No, not John Kerry. Our esteemed federal Revenue Minister John McCallum.
Liberals bent rules to appoint mail CEO
The new Martin government broke its own rules designed to clean up the hiring process for Crown Corporations this week by giving Revenue Minister John McCallum the green light to hire a former colleague as Canada Post's new chairman.Mr. McCallum quietly announced late Thursday afternoon that Gordon Feeney had been named chairman of the Crown agency. Mr. Feeney is a retired deputy chairman of Royal Bank of Canada and worked with Mr. McCallum when the minister was vice- president and chief economist at the bank.
Last March Treasury Board President Reg Alcock introduced new guidelines to apply to the hiring of senior officials for crown corporations. This was supposed to assure us that the Liberals had learned something from the sponsorship scandal and would be more accountable and transparent and all that other good, democratic stuff.
But, in the appointment of Mr. Feeney, at least two of Mr. Alcock's four steps were ignored. No outside recruitment firm was hired and the job was not advertised, as the new process demanded. Nor was the selection of Mr. Feeney submitted to a parliamentary committee.A nominating committee was struck to find names of appropriate candidates, which Canada Post's board of directors approved and submitted to the Revenue Minister, who is responsible for the agency.
"I selected one of those names. I informed the opposition critics prior to any decision. It was submitted to cabinet. Cabinet passed it," Mr. McCallum said. Going to a recruitment firm would have cost taxpayers more money and delayed the process, he added. "Given the urgency of the task, I didn't see the need to spend additional money and additional time."
One is left to wonder where the urgency was when, as it states elsewhere in the article, the person Feeney replaces will remain on the board of directors. So it's not like the mail wouldn't be delivered because they'd lost the benefit of her expertise.
But the really good bit of spin was earlier in the article when McCallum tried to claim that the process used was "in the spirit of the guidelines." I don't think so, John.
The point of going to an outside recruitment firm and advertising the position is to allow for applications from people outside the immediate knowledge of the key players in the government and the corporation in question. It allows for the entry of new blood. It might also help prevent both the appearance and the fact of partisanship in the crown managements, something which certainly sounds like a blessing given recent events. So hiring someone you know without even considering candidates who might have surfaced during a proper search is hardly "in the spirit" of the new process.
For all I know Gordon Feeney may be a perfect fit for the job. But methinks McCallum is full of something here and it isn't the milk of human kindness. He's also pretty tone deaf. He just doesn't seem to understand what rubs us all the wrong way about the sponsorship scandal. It's called cronyism and the stink of it is just as bad now as it was before the last election.
Parliament resumes on Monday. Aren't we off to a good start?
Mighty strange way that the Paul Martin Liberals have of cleaning up the democratic deficeit.....
Democratic deficeit? Is that a new coinage?
WHY would they DO this? Totally stupid, and McCallum's press conference was just totally bizarre. Martin seemed to be trying not to be tarred with the "Old bums exit here, new bums enter there" brush, but this was not good news.