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Trudeau vows to change system of political appointments: PMO

Trudeau vows to change system of political appointments: PMO

The government hasn’t yet decided whether it will rescind dozens of political appointments Stephen Harper made in advance of the federal election that some argue should now be cancelled.

“We are currently assessing the situation,” a spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office told Yahoo Canada News on Tuesday.

“It is regrettable that, particularly over the last decade, government appointments have become synonymous with cynical backroom politics. This is not a reflection of individual appointees, but rather of the opaque nature of the process surrounding their selection,” Olivier Duchesneau said in an emailed statement.

Duchesneau said one thing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau does plan to do is change the system.

“We’ve committed to restoring Canadians’ faith in their government — in part by adopting a new government-wide appointment process that is open and based on merit,” he said.

At least one former Conservative MP thinks Trudeau should, indeed, cancel them.

Inky Mark wrote Monday on Twitter, “Harper made 49 future patronage appointments before ousted, unprecedented, should be reversed.”

Mark clashed with Harper and with the party often during his tenure representing the Manitoba riding of Dauphin-Swan River between 1997 and 2010.

“I would suggest the government give notice to all those receiving extensions prior to October 19th (whose contracts are in effect) will not be honoured by the new government,” he told Yahoo Canada News. “The court of public opinion would support such a move. This action should be made public, with names and positions and remuneration.”

The former prime minister granted many of the contract extensions long before they were due to expire – some of them at government agencies and Crown corporations that were mired in controversy during his tenure.

For instance, National Energy Board (NEB) vice-chair Lyne Mercier’s contract was scheduled to be up in December, but Harper renewed the appointment back in June for seven years, which keeps Mercier in place until 2022.

Three other members of the board had their contracts renewed much earlier this year though they weren’t set to expire until around this time.

The NEB’s role as regulator of the oil, gas and electricity industries has put it at the centre of heated partisan debate over pipeline projects such as Keystone XL, Northern Gateway, Trans Mountain and Energy East.

Trudeau has criticized how the agency was run under the Conservative government and said in August he will restore “a level of independence and intellectual rigor” to its processes.

Heads of agencies, CEOs of Crown corporations and members of quasi-judicial tribunals are appointed through an Order in Council (OIC), proposed by the minister in charge of the organization.

So former Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander recommended the renewal of five members of the Immigration and Refugee Board – another area in which Harper government policies stirred strong opposition.

On Monday, those five contract extensions went into effect, all of them the result of OICs that were made and accepted in May or June.

Another OIC proposed by Alexander in May, to extend the contract of a citizenship judge, went into effect last month.

Yahoo Canada News has reached out to the current Minister of Natural Resources and the current Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship for comment on the contract renewals that come under their purview.

A number of other renewals don’t kick in until 2016, like the contracts of the directors of the Canadian Museum of Nature and the Canadian Museum of History. The contract renewal of the chair of the Transportation Appeal Tribunal won’t go into force until 2019.

It’s par for the course for a government to make appointments that match its ideology, but the timing of these appointments raises questions, says one expert.

“I think the thing that’s worrisome is appointments that don’t kick in till 2016,” Queens University political studies Prof. Jonathan Rose said Monday. “Clearly he knew he was facing an election and there was not an immediate need to fill those positions.”

There may have been some vacancies in need of staff, but “the rest smack of old-fashioned patronage,” Rose says.