…But why aren’t the media targeting them and that horrendous Liberal Party patronage abyss? Why do they choose instead to target Mr. Harper’s belly, or how he is such a Big Fat Mister Meaniepants with the media?
The story in the Vancouver Sun greeted me this morning over my morning coffee and stayed with me all day long. I couldn’t shake it out of my head. So I decided to share the bad vibe with you. You’ll thank me later.
How is it that the media—over 13 years—never seemed to cotton onto the fact that the Liberals under Chretien/Martin appointed countless Liberals and liberals to every conceivable crease and crevasse in Canadian society over the past 13 years? Every bureaucracy, every institution, every government office and crown corporation and every ministry is stacked from top to bottom with liberals. Liberals own and run all of Canada, and work for the betterment of liberal-left values and goals, which is the re-election of more liberals to power.
Why did the media never question that? Why does it take a conservative blogger or a Conservative MP (Chuck Strahl) to raise the issue and ask the tough questions and demand answers? What is the media for?
Perhaps the media is there to grease the skids for the liberals.
Today we have to ask about Jean Chretien’s daughter being appointed to the board of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics board of directors. No, not Catriona LeMay Doan, no not Rick Hansen. I wondered about it aloud here and everywhere that anybody would listen, when it happened. Nobody answered, because I was and still am surrounded by liberals everywhere I look.
And Tony Tennessy, a former union leader who is also a friend of ex-Liberal MP and ex-cabinet minister Sheila Copps (also a Chretien loyalist); and Peter Dhillon, a friend of Chretien cabinet minister Herb Dhaliwal (who is also a loyal Chretien supporter). And who know who else.
Conservatives target 2010 appointees
Legitimacy of three prominent Liberal appointees on the board of the 2010 Winter Olympics questioned
Peter O’Neil, with a file from Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, April 12, 2006OTTAWA—The new Federal Accountability Act includes a measure that could trigger the replacement of three of former prime minister Jean Chretien’s most controversial patronage appointees.
Shortly before stepping aside for his bitter rival Paul Martin in 2003, Chretien named his daughter and two friends of cabinet loyalists Herb Dhaliwal and Sheila Copps to the board of directors of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
France Chretien Desmarais, Copps political ally Tony Tennessy, a former union president, and Dhaliwal chum Peter Dhillon, a B.C. businessman, are scheduled to serve until their three-year terms end in November.
The good bit is that under the Harper Conservative Accountability Act just introduced, they will have to answer for their appointments.
Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl, Harper’s senior B.C. minister in the new Tory cabinet, said the three Liberals will have to pass the requirements of the new Accountability Act’s provisions that are intended to ensure merit trumps political connections.
[…] He said the hundreds of Liberal appointees across Canada who were chosen only because of political connections will, when their terms expire, “be replaced with people hired on merit.”
He later said he wouldn’t preclude the ability of Tennessy, Dhillon and Chretien Desmarais to make a convincing case that they should remain when their terms expire.
But he said they would have to make a compelling case to the chairman of the new Public Appointments Commission, proposed in Harper’s Accountability Act, which will advise Harper on appointments to agencies, boards, commissions and Crown corporations.
“What any appointee is going to have to show is their meritorious qualities, and being related to someone in the government or a former prime minister doesn’t put you at the top of the list,” Strahl said.
“You will have to have the qualities and prove to the committee, and to the ministers who have to sign off on it, that you have the royal jelly, and by that I don’t mean ‘who you know in the PMO.’”
He said the three shouldn’t be able to argue that they deserve the job because they’re more experienced than other candidates.
“Nobody would be disqualified from the job, but boy, they sure don’t get preferential treatment either because they’ve been there for a while or because they’re related to some famous person,” said Strahl, who will advise Harper on the appointments after consulting with Trade Minister David Emerson, minister responsible for the 2010 Games.
That’s a beautiful thing.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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