Canada’s Debate

You know, it’s funny. Yesterday as I sat watching a rerun of Rome I decided that I would thrown down a post on patronage… and lo’ and behold, the media has presented me with two stories on the subject just this morning. Rome of course is our source for the word, but the dialogue of a young Octavian struck me. When asked how he would “set the Republic to rights” after Caesar’s conquest he says, I should appoint a hundred men to the Senate. Men who I could be sure were my creatures, and not secret enemies… While this is obviously an anachronistic statement (being that it was written in the here and now), it does offer a colourful take on our own system, does it not?

While we’re not quite so bald-faced in our patronage as the Americans, it’s been the way things are run in Canada for quite a while. However, all of that was so supposed to change with the introduction of Harper’s Federal Accountability Act. Unfortunately, as the CBC is reporting, Harper has been filling positions (over 118 in December alone) without any committee oversight. What the CBC report does not provide is Harper’s reason why the committee responsible for handling these appointments isn’t doing its job…

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.

This sort of public shenanigan is right out of the conservative playbook mind you. It wouldn’t surprise me on bit to find out that Harper appointed an unacceptable candidate specifically to stall the committee process until he had restocked the public service with his people. What galls me is that he is essentially allowed to unfettered by his own supporters. Come on Blogging Tories! If Harper is as determined and ethical as you say he is, get on him to fill the committee and clean up the process!
All of this of course leads me to the Americans, who make our patronage system look transparent by comparison; and put the dangers of executive appointments in sharp relief. The FEMA deputy who was ‘along for the ride’ during the Katrina disaster has been appointed to the NASA administration. President Bush has turned failing upwards into an art-form and subsequently perfected it. Given how disastrously the various executive organizations have performed under his watch as “The Decider” of who runs what, it should give us all the incentive we need to see this style of appointments banished forever.