Green party’s cronyism fix? Appoint people on merit
Schreiner likens internal review to putting a fox in charge of a hen house
Mired in a cronyism scandal, Premier Doug Ford’s government needs to overhaul the criteria for public appointments to make it clear that merit — and not personal connections — is the key factor in getting jobs, Green Leader Mike Schreiner said Wednesday.
Schreiner made several recommendations to fix a “deeply flawed” system that has seen the Progressive Conservatives resurrect foreign trade representative jobs not filled in 25 years and give two of them to friends or relatives of Ford’s former chief of staff, Dean French.
“Don’t use the public purse to create cushy jobs for their family, friends, supporters and donors,” he told a news conference at Queen’s Park, questioning why the premier hasn’t taken stronger action given how the scandal has pulled the Conservatives down in the polls despite Ford’s “for the people” mantra.
French left the government in late June after Ford rescinded the two appointments of people connected to him as Ontario’s representatives in London, England, and New York City at lucrative, six-figure salaries.
Since then, the pair are among seven people who have been fired or quit positions with the government or related agencies because of their connections, including Peter Fenwick, a long-time life insurance customer of French hired as the province’s first “strategic transformation adviser” — a job that was not publicly posted for a hiring competition.
The premier’s office said it is sticking with an internal Treasury Board review of all pending appointments with better “conflict of interest screening to further ensure the most qualified individuals are being selected.”
“If the premier finds that people have been appointment for the wrong reason and are not performing to the higher standards these individuals will be removed from their positions,” spokesperson Ivana Yelich said.
Schreiner said that review is like “putting the fox in charge of the hen house” and noted the federal government and several provincial governments have made merit considerations explicit in their hiring policies for appointments.
Schreiner said the trade representative posts are suspect as the New York job went to Tyler Albrecht, 26, who is a lacrosse pal of one of French’s sons. The envoy to London was Taylor Shields, a cousin of French’s wife and a Chubb Insurance executive. No replacements have been named since their threeyear appointments, paying $164,910 Canadian in the U.S. and $185,000 in the U.K., were revoked.
Appointments to two similar posts, in Dallas and Chicago, remain in place for former PC Party president Jag Badwal, a realtor, and Earl Provost, a former Ontario Liberal party executive director and chief of staff to the late Rob Ford when he was mayor of Toronto. Both Badwal and Provost have worked with Doug Ford on political matters.
The four trade envoy jobs appear to be “pure patronage,” said Schreiner, given that no such posts have existed since the early 1990s.
His recommendations also include publishing specific selection criteria for jobs and the qualifications required, adding a public complaints and investigation process and commitments to diversity, empowering Ontario’s integrity commissioner to make the results of any investigations public, and gender parity in appointments.