Mr. Speaker, to my friend from Kitchener on his first point, I tried to get the figure, but I did not get it in time. There are many hundreds of vacancies on government boards now because we wanted to do the review before we began appointing people to agencies that we either no longer need in
terms of the government's policy thrust, or did not need in such numbers.
For example, the ACOA board is going to be reduced from 18 members to 7. There were vacancies on that board, but it would have been foolhardy for the minister responsible, my friend from Cape Breton-East Richmond, to rush in and appoint those people, knowing full well it was the government's intention to reduce the size of the board.
As far as the second part of his question is concerned I say to my friend from Kitchener that I think I alluded to that in my speech when I said that both Liberal and Conservative governments over the past have been guilty of what I described-what I defined first but then described in the context-as corrupt patronage, where you appoint people of a particular party label for that reason alone, not because of their competence to do the job.
A party label ought not to be the reason for the appointment, but it should not exclude one from receiving such an appointment. That was my point. A fair amount of it has gone on in the past. What is more to the point is that since the government took office I believe it has been fairly diligent. It has had 150 backbenchers keeping an eye on it, as well as the opposition. It has been fairly diligent on this matter. I do not honestly believe that one can make much of a case that there has been an orgy of patronage under this administration.