously."
A spokesman defended the prime minister's approach, noting Harper shelved the Public Appointments Commission after the opposition parties opposed his nomination to lead the new agency -- former Calgary energy executive Gwyn Morgan.
"The opposition decided to play partisan political games with that nomination and, as such, our government was unable to fill the position," said Dimitri Soudas. (Lie, LIE, LIE, LIE. Gwyn Morgan was a Reform Party fundraiser who had made racist remarks in the past))
New Democrat MP Joe Comartin called for the creation of a special committee of the House of Commons to review all federal appointments and establish a "code of laws" that would eventually be the standard for public service nominations. He also called on Harper to expand the jurisdiction of advisory panels for judgeships and re-establish a system set up by the previous Liberal government that allowed the Commons justice committee to interview nominees to the Supreme Court.
Among Conservative supporters or those with Tory connections who received posts or had them renewed in the August round of appointments:
Lorne Mayencourt, who ran unsuccessfully in Vancouver in the last federal election, was named chair of the employment insurance boards of referees for B.C. David Usherwood, who placed ninth as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the 2004 Alberta Senate nominee election, received a second three-year appointment as chair of the employment insurance referee boards in Alberta. Geoffrey Machum, who chaired the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative leadership convention in 2006, got a second three-year appointment to the Halifax Port Authority. Brian Coburn, an Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP under former premier Mike Harris, received a second three-year appointment as a citizenship judge.
As I pointed out in another post, Former Prime Minister John Turner wore the patronage appointments of Pierre Trudeau, and Brian Mulroney in the debates leading up to the 1984 election, made sure that he did.
So who will wear the patronage appointments of Stephen Harper? Where is his crack team, and heaven forbid his elected MPs? Why is no one standing their ground? They must be hearing rumblings of this in their home ridings.
Harper, once the mouthpiece for an elected senate, has just made some of the most blatant patronage selections to the upper chamber in Canadian history. The last time it was this bad was when 18 Conservative buddies were given these prestigious seats, and that was by Conservative PM ... hmmm .... oh, yeah ... Stephen Harper. I guess he beat his own record. He should be so proud.
But for any members of his caucus who want to use the tired "I had no option but to go along", as Brian Mulroney said to John Turner "You had an option sir ... it was an avowal of failure". It cost John Turner the election. Something to think about.
"We don't support any Senate appointments."(Stephen Harper, Winnipeg Free Press, January 29, 1996)
"Despite the fine work of many individual Senators, the Upper House remains a dumping ground for the favoured cronies of the Prime Minister."(Stephen Harper Leadership Website, January 15, 2004)
"In the 21st century, those who want to sit in the parliament of a democratic state should have a mandate from the people." (Stephen Harper, February 7, 2006)
"A conservative government will not appoint to the senate anyone who does not have a mandate from the people."(Conservative Party website during 2006 election)
"As everyone in this room knows, it has become a right of passage for aspiring leaders and prime ministers to promise Senate reform - on their way to the top - but once they are elected, Senate reform quickly falls to the bottom of the Government's agenda. Nothing ever gets done."(Stephen Harper, Speech on Senate Reform before Senate Committee, September 7, 2006)
"I don't plan to appoint senators; that's not my intention."(Stephen Harper, Cornwall Standard-Freeholder, January 14, 2006)
"Stephen Harper will cease patronage appointments to the Senate. Only candidates elected by the people will be named to the Upper House."(Stephen Harper Leadership Website, January 15, 2004)
"I challenge Mr. Martin, once he becomes Prime Minister, to turn a page on the past, and appoint only elected Senators to the Upper House." (Stephen Harper, Canadian Alliance Press Release, July 4, 2003)
"Canadians from Newfoundland and Labrador to British Columbia remain ashamed of Canada`s senior legislative body. They are ashamed the Prime Minister continues the disgraceful, undemocratic appointment of undemocratic Liberals to the undemocratic Senate to pass all too often undemocratic legislation."(Stephen Harper, Hansard, March 7, 1996)
When he anoints his very own Hallelujah Chorus to represent Canadians in the Senate in the coming days, Prime Minister Stephen Harper will have delivered his most compelling argument for electing senators.
Sources say up to nine vacant Senate seats will soon be filled, bolstering the Conservative standing to 46 seats in the 105-seat chamber.
Among the rumoured appointees are fawning Conservative party president Don Plett, bare-knuckled campaign manager Doug Finley and obedient former staffer Carolyn Stewart-Olsen.
An ideological politician who was disgusted at watching Parliament's upper house turned into a vote-stacking exercise, where only the faintest of serious or sober second thoughts actually take place, Harper has turned ruthlessly partisan in making his Senate appointments, elevating party loyalty into the sole consideration for the cushiest job on the Hill.
