Lacking accountability

The Ottawa Citizen reports that rather than setting up a non-partisan public-appointments commission as promised under the Accountability Act, the Cons have instead handed the commission's role over to a secretariat which doesn't allow for input from any other party:

The commission was supposed to be a patronage watchdog that would vet appointments to federal agencies, commissions and Crown corporations. It was also expected to report on how the government makes such appointments.

The act became law in December, but the Harper government has yet to establish the public-appointments commission, despite calls to follow through on its accountability agenda.

However, the government has created a similar-sounding "public-appointments commission secretariat." In January, the secretariat completed a report recommending changes to the way the Immigration and Refugee Board selects members.

New Democrat MP Paul Dewar accused Harper of undermining his own promise to improve accountability.

"The irony is that we're supposed to have a transparent public-appointments process, and what we have is a quietly set-up process that no light is being shed on, that is behind the scenes, and that is being done without any oversight at all."...

(I)t appears the secretariat will be pushing ahead with work the appointments commission was expected to do.

The government's latest fiscal estimates allocates an operating budget of $1.1 million to the secretariat for "oversight" of government appointments in the current fiscal year.

The article notes several other interesting threads surrounding the secretariat, including a series of expenditures last year before it was formally created, and its role in drafting the new, re-politicized Immigration and Refugee Board process.

But the central problem is that not only has the nonpartisan public-appointments commission not been created, but its role is now being usurped by a body entirely controlled by the Cons - effectively leaving PMS alone in charge of evaluating whether he's happy with his government's own degree of patronage. And if (as seems all too likely) the Cons have bought into the Libs' old theory that the government's word is accountability enough, we can only hope they meet the same fate for holding that wrong-headed position.