A little help for his friends

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Former Manitoba Tory leader Stu Murray (inset) was named boss of the human rights museum by the Harper government.

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Stuart Murray

OTTAWA -- Patronage thy existence is golden.

Winnipeg Liberal MP Anita Neville last week produced a list showing in the last 13 months, the Conservatives filled 11 federal appointments in Manitoba with their own.

Three are former provincial Conservative cabinet ministers, one a former provincial Tory leader, one was the president of the federal Conservative party and the others all donated money to the party or to Conservative candidates in the last five years.

The appointments include Stu Murray, the head of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, three judges, a senator and board members on a number of federal agencies including the National Gallery and Canada Council for the Arts.

Of course patronage is nothing new. Looking at the Liberal appointments made during their tenure, the picture would be the same.

The sad factor here is simply that this government was elected on a promise to not only be different but actually create an appointments commissioner to try and stem the patronage tide.

Even sadder is that many if not all of these appointments likely went to people who were fully qualified and deserving but their ties to the Conservatives make all of the appointments suspicious.

Would Liza Maheu have been appointed to the board of the National Gallery of Canada if she hadn't donated $1,000 to Tory MP Shelly Glover's 2008 election campaign?

Certainly she has the credentials for it with years of experience in the Manitoba arts community, including her current job as executive director of La Maison des artistes visuels du Manitoba.

But the donation raises questions about the validity of the appointment that could have been avoided if all federal appointments had to be vetted by a commissioner.

Yes, the Conservatives tried to follow up on their promise but opposition parties rejected their appointment for the commissioner because it was in itself seen as a patronage appointment.

An irony if I ever heard one.

But the Conservatives need to try again. Addressing this issue would go a long way to helping give credibility back not only to politics, but to the qualified men and women who actually get the appointments.

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House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken last week made a ruling that could be the beginning of the end of the much-despised ten-percenters.

Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler complained about a Conservative flyer sent to his riding claiming the Liberals are anti-Semitic. The flyer didn't specifically accuse Cotler, who is Jewish, but Milliken said the link was clear and it negatively affected Cotler's reputation in "a very direct and personal way."

The Conservatives argued the flyer simply made use of conventional political arguments that every party, the Liberals included, are known to use.

That is of course, to use distortions, partial truths and select facts to paint a picture of your opponent that completely ignores any evidence to the contrary.

It is kind of like running an ad accusing a candidate of being responsible for a gun-related murder because the candidate voted against a gun-control bill.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot that can be done to stop this nonsense.

Negative advertising will continue because it works.

But maybe, just maybe, Milliken's ruling will be the first step in the House of Commons at the very least putting a stop to political parties being able to make taxpayers pay for these falsehoods and innuendos.

Several MPs have complained about the ten-percenters for years. They cost taxpayers $10 million last year alone. If the emails I get are any indication, voters are disgusted by them.

Maybe Milliken's ruling means he will finally actually look at putting a stop to them.

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I remember ranting a few years back when the federal budget surplus once again came in far higher than the initial projections.

Year after year, the budget would say the surplus would be one amount but months later it would come in far higher. In 2005, for example, in the winter the surplus was projected to be $1.9 billion but by the end of the year it exceeded $9 billion.

Opposition parties were steamed.

Oh to be able to complain about the surplus being too big.

Last week, the Department of Finance released scheduled fiscal updates that showed the deficit grew another $5 billion in September, bringing the total deficit for the first six months of this year to $28.6 billion.

That, many media outlets pointed out, means Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is on track to meet the $56.2-billion deficit for the year he has predicted. While that is $5 billion more than he predicted in the budget, I suppose there might be some comfort in knowing at this point, Flaherty is marginally better at predicting a deficit than a trio of Liberal finance ministers were at predicting a surplus.

However, $56.2 billion in red ink makes one gulp.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 30, 2009 A7