The argument for such warped behaviour was first advanced after Harper rushed 18 bums into Senate seats when the Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition was threatening to take down his government. Better to load up the red chamber with loyalists before the Liberals handed out those juicy plums, he argued. (Don got this wrong. The Bloc were not part of this coalition. They only agreed to support it on confidence motions for 18 months)
But is it absolutely necessary for Harper to fill these $132,000 positions, with retirement deferred to age 75, with fanatical loyalists?
These insiders may not be known outside the parliamentary precinct, but that only makes their appointments more outrageous.
Their strongest, indeed ONLY, character traits for the job are blinkered vision and blinded loyalty. They will serve as little more than a vote administered by remote control from the PMO for as long as Harper owns the job.
There is a certain shenanigan symmetry to this, of course.
The Liberals appointed a former prime minister communications director named Jim Munson to the job. Stewart-Olsen comes from the communications wing of Harper's PMO.
The Liberals put their election wizard, David Smith, into the Senate. Finley has been the campaign guru for the Conservatives through all Harper-led elections.
But there's something sad about justifying the sliming up of the Senate with patronage trough-feeders on the grounds that Tories are no worse than the Liberals.
There's also the incongruity of giving faithful Conservatives a job representing provinces which rejected them in the polls.Fabian Manning grabbed a Senate gig representing The Rock just two months after he was defeated as an MP there in the last federal election. Rumours have former premier Rodney MacDonald, ousted from power in Nova Scotia only two months ago, landing a seat.
The Senate is becoming the land of the misfit politicians, but at least most of those types have solid people skills.
Not so much for gruff Doug Finley, who excels at campaign donor shakedowns and serving as guard dog in deciding who was worthy of receiving Conservative nominations(including his wife Diane Finley). Ditto for Stewart-Olsen, severed from the PMO a few months ago, whose enforcement of low-level directives and constant singing of Harper's praises are somehow seen as ideal senator material.
Of course, the ultimate objective can only warm the hearts of true blue Conservatives. This batch of appointments edges the Senate closer toward the glorious day when it will fall under Conservative control.
But Harper could've and should've done better--even though the inside view is that he did not get enough credit for delivering decent appointments under his watch.
True, the appointment of Bert Brown, who had been voted in twice in Alberta elections, was commendable.
Former broadcaster Pamela Wallin deserves credit for projecting a dignity of independence as a bona fide celebrity senator, even while standing with the government when the votes are called. And while I've been hard on former CTV icon Mike Duffy, at least he bonds with average Canadians even while shamelessly promoting the Conservative agenda.
But the names so far fall short of having any skills to represent their assigned provinces in a more effective Senate. They will only represent Stephen Harper. That's why we must find a better way of making quality Senate appointments --or elect to abolish it entirely.
A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada
"They haven't changed since they hanged Riel" Marjory LeBreton on Manitoba after the 1993 election results (1)
According to her bio, the 70-year-old Marjory LeBreton has worked for four leaders of the now defunct, Progressive Conservative Party of Canada - John Diefenbaker, Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney.
That's true, though she should mention that she never liked Joe Clark, and liked his wife even less (2), but I suppose that's water under the bridge.
She was appointed senator by Brian Mulroney in 1993, but before that she was responsible for many patronage appointments, especially to the senate. This job was formerly handled by Peter White, who went back to work for Conrad Black.
Marjory LeBreton took over the unofficial patronage portfolio after Peter White's departure:Leading up to the leadership, people used to say, in the party, "You know, Brian Mulroney would be a great leader, but boy, I am worried about his friends." You would hear that, and I used to say, "Don't be so silly, everybody has liabilities Joe Clark has got a fair sprinkling of them, I don't mind telling you.
LeBreton dealt with dozens of demands and requests, particularly when Senate seats became available. Seven prominent Tories explicitly asked for appointments: I had John Reynolds on the phone lobbying for a Senate seat for himself, and giving me this pitch that it should be someone that could go on the talk shows. I said, "Gee, John, I haven't noticed you being out there."
Gerry St. Germain wrote a letter to the prime minister talking about the sacrifices he's made. I actually felt sorry when I read it. It said something to the effect that he would want to serve in the Senate and then he ended the letter by saying, "If you decide to choose someone else, please know that you will have my absolute loyalty." Jim Doak, who was seventy-four, was actually going to sign a letter saying that he would only stay there for a year, just to be called a senator. Doak was originally the president of the party in Manitoba under Diefenbaker.
Duncan Jessiman was another of the old party bagmen stalwarts, but he had supported the prime minister financially when he ran for leadership. He was seventy years old, and he sent the Prime Minister a kind of "you owe me" letter, and you know the prime minister people have helped him out. He [didn't make him a senator but] put Dunc in the best appointment he could give at the time, which was on the board of Air Canada, and of course we privatized Air Canada and they didn't keep him on the board, but they gave him a lifetime pass.
We had Kate Schellenberg [later Kate Manvell] in BC. She was married to Ted Schellenberg, who was the MP from Nanaimo. She wrote a long letter to the prime minister just before Christmas. As the prime minister was reading it, he said, "There must be some reason she's writing." The last paragraph was, "I'd like to be named to that vacant Senate seat from BC." We made her a citizenship court judge. Pat Carney asked for the Senate seat too, but claims she didn't. (3)
LeBreton is now Leader of the Government in the Canadian Senate, an appointment given her by Stephen Harper as payment for help with his 2006 campaign. I wonder how many letters and requests she fielded for Harper's patronage senate appointments.
Corruption Knew no Bounds
Erik Nielsen*, shown to the right, was the first Deputy Prime Minister under Mulroney, who eventually quit because of the rampant corruption in the Party.
Not that he was immune to making patronage appointments, and in fact developed a system where all party faithfuls had a say:
The way Nielsen envisaged it, the first stream would fill the top jobs at Crown corporations such as Air Canada, Export Development Corporation, the Atomic Energy Control Board and the CBC, as well as slots in bodies like the Parole Board and the Immigration Appeal Board, which required members with genuine expertise.
The party faithful who had raised money and volunteers in campaigns across the country would constitute the second stream, a pool from which candidates would be drawn to fill positions in arts agencies, marketing boards, and citizenship courts. Nielsen expected Tories to be appointed to the major boards as well, but he believed the chairmanships and presidencies should be set aside for people who had more than political credentials. There was a distinction, he insisted, between what was pure patronage and what had to be a selection of highly qualified persons to run government enterprises. (4)
With 3,000 patronage appointments to fill, Nielson established provincial advisory committees, who would bring forward likely candidates for various jobs, and these recommendations then went to a national advisory committee. He had patronage down to a science, but it soon became clear that the final decisions were in the hands of only one person, who more often than not completely disregarded any suggestions by the provincial groups.
Loaded as they were with old Mulroney associates, the provincial committees were being ignored and their recommendation, bypassed within three months of their inauguration. The national committee? It was a joke, "a mere facade," snorts Nielsen ... So I stopped chairing. I just simply stopped going to the meetings. My presence there was totally ineffective and superfluous." The committee's executive committee faded away and the process was taken over by Marjory LeBreton. (4)
A Champagne Taste on a Beer Income
The Mulroneys led an extravagant lifestyle, mostly on what would appear to be tax dollars and influence pedaling:
"He always lived up to the hilt" said one of his oldest friends. Like Mila, Mulroney enjoyed living and working in luxurious surroundings decorated with fine furniture and good paintings ... And he too liked expensive clothes. In the mid-1980s he would buy several $2,000 suits at one time from Bijan in Manhattan, one of the most expensive stores in New York, and of course he has long indulged a weakness for Gucci loafers at about $500 a pair.
One individual who has known Mulroney well since his days at Iron Ore is Conrad Black. In his 1993 autobiography 'A Life in Progress', Black patronizingly described the Mulroney he knew in the 1970s. Even though Mulroney had become successful wrote Black with the confidence of someone to the manner born, "he still felt himself quite keenly to be the underprivileged lad from Baie-Comeau, son of the foreman in the Chicago Tribune's news print mill who identified more with the French than the English,and more with the lower economic echelons than than with the scions of wealthy Westmount . . . He had the attitude to money of someone who didn't have any himself but had seen other scatter lavishly - he appreciated it more in the spending than in the accumulation, the latter a process he tended to oversimplify. And politically he had the attitude to money of someone who came to maturity in last years of Duplessis when the tangible fruits of a long incumbency were being extravagantly dispersed. He had the heart of a working man but the tastes of the rich." (5)
What my mom would call having a champagne taste on a beer income.
Before leaving public office, Brian Mulroney had got himself into a financial mess and was indebted to the Progressive Conservative party to the tune of more than $ 200,000.00 Many of these expenditures had been approved by Marjory LeBreton.
And LeBreton has done very well for herself, without apparently no post-secondary education, but referred to as "one of the hard-ass operatives" (6), a left over of the Mulroney years.
Stephen Harper once made the claim: "This party will not take its position based on public opinion polls. We will not take a stand based on focus groups. We will not take a stand based on phone-in shows or householder surveys or any other vagaries of pubic opinion."
It's fun to go back a few years when blogging, to see how present day actions relate. Harper's hyper-partisanship is certainly nothing new and neither is the vindictive cruel side of his nature that made him such a hit with the National Citizens Coalition.
The Sponsorship Scandal helped to bring him to power, with promises of cleaning up government, that proved to be more of a PR gimmick than any actual attempt to clean up government.
But back in the day, when he was still riding his high horse, he decided to use taxpayers money to see if he could dig up more dirt on the Liberals, knowing that he couldn't ride Adscam forever.
Besides, when the path was leading straight back to Brian Mulroney, whose patronage appointments and maneuvering of Conservative friendly ad agencies, set the stage for the scandal, he thought it best to end there.
So instead he decided to see if he could find a story on the Grit's use of opinion polls, only to discover that his own government was spending more on opinion polls than any before it. Oops!
OTTAWA -- An independent investigator hired by the Harper government to look into past Liberal polling practices has wound up shining an unfavourable light on the Tories' penchant for polling. Daniel Paille notes that the Conservative government commissioned more than two polls per business day in the past year, a figure he calls "quite astounding.''
His report shows that the government spent $31.2 million on opinion research in the last year -- more than any previous year and almost twice the $18 million spent on average during the Liberal years ....
IS THIS REALLY CONSERVATIVE? IS STEPHEN HARPER REALLY THE BEST CHOICE FOR CANADA?
Further to the story of Winnipeg MP Rod Bruinooge and his relationship with lawyer and businessman Gary Thomas Brazzell; we see that Mr. Brazzell was involved with Brian Mulroney several years before doing business with Bruinooge and his family.
Apparently in 1985, Mulroney fired the board at Via Rail and appointed his own cronies; including one Gary Thomas Brazzell.
In fact he fired the boards of many crown corporations, making it easier to grant contracts to friends and supporters, when it was friends and supporters who would be involved in the process.
What's interesting about this is that it actually sets the stage for the Sponsorship scandal, referred to as Adscam, that helped bring Stephen Harper to power.
Harper was in Ottawa in 1985, as chief aide to Progressive Conservative MP Jim Hawkes, the man he would later screw over when the National Citizens Coalition spent $ 50,000.00 to politically destroy him.
I'm not suggesting here that he was part of Mulroney's corruption, but no doubt rubbed shoulders with many of the people involved; and Gary Brazzell was given a patronage appointment in Harper's government, through Maxime Bernier.
In the case of the following story, an ad agency, with little experience, Publicité Martin, was granted a lucrative contact to run a campaign for VIA Rail, much to the shock of VIA employees, since there were many better qualified agencies who had submitted tenders.
We can see how Mulroney cronies engaged in a little arm twisting to make that happen, and later this same ad agency and at least one other Mulroney appointee, Marc LeFrançois, would be named in Adsam several years later.
André Verret couldn’t believe his eyes. A friend told him that if he sat in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel’s Café de Paris at breakfast any weekday morning, he could watch hotel manager Fernand Roberge hold court at a corner table for a stream of interesting individuals.
“Out of pure curiosity,” said Verret, a senior public servant who had moved from Ottawa in 1984 to work in the public affairs office at VIA Rail, “I went to have a look. Every morning around 7 or 7:30 people would spend about fifteen minutes with Mr. Roberge, well-known people, lawyers and the like.” Sometimes a dozen people in all would meet with Roberge over coffee, each person or group of two or three taking no more than twenty minutes.
“It was really like his office,” said Verret, adding that Roberge’s visitors would leave the table “with beautiful; smiles on their faces.”
Like pilgrims searching for the Holy Grail, hungry contract seekers had a number of choices during the Mulroney years. As we’ve seen, some were comfortable cutting their deals with Roch LaSalle over a power breakfast at Nate’s in Ottawa. Many Atlantic Canada businessmen found their way up the back staircase above the New Glasgow pizza parlour to try to humour Big Daddy. A few of the more sophisticated would book a table at Le Mas des Oliviers in Montreal to lobby Guy Charbonneau. And some, as André Verret discovered, preferred the Ritz-Carlton Hotel’s Café de Paris.
Advising on federal advertising contracts in Quebec was among Roberge’s pleasant duties, according to half a dozen well-connected advertising executives based in Montreal and Toronto. At least one senior official in the federal government’s Advertising Management Group, the agency set up to handle the government’s advertising, routinely received calls from Roberge—who was at this time a private citizen with no official authority of any kind. (He was later made a senator by Mulroney)
During the Mulroney years, Montreal’s advertising and public relations community made the Ritz coffee shop something of a hangout in the mornings. Perhaps they were hoping for the chance of a word with Mulroney, who always stayed at the hotel when he was in town, or maybe they were just making sure they had regular contact with Roberge. “There was a real clique there,” said one of the advertising executives. One of the members was Marcel Côté, a partner in Sécor, who later worked in Mulroney’s office as his communication’s advisor.
One morning in March 1985 Verret was just finishing his breakfast when he saw an acquaintance, then a senior manager at a Montreal advertising firm called Publicité Martin, run by Montreal adman Yvon Martin, in an intense conversation with Roberge. A few minutes later the man rose to his feet, shook Roberge’s hand, and left, grinning broadly.
When he saw Verret, he came over. He spoke enthusiastically about landing the VIA Rail advertising account. Verret, who had been at VIA Rail since June 1984, was skeptical. “In that kind of contract there is always a call for a public tender,” explained Verret, and as far as he knew when the Martin official spoke to him, that process was still under way.
“Six or seven or eight firms were invited to tender, and we always tried in the past to be as fair as possible.” Back at VIA, several other people were just as incredulous as Verret. To begin with, although the company had been in business for fifteen years, Publicité Martin had not made the original list of potential agencies drawn up by VIA’s advertising department because the firm was not considered to be equipped to handle large national accounts, certainly not one as significant as VIA’s.
But Mulroney had just fired the old VIA Rail board and appointed a new one packed with cronies and party bagmen. It was a crew that was feeling its oats, and one of the recently arrived board members saw to it that Martin’s firm was added to the short list. The final forming bidding process began in March 1985, just before Verret encountered his friend at the Ritz. About nine firms were invited to present their pitches over a two-day period to a committee of three new VIA board members, Gary Brazell (sic) from Winnipeg, Paul Norris from Edmonton, and Marc LeFrançois from Quebec City, and five executives from VIA’s advertising and marketing departments, vice-president Michael Kieran, Jim Warrington, Christina Sirsley, Preston Beaumont, and Nicole Alyot.
By the end, three firms had been dropped from the roster, and two of the nine firms needn’t have bothered to show up. One was MacLaren Advertising, the firm that had enjoyed a near-monopoly on advertising under the Liberals; a second was McKim, which was known to have backed Joe Clark’s failed bid to hang onto the Tory leadership the year before.
“They were treated like shit by the board members,” said a witness to the proceedings. “It was very embarrassing.”After the first day of proceedings, the VIA board members and staff went off to dinner at Montreal’s Atlantic Pavilion, courtesy of VIA, and feasted on seafood, everyone trying to guess what was in the minds of their companions concerning the day’s events.
Some members continued the evening’s festivities at the Ritz-Carlton’s bar where they quaffed champagne, again at VIA’s expense, until the small hours of morning. Others retired to their hotel rooms to prepare for day two of the presentations. This would be the day on which Martin would make his presentation, and Paul Norris and Gary Brazell (sic) had already made it clear they were strong supporters of the firm.
When Martin’s firm formally made its pitch, it seemed to overwhelm the board members and underwhelm the VIA staffers. “At best it was mediocre,” said one staff person who was there. Another former VIA official agreed. “The pitch was not very good, it was not strong,” the official said.
“If they had been innovative and understood the problems of VIA they would have done a better job, but they did not do their homework and gave a presentation that was somewhat silly, that was not up to the task. They did not understand what trains are about in Canada, they did not do the research to understand it.”
The next day, a Saturday morning, the eight committee members met at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel for a final review. The board members stated their admiration for Martin’s presentation but agreed that the one done by Cosette Communication-Marketing Publicité had also been excellent. The VIA staffers were of a different view. Kieran vehemently opposed Martin and said so, while his colleagues mouthed perfunctory platitudes about Martin’s pitch and then stated their preferences for some of the other agencies that had competed.
After hearing their remarks, Paul Norris looked surprised. “I don’t think we were all at the same party,” he commented. Kieran did not give up without a fight. He was relentless and persisted against the obvious will of the board members. “It was extraordinary that the board would involve itself with such matters,” says Kieran today. “It was not illegal, mind you, but it was extraordinary.”
About two weeks later the official decision was made at VIA’s head office and the committee members were duly notified. There were two winners, Martin and Cossette. Cossette had been high on everyone’s list and it won 50 per cent of the total contract, or $4.5 million. Known to spend lavish sums on its creative talent, Cossette was to handle VIA’s national advertising—everything outside the Windsor-Quebec City corridor.
Now an industry giant, in 1985 Cossette was still a small regional advertising agency, explained one advertising executive, “but it was known to be extremely tight with Roberge.” (1) Martin, an outfit that was reputed to place a higher value on its accounting department, was given the corridor and $4.5 million to do the job. Yvon Martin was disappointed with the results; he had hoped to land the entire package. But he didn’t need to worry, especially after the firm went on to win other excellent contracts.
To celebrate his good fortune, Martin, who had started the company in his own home and was still the sole owner, bought himself a new $70,000 Jaguar.
Another former VIA employee, a senior manager who was familiar with the contracts, agreed with Verret’s version of events and remembers what happened after the first ad campaign ran. “We did reviews of his [Martin’s] firm: how successful they were with our campaigns. The presentation the agency made to us was the pits. They really ignored VIA. They took the contract for granted. They never assigned the right account executive to it and their ads were shitty.” The executive would complain to the VIA manager who deal with Martin and the manager agreed but could say only, “I can’t do anything. My hands are tied.” Martin still has the VIA Rail account, and he has it all: Cossette no longer has half.
Footnote 1Cossette was also supposed to get the Air Canada advertising contract, then split evenly between an English firm and a Quebec firm. “My marching orders are that it’s to go to Cossette,” said one senior Tory on the board of the PC Canada Fund to a friend. Only the intervention of Air Canada’s president, Claude Taylor, prevented the move. Cameron, pp. 316-320 ( Toronto: McFarlane Walter and Ross, 1994 WPL 971.064)
Rod Bruinooge is the Conservative MP for Winnipeg South. His bio claims that he is a businessman, an amateur film maker and computer games designer. All true.
He is also a Metis and the Harper government loves to hold him up as an example of how enlightened they are. Drawing in aboriginal candidates helps them to shed their old image of being harsh toward Canada's First Nations.
Unfortunately, Bruinooge is not an aboriginal member of Parliament, but a Member of Parliament who happens to be of aboriginal descent. In fact the Native community has never endorsed him.
During the 2004 election, Bruinooge and party leader Stephen Harper were the targets of a protest by aboriginal activists, including David Chartrand of the Manitoba Métis Federation.
In 2006, though Bruinooge was a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation, that organization endorsed his Liberal opponent, Reg Alcock. He beat Alcock by just 111 votes.
At the First Nations General Assembly in Nova Scotia in July 2007, Bruinooge described the Paul Martin government's Kelowna Accord on aboriginal investment as nothing more than an "expensive press release". This statement was strongly criticized by Assembly of First Nations leader Phil Fontaine. The deal had been hammered out over five years, and one of Harper's first acts as prime minister was to scrap it.
Fontaine argued that the accord "was designed to eradicate poverty in First Nations communities and make Canada a better place."
William Davison of the Indian Métis Christian Fellowship, who works with urban aboriginals in Regina, said he wasn't surprised that the Tories chopped the funds. But he said the billions promised in the Kelowna Accord would have gone a long way to helping improve the lives of aboriginals in Canada.
"I work with a lot of hopelessness and despair within the aboriginal urban community dealing with traditions and cultures and dealing with those trapped in the streets," Davison told CBC News.
Hardly a simple "press release".
Instead, as a member of Canada's Religious Right, Rod Bruinooge has focused most of his attention on re-criminalizing abortion, validating feminist Gloria Steinem's claim, that the neoconservatives believe that "life begins at conception but ends at birth".
Child poverty rates are on the rise in Canada. In November of 2009, Vipal Jain wrote in the Toronto Star:
One in nine Canadian children, more than a million, live below the poverty line according to the 2008 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada ... “For many families, it’s very difficult to get out of poverty. There isn’t enough money to feed the children, clothe them properly, or even enough money to pay for the bus fare or to look for a job,” says Grant Wilson, President of Canadian Children’s Rights Council. It’s even harder for new Canadian children and aboriginal families as they are at a greater risk of living in poverty. (1)
UNICEF confirms the plight of many First Nations children. From their 2009 annual report:
Aboriginal children are among the most marginalized children in Canadian society. Despite some advances, in almost any measure of health and well-being, Aboriginal children – including First Nations, Inuit and Métis -- are at least two or three times worse off than other Canadian children. As children, they are less likely to see a doctor. As teens, they are more likely to become pregnant. And in many communities, they are more likely to commit suicide.
This disparity is the greatest children's rights challenge facing our nation.
The Canadian Press reported that:
... infant mortality rate for native babies in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand is up to four times that of non-native newborns, says a groundbreaking new study ... Dr. Janet Smylie, a researcher who works through St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto, says the international replication of startling native health gaps among such diverse populations suggests social deprivation – not genetics – is to blame.(2)
The Native Women's Association of Canada, post that "our infants are challenged right from the start, and that our infant mortality rates are equal to developing countries such as Chile, Sri Lanka and Fiji, and higher than Latvia and Lithuania."
If Rod Bruinooge was really pro-life and an "aboriginal" MP, he would be doing something for these children, instead of exploiting his heritage for political gain.
Fortunately, the honour remained, and Morgantaler was rewarded for his work in offering safe abortions.
Most of the Conservatives didn't see it that way, but Rod Bruinooge went above and beyond. He was behind a poll that appeared on Lifesitenews, suggesting that "56% of Canadians Oppose Morgentaler Order of Canada".
The poll was commissioned by Lifesitenews, and conducted by KLRVU polling. But what they don't mention, is the fact that KLRVU polling is run by Allan and Katherine Bruinooge. Rod's brother and his wife.
Prophet or Profit?
Canadian dominionist, Faytene Kryskow, has called Rod Bruinooge, a 'Prophet for the Lord', because of his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. Her organization, 4MY Canada, threw their support behind his election campaign, and continue to endorse his political career. (3)
But just how righteous a man is he?
In an alleged shady deal with a former Brian Mulroney crony, Gary Thomas Brazzell, Bruinooge showed that he could play the game.
It began with a patronage appointment in 2007. According to WaverleyWest:
There was a recent Tory appointment that the WFP [Winnipeg Free Press] missed, as they always seem to miss it. That man is the one Manitoban who got plum appointments from both Prime Ministers Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper. That man is Ladco Board Member and former Rod Bruinooge lawyer Gary Brazzell. (4)
Ladco is one of the primary owners of Waverley West development (35%). Bruinooge lobbied hard for the Waverley underpass, which would be beneficial to Waverley West.
Less than two years after the Kenaston underpass finally ended traffic mayhem on one major south Winnipeg artery, the area's MP says it's time to do the same thing on Waverley ... (Waverley West is a project of ladco) And Winnipeg South MP Rod Bruinooge says his government is prepared to pony up its share of the cash." (Senior Manitoba minister Vic Toews has signalled to me that should the province come on board, the federal government will be there," Bruinooge said.
"My interest now is in convincing the premier they should also come to the table." Bruinooge said the additional 30,000 homes in the Waverley West subdivision makes the underpass at Waverley a desperate need."A lot of people don't use Waverley because they can't count on it," Bruinooge said. "It's been a constant burden." (5)
But was Bruinooge really concerned with congestion, or something else?
Seems that the MP owed Brazzell a favour. A Waverley West watchdog group provides a bit of background:
December 2, 1998 Lawyer Gary Thomas Brazzell is made a director of Abject Modernity Internet Creations. Its president is Rodney Bruinooge (now the MP for Winnipeg South.)
December 23, 1998 Brazzell buys 25,000 shares of Abject stock.
December 23, 1998 Brazzell provides share certificates to Bruinooges’s step-brother’s co-worker.
February 1999 Brazzell provides share certificates to an uncle of Chantale Marion (Bruinooge’s wife). They had been backdated to December 23, 1998.
Brazzel had actually once been removed from the Ladco board for questionable business practices.
C1. BRAZZELL acknowledges and agrees that he acted contrary to the public interest in that he: (a) traded in securities without having been registered and without prospectus in contravention of sections 6 and 37 of the Act; (b) facilitated or permitted the purchase of shares by a number of investors under the sole name of one investor, so as to minimize the number of apparent investors in an effort to purportedly rely upon the private company exemption under section 19(2)(i) of the Act; (c) failed to ascertain whether the company in question was in fact a private company as defined in the Act, thereby causing shares to be traded in reliance upon such exemption, when the exemption was not so available; (d) facilitated or permitted the purchase and sale of securities in ABJECT in the name of one investor, when he knew or ought to have known that the shares were intended to be purchased by a number of other investors in addition to the investor so named. Brazzell will pay the Manitoba Securities Commission $3,000 plus costs for his actions.
Is Rod Bruinooge really a "prophet for the Lord"?
I'd say he's just another self serving Conservative politician.
Sources:
1. Rich Nation, Poor Children, by Vipal Jain, The Toronto Star, November 20th, 2009
After saying that he would never appoint a senator, Stephen Harper appointed 18 of them in December, so terrified that if the Coalition took power, they would give Elizabeth May one of the seats. She had wiped the floor with him during the debates, and vindictive thing that he is, couldn't allow that to happen.
One of the men he appointed was a longtime Alliance/Reform/Conservative fundraiser, and friend of Harper's aide Dimitri Soudas, Leo Housakos.
Housakos had run for the Alliance Party under Stockwell Day in the 2000 election, and while the Party was gaining momentum, was thought to have a pretty good chance. While the Reform Party was always opposed to multiculturalism (and still are), the Alliance tried to exploit it (and still do)
Montreal Gazette 15 November 2000
Alliance strategists are basically hoping to attract three groups in the Quebec electorate: former Conservatives, soft nationalists from the Bloc Quebecois and voters from cultural communities. They think the seats in ethnically diverse Montreal neighbourhoods will make or break their march to power if the outcome is close. Giulio Maturi, a former chief organizer of Hugh Segal's Conservative leadership campaign in Montreal and now an Alliance organizer, said that as the election campaign picks up steam, so will the efforts of his party to target the cultural communities.
"Right now, we are approaching people from the cultural communities on an individual basis," Maturi said. "But as we get better organized, there will be a concerted effort to take our message to cultural communities of Montreal as a whole."
Leo Housakos is running against Liberal incumbent Raymonde Folco in the riding of Laval West, where 20 per cent of the voters are Greek.
However, the expected steam cooled off as scandal after scandal dampened Stockwell Day's chances. From buying his seat to allegations of kick backs; his dreams of becoming Canada's Prime Minister in 2000, fizzled.
At one point during the election campaign, when he thought that Jean Chretien would only win a minority, Day made a secret deal with the Bloc, to form a coalition to oust the Liberal chief.
But alas, that dream also died when the Liberals won a majority, and the Alliance only picked up an additional six seats, despite the fact that they had joined forces with the Reform Party who already had sixty. (Note: the Conservatives, Reformers and Alliance are all now under one blanket, the Conservative Party of Canada. Stephen Harper was with the Reform and Alliance wing)
As to the riding of Laval West, Liberal Raymonde Folco had 31,758 votes to Leo Houskos' 4,631.
In a media blitz he announced an accountability act, that would ensure something like that would never happen again.
But after milking that scandal dry, and the Gomery report revealing that it was perpetrated by bureaucrats, and no elected official was involved; he moved on.
Besides the act was supposed to catch Liberals, not anyone in his own party, which is a shame because those are the guys who have taken corruption and scandal to new levels. Who knew? (besides me)
But instead of addressing these things when they surface, Harper's MO is to sweep them under the rug, and when the rug can no longer be walked on, he uses his executive powers to ignore subpoenas and sue our public service. A page out of Brian Mulroney's book.
On the first anniversary of the act that never was, the Toronto Star ran this article:
Tories' cronyism rampant, critics say Two important provisions of the much vaunted accountability act haven't been implemented January 01, 2008 Richard Brennan OTTAWA BUREAU
OTTAWA–When the Conservatives were elected, they promised to do business differently. No more cronyism, no more backroom deals with party hacks. They were going to clean up Ottawa.
However, critics say Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has appointed hundreds of people with Conservative ties – the kind of cronyism the Conservatives and their predecessors used to howl about.
When the federal government was patting itself on the back last month on the anniversary of the passage of the Federal Accountability Act, it failed to mention that two key components – the appointments commission and the lobbying provisions – have not been implemented.
"The lack of a public appointments commission seriously undermines any credibility that Mr. Harper is serious about cleaning up how business is done in Ottawa," said New Democrat MPP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay).
Opposition parties insist Canadians were duped into giving the Conservatives a minority government in the January 2006 election. Government accountability was a big factor in the contest that banished the Liberals to official Opposition.
"After a full year, enough is enough. We're not going to let the Conservatives deceive Canadians any longer," New Democrat MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre) said.
The Accountability act, drafted by the Tories in response to the Liberal sponsorship scandal, passed the Commons and Senate and received royal assent in December 2006, but a separate cabinet order is required for many provisions to come into force.
There is nothing forcing cabinet to establish the appointments commission.
Treasury Board President Vic Toews told the House of Commons these two components of the Accountability Act are very complicated and require time to draft. A government official said it could be another six months before the new lobbying rules come in and, as for a public appointments commission, that may never happen.
Angus said if there was a public appointments commission the government wouldn't be in a mess with Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.
The Conservatives' hand-picked chair, Michael Burns, resigned from the Crown corporation after Parliament was forced to intervene when the shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ont., caused a critical shortage of medical isotopes nationwide. Burns, a Tory fundraiser, was appointed to the top job at AECL by Harper's government in October 2006.
"One of the key elements to (having) the public appointments commission is to make sure that there is a process in place to carefully vet the public appointment and ensure that the government isn't just parachuting cronies into key posts," Angus said.
Since taking office, the Conservative have made 1,132 appointments – 410 in 2006 and 722 posted so far this year – and critics have said many of them are patronage appointments.
Another anniversary has passed and still no appointments commission or lobbying rule are in place, though we've been paying the staff for two years, running up more than one million dollars, mostly to pay salaries for people who techniclly have no jobs.
Three years later, there is no new commissioner nominated and the Public Appointments Secretariat, created by an order in council on April 21, 2006, to "lay the groundwork for the eventual establishment of the commission," is still operating.
The secretariat has cost taxpayers more than $1-million over the last three years, including $633,000 spent in 2006-2007—most of which went to salaries and $82,000 in severance payment for layoffs. It has a yearly budget that's just more than $1-million, though for 2007-2008 (the last year that is posted) it lapsed most of it, using only $113,000.
There are two employees working at the secretariat: deputy executive director Christine Miles and administrative assistant Joanne Leblanc. Their salaries amount to most of the secretariat expenses, $88,000 in 2007-2008. A search through the orders in council website shows almost 3,000 public appointments were made since Feb. 6, 2006. Mr. Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) said the secretariat is "all smoke and mirrors" and "they should just fold up their tent" because the government is still making appointments in the same way previous governments did; "by the Rolodex of Conservative Party faithful, not by merit and certainly without any scrutiny or examination by an independent commission." Declared Mr. Martin: "
Only people who pay a lot of attention to Ottawa know that no such appointment process exists, because it was featured and advertised and promoted and promised, a lot of people probably think there is such an appointments commission and when they look it up in the government registry, sure enough, there's the office, there's the budget, but there's no commission so it is completely disingenuous and in the interest of honesty and transparency they should just lock the door and re-appoint these people to something more useful. You are probably wasting some decent, administrative talent, if nothing else." And what does our buddy Vic Toews have to say now? Treasury Board President Vic Toews (Provencher, Man.) told Civil Circles he wasn't aware of the state of the appointment or commission. "The only thing I know is the commissioner was rejected by the House," said Mr. Toews. That was three years ago Vic. You can't ride that forever.
