One last trip to the trough (en francais)

No great surprise here. It's common knowledge that this generally occurs at both the federal and provincial levels across Canada, some worse than others. Thankfully public knowledge of this is expanding which will help drive its reform.

I noticed a bunch of announcements when the $1 billion in funding was authorized by an Order in Council during the election. At the time, I cruised through the rest of the orders for October and November. I remember making a note to come back and look into them a little deeper, but then election events overtook me.

I agree with most of Greg Weston's article, with the exception of creating a new impartial staffing agency to handle these appointment. The last thing we need to be doing is creating new government agency.

Canadians already have a staffing system in place, Employment Insurance. Their job listing system is more than suitable for these appointment. List the appointment available and requirements. Intial vetting to ensure all requirements are met would be done at the point the application is submitted. Names would be removed from the applications, to be replaced by reference numbers. The only time names would be revealed would be interviews for a final selection process. Use the system we already have and add some personnel where required. There's no need to re-invent the wheel here.

Departing Liberals kiss their Grits

Poking through some recent cabinet records, we discover that Paul Martin's government spent its final days in power doing what Liberals have always done best -- namely, sending Grit faithful to hog heaven by the truckload.

By our count, Martin and his gang doled out a breathtaking 212 patronage appointments -- and that's just in the two weeks before the election was called last November.

Some were relatively minor plums, but most were not.

In the category of nice work if you can get it, the list of lucky Liberal appointees includes: Civilian and military judges up to the highest echelons; a dozen ambassadors; directors of huge Crown corporations; trustees of national museums; executives of important federal agencies; immigration adjudicators; even promotions in the most senior ranks of the RCMP.

At that rate -- and if voters had not kicked Martin's butt out of office before he could do more damage -- Mr. Dithers might well have matched Pierre Trudeau's record patronage spree of almost 2,000 Liberal appointments in the year before his retirement in 1984.

... more

H/T Dust My Broom