Madam Speaker, I want to follow up on my friend's comments about the Liberal approach to appointments.
It is quite evident that merely accepting applications from the public is not an open process if the results are baked in. In fact, all it is doing at that point is just leading people on and inviting them to use their time unproductively, if in fact all the government is doing is receiving these applications but then proceeding in a direction that is predetermined.
What we have seen in the way the Liberals have approached appointments, with respect to the Senate, is they have accepted applications, but then if we look at the voting record of those senators, we see less independence from their new appointees than we see from the people who were appointed as partisan Liberals.
Strikingly, on the one hand the government is defending this application process that it has for various appointments, but on the other hand there are people like Madeleine Meilleur put in place who clearly are there with a partisan background and reflecting that partisanship.
I wonder if the parliamentary secretary is willing to come clean on this point, and acknowledge that what we really have is a smokescreen. There is an application process that is designed to—