Mr. Speaker, patronage appointments to the new port authorities are getting completely out of hand. We are not naive on this side of the House. We do expect a little bit of this stuff. However, there must surely be somebody out there, who is not a Liberal, who could chair one of the new port authorities. He does not have to be a well known Liberal operator like Mel Woodward or Merv Russell for example.
I have a news flash. Patrick Wong, former member of the Fraser River Harbour Commission and an executive of the B.C. Liberal Party, has been appointed to the Fraser River Port Authority Board and is now the chairman. In 1996 and 1997 he and his accounting firm donated $5,380 to the Liberal Party.
The creation of new port authorities was supposed to take politics out of the ports, but the slimy dance continues.