PM Patronage Appointment Rate 20% Compared To 50% InLiberal Era

Ya really gotta love Liberal MP Wayne "DOORKNOB" Easter. He thought it was a good idea to hold a news conference today slamming the Conservative government for the fact 20% of all patronage appointments were to Conservative supporters. It's just a godarn shame Easter never really gets his facts straight before embarrassing himself. Why? Well let's take a look.

1. Easter slams the PM for supposedly breaking a promise to lower patronage appointments: "The PEI Liberal stressed that Mr. Harper came to office by campaigning against Liberal largesse. “He said he would do certain things, he hasn’t done them". Well he is correct the PM made that promise. The problem is the PM has kept that promise. Under Liberal MP Jean Chretien, patronage appointments to Liberal supporters were in the area of 50%

"'The king of patronage'
Seven years after vowing to review the appointment process, the Chretien
patronage machine is humming along, beating even Brian Mulroney at
the political 'game of friends.'
Jack Aubry

One sunny July day this past summer, Prime Minister Jean Chretien joined his cabinet to hand out millions of dollars worth of federal jobs, with half going to supporters of the Liberal party.

That job finished, Mr. Chretien hopped into a helicopter for a whitewater raft ride on the Ottawa River.

Ten years ago, the Citizen examined a similar summer day's worth of appointments made by then-Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and his cabinet.

The high rate of Liberal patronage on July 27 surpassed Mr. Mulroney's one-in-three patronage ratio.

Mr. Chretien has said the upcoming election would be partly fought over protecting "Liberal values" -- the values espoused by the late Pierre Trudeau. But the Citizen review may remind Canadians of the darker side of Mr. Trudeau's legacy, including a particularly infamous spate of patronage appointments he made John Turner fulfil in 1984. That list helped hand the 1984 election to Mr. Mulroney.

Mr. Chretien defended the appointments during the 1984 election, arguing that by naming so many sitting MPs to the patronage posts, Mr. Trudeau had saved taxpayers money. Instead of drawing big pensions, Mr. Chretien rationalized, the appointees would only earn their new salaries.

Later as Opposition leader, Mr. Chretien and his Liberals were highly critical of Mr. Mulroney's appointments.

And in the 1993 Red Book of election promises, the Liberals vowed to restore integrity to government and review the appointment process to ensure jobs were filled on the basis of competence. Seven years later, the famed Grit patronage machine is humming along, apparently cranking out Liberals for one out of every two new appointments -- if July 27, 2000, is any indication.

On that day, about 40 of the 80 appointments made by the cabinet were filled by Liberals who either contributed money to the party, ran as party candidates in previous federal and provincial elections, or worked on Liberal election and leadership campaigns. The total annual salaries of the 80 jobs filled is more than $3.8 million.

The appointments included Chretien cronies, former Liberal MPs, some defeated candidates, and in one case, the daughter of a Newfoundland Liberal member of the provincial legislature.

There were a handful of noteworthy Liberal appointments including Robert Fung, the man who brought Mr. Chretien to a Bay Street brokerage house as a well-paid "special adviser" when Mr. Chretien left politics in the mid-1980s.

I dunno Wayne. That kinda damages your rant of the day. But maybe you need further proof. How about this? This actually kicks it up a notch to 60% with this round of appointments:

"Interviews with well-connected members of the legal community, including Liberals, a search of news data bases, and Elections Canada political contribution records, establish that in the past five years a majority of the 93 lawyers who were appointed to the Federal Court, the Ontario Superior Court, and the Courts of Queen's Bench of Alberta and Saskatchewan had associations with the governing Liberals.

More than 70 per cent of those appointed since 2000 to the Ontario Superior Court by Cotler and his predecessors, Anne McLellan and Martin Cauchon, donated money only to the Liberal Party of Canada. Forty of 56 lawyers gave just to the Liberals...

...The situation was similar in Alberta. Seven of the 13 lawyers (54 per cent) appointed to the federal bench in 2000 or later donated solely to the Liberals. None of the lawyers appointed donated solely to the Conservatives...

...High-profile Liberals appointed to the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench included John J. Gill, co-chair of election readiness in Alberta for the Liberals in 2004; Vital Ouellette, who ran unsuccessfully for the provincial Liberals in Lac La Biche-St. Paul in 1997 and 2001; federal Liberal candidate Bryan Mahoney, who lost twice to Conservative Myron Thompson in the riding of Wild Rose; and Liberal fundraiser Marsha Colleen Erb, Calgary co-chair in 1999 of the exclusive Laurier Club, where membership is based on donations of $1,000 or more to the Liberal party. Erb was appointed by her friend, then-justice minister Anne McLellan...

...11 of the 17 judges appointed to the trial level of the Ottawa based Federal Court were found to have ties to the Liberals.




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