Mr. Speaker, the hon. member raises a good point. I do not think that the exact method is necessarily the important thing. It is some form of review prior to, as opposed to after, appointments have been made, some form of questioning, that would be profitable. Committees are certainly a good place to start.
There is always a problem with these things when the votes take place openly because then we get, effectively, some kind of party discipline or pressure being applied to the decisions that are made and to the questions that come up. However, I am afraid this is probably all that is available to us and it is a good starting point.
I have struggled with the question of how we deal with patronage appointments, ensuring that they are in fact based on merit. Absent the presence of a philosopher king who always chooses exclusively on merit and who is virtually omniscient in being able to choose the best people, we need to have some form of delegation. I would think that the nominations going forward to whoever is doing the review ought to as well be coming from a bit broader source than merely the Prime Minister's Office.
I say this with some reservation, because there may be problems with this, but I think that perhaps we should consider the possibility of excluding certain classes of people from patronage appointments, such as people who are defeated candidates for a party in the prior election until a period of time has passed, or people who have perhaps donated more than a certain amount of money to a governing party, or people who have served in some other capacity that would make them obvious candidates, unless they go through some sort of special further review to ensure that they really are being chosen on their merits and that their political allegiance is purely coincidental.