What Tories are Missing in the Patronage Revelations

Liberal MPs Wayne Easter and Alexandra Mendes reported that since Harper's government has been in power, 20% of federal appointments had been given to Conservative supporters, constituting in their opinion a blatant case of patronage. Tory supporters thought they had the perfect mathematical defense.

Looking at the comments on news stories, you see a lot of Tories saying: "If he only appointed Tories to 20% of the jobs, then that means 80% went to Liberals, NDPers, Blocs and Greens. Why are the Liberals complaining?"

But that is not the case. When they said supporters, the Liberal MPs meant Conservative party insiders, people who had worked for the party or had given large donations to it. People that actually were Conservative party members. They did not mean anyone who voted Conservative in the last election.

Not every Canadian is a member of a political party, or is a donor to one. Far from it. To think therefore that the appointments can be divided into the ones that went to Tory supporters and the ones that went to Opposition party supporters is simply not accurate. There are plenty of public servants who, although they may have voted for a certain party, have never worked for a party or been a donor.

Those non partisan public servants have to be counted among the 80%. Which makes that 20% going to Tory insiders/members/donors look a whole lot bigger.

(However, it is true that if Easter and Mendes have the breakdown on the affiliations of the federal appointees since 2006, then surely they can release that information. They should let us see how many Liberal party members, NDP party members, Bloc party members, Green party members and non partisans were appointed. That would provide the transparency they maintain they seek.)

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