Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board for attending tonight to listen to a follow up on a question that I put to the President of the Treasury Board on the rules that were posted last spring on the appointments for board members, board chairs and CEOs of Canada's crown corporations.
The criteria of March 2004, while not perfect, was what the Canadian public was asking for. I want to read from a recently released “Review of the Governance Framework for Canada's Crown Corporations”:
Good governance requires transparency and accountability.
What Canadians are Saying About Accountability
Canadians are seeking the same assurances from all levels of government: that governments willspend taxpayers' money as though it were their own; provide better and more accessible information on how public funds are being used and what outcomes result from public expenditures; keep the promises that they make;
With that asked for, I can only assume that when the following was posted on the website of the Treasury Board, Canadians looking for accountability cheered and said that after years of cronyism in crown corporations, the rules would now prevent the rewarding of buddies and pals and stop the “who you know” from being the only criteria used when selecting the leadership of our crown corporations.
I will read the four criteria established on March 15 and posted on the Treasury Board website. The criteria were as follows:
A permanent nominating committee will be struck by the board of each corporation. If the board so chooses, this committee may include outside eminent persons to support the work of the board. Among other things, the nominating committee will establish appropriate criteria for candidate selection.
A professional recruitment firm will be engaged to assist these nominating committees in the search for meritorious candidates. In addition, public advertisements will be posted in newspapers and in the Canada Gazette for all openings for the positions of chief executive officer and chair of corporations.
The nominating committee will make recommendations to the board of directors, and the board will provide a short list of candidates to the minister responsible for the corporation. Based on this list, the minister will make a recommendation for appointment.
The appropriate parliamentary committee will then review the candidate recommended by the minister.
Those four criteria from March 15, 2004 seem simple enough. While very clear and concise, however, the Treasury Board president who put them forward almost immediately watered them down and put in plenty of wiggle room when it came to the appointment of the chair at Canada Post. Almost immediately the firm accountability words like “will” and “shall” were changed to words like “may” and “if possible”. They are not very accountable words. There is a lot of room to appoint pals and buddies.
When pressed by the committee as to why the rules were softened and weakened, the response was one of denial of a difference between the two and a referral to this upcoming crown corporation governance framework.
It is upon us now and is it the firm and concise criteria of March 15, 2004, the “cronyism” saving criteria? We have received a weaker version. The people of Canada will find it lacking.
If we set our targets low enough, I guess we will always be able to hit them. Is this the standard the government wants to set? I was hoping for better.
Would the parliamentary secretary like to explain how the rules became so soft?