Mr. Bélanger had asked for a list of the vacant positions within the Canadian heritage portfolio and organizations. I have it here. There's a continuation of one line on the back for the French.
Taking a look at this, I was very interested: for example, for the Canada Council for the Arts, one director, one member; for the Canada Science and Technology Museum, the president is missing; for the CBC, one member is missing; and so on and so forth. So there are obviously some vacancies here.
The Conservative government is starting into a process for these kinds of appointments that we are attempting to expedite as quickly as possible. It was deeply regrettable that today a decision was made by the board responsible for the person who was going to be responsible for actually establishing how that process was to be undertaken. It was deeply regrettable that it didn't happen.
I believe there are two or three other appointments that have already been made in the process, and now we're going to have to circle back and find someone else to do it. The point is that where the practices of previous governments--of various political stripes, to be non-partisan--had, I'm sure, their own internal processes, it wasn't always clear how the vacant positions were going to be filled.
Because we're really totally focused on the entire issue of accountability, and we think the Canadian people are, we are now in the process, as expeditiously as possible, of establishing a process whereby people who are qualified--for the sake of their own qualifications, and not necessarily for the sake of the political party card that they have in their pocket.... We are totally focused on that, and we are going to make it happen as quickly as possible.
As I say, I just find it regrettable that things didn't work out. The person the Prime Minister had nominated for the position is probably the most qualified--not one of the most, but the most qualified--person to get the process started.
So there is going to be a bit of a delay.