Wednesday, April 11, 2018

LIBERAL PORK-BARREL PATTERNS

   The federal government is spending $158,200 on headhunters to help it staff up Canada’s new foreign investment promotion agency, part of $1.1-million spent on executive searches last year that opposition MPs say raises questions about the effectiveness and cost of what the Liberals say is a merit-based process when it leads to appointees with Liberal connections.
    “We’re spending an awful lot of money, but the reforms that are needed are not apparent,” said NDP MP and ethics critic Charlie Angus, pointing to recent appointments to Invest in Canada as a prime example.
   Mr. Angus (Timmins-James Bay, Ont.) questioned the new investment promotion agency’s creation this year, when Canada “already has a number of government agencies that do international business development,” but was especially critical of spending on an executive search and the government’s pronouncement of an “open, transparent, and merit-based” selection process when, Mr. Angus said, “they’ve appointed two key Liberals to run it.”
    “It looks like this government is talking about a new way of doing politics, but it’s very much the old Liberal pork-barrel patterns that are becoming apparent,” said Mr. Angus, adding he doesn’t have a problem paying to find the “best and the brightest,” but there have been clear examples where an appointment has been “interfered with for partisan purposes” and made a patronage post.

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