Hon. Joseph A. Day:

Honourable senators, I thank Senator Finley for setting the tone for the debate on this inquiry. I may not adopt the same tone, and honourable senators will understand why.

I rise to enter the debate on Senator Cowan's inquiry. Honourable senators will remember that when the current government came to power, it did so promising a new era of transparency and accountability and telling Canadians that it only would make promises that it could keep and that Canadians could rest assured that they would keep all of their promises.

Honourable senators, five years later we see that this promise was the greatest broken promise of all. Senator Cowan has reminded us of the broken promise on income trusts, which destroyed the lives and life savings of so many of our senior citizens.

Honourable senators, I want to talk about a different promise, which was set out in the Conservative Party's 2006 federal election platform: The promise to establish a public appointments commission. The wording from the platform states that a Conservative government will:

Establish a Public Appointments Commission to set merit-based requirements for appointments to government boards, commissions, and agencies, to ensure that competitions for posts are widely publicized and fairly conducted.

Honourable senators will recall the discussion that took place during Question Period and, had that been commission been established, it would have saved the embarrassment that was evident in the answers given by the Honourable Leader of the Government in the Senate.

I am sure that all Honourable senators remember the promise that partisanship was to be a thing of the past, at least in terms of government appointments to boards and agencies. Mr. Harper, the candidate, promised Canadians solemnly that if elected, he would establish a new public appointments commission to take partisan politics out of the appointment process.

Candidate Harper was elected by Canadians who embraced this platform. Prime Minister Harper then introduced his much-touted Bill C-2, the proposed accountability act, which included provisions authorizing the Governor-in-Council to appoint the public appointments commission.

So far so good, honourable senators, however, on careful examination of Bill C-2, we discovered that this promise had become discretionary. The proposed legislation stated that the Governor-in-Council may establish a commission. I was a critic on this piece of proposed legislation, as a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs when Bill C-2 was studied.

The committee proposed an amendment to make it mandatory for the Governor-in-Council to appoint a public appointments commission. The amendment was passed by the committee and passed by the Senate as a whole, but was rejected by the government when the bill was sent back to the other place. Many honourable senators liked the idea of ensuring merit appointments to boards and agencies, duplicating the merit principle that exists in the public service, which works well.

Honourable senators, the government rejected the proposed amendment in the other place. They said the amendment "would limit the capacity of the Governor-in-Council to organize the machinery of government" and "as such are unacceptable."

What happened with respect to the commission after Bill C-2 was passed, honourable senators? Prime Minister Harper never did exercise his discretion to establish a public appointments commission.

It is true that he put forward a name of a candidate to chair a proposed public appointments commission. This was a process set up by Mr. Harper before Bill C-2 was passed. Under those old rules, committee members of the other place considered the proposal and, in their wisdom, disagreed with the proposed chair of the public appointments commission and rejected the name.

Honourable senators, the Prime Minister abruptly announced that he was scrapping of idea of a commission altogether. If he did not get to choose his candidate, then the public appointments commission was not to be. The Prime Minister said that no other candidate would be put forward. There was apparently no other man or woman in the entire country who was qualified to do the job. The Prime Minister took his marbles and went home. He went back to 24 Sussex, the keys to which he obtained on the strength of a platform which he was now breaking.

Subsequent to this, honourable senators, Bill C-2 was passed with a provision still in it for a public appointments commission, with an advisory role in Parliament and not a mandatory "yes" or "no" for the appointment. Parliament, therefore, was still involved, but not to the same extent.

Then, honourable senators, in an apparent change of heart, the Prime Minister actually repeated the promise to establish a public appