Well this proves that Harper is all "hot air" about cleaning up government.
The Conservatives are coming under fire from the opposition for making a host of patronage appointments instead of waiting for a more transparent system to be set up.
"You can't keep dining out on the fact that you've cleaned government and then never implement the actual changes that would effect cleaning up government," New Democrat MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre) told the Toronto Star yesterday.
"At the very least ... there should be a moratorium on appointments of any kind until (the appointments commission) can be created. This kind of patronage appointment, next only to out-and-out theft and corruption, just drives Canadians crazy."
The provision for a public appointments commission is contained in the Federal Accountability Act, which passed late last year. Last April, Prime Minister Stephen Harper nominated former EnCana president Gwyn Morgan to head the commission, but Liberals, New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois refused to confirm him to the appointment, pointing to controversial public statements he'd made on immigration and crime.
After the rejection, Harper said the idea of an appointments commission was essentially dead. However, the commission exists under the accountability act and opposition MPs want to know why appointments are being made when positions on the commission itself – which is designed to make the appointments system more transparent – haven't been filled.
Government officials say it's unfair to expect the commission would be running so soon after the accountability act was passed. The Tories have made 118 appointments in the past several months, and critics say many are clearly patronage appointments. The Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin were often criticized for doing the same.
Liberal MP Mark Holland (Ajax-Pickering) said the point is the Tories have painted themselves as "holier than any government that has ever come before them and are beyond reproach. It's the hypocrisy of it all ... because they have gone and made patronage appointment after patronage appointment, which is completely opposite of the image they are trying to portray."
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