Sometimes our friend Pierre Poilievre sits in on this committee. He was interviewed in the Toronto Sun on March 28, 2007, and he explained the role that this secretariat, under the Prime Minister's Office, would assume.
Under the headline “Only Tories Need Apply: Looking for a government job? New commission says lean to your right”, the article said:
Conservatives have no plan to cleanse partisanship from the government appointments and will the use the promised Public Appointments Commission to ensure that their qualified friends get jobs, says an Ottawa Conservative MP.
MP Pierre Poilievre, parliamentary secretary to the Treasury Board president Vic Toews, apparently said that the government wouldn't be appointing people who don't agree with its agenda—this in reference to a secretariat directed by the PM and not accountable to Parliament.
Given that we've had a thousand appointments, many of them openly partisan, what accountability is there to the taxpayer? Should the taxpayer continue to put $1 million into this fund that one of the sometime members of this committee says is there to ensure that Conservatives only need apply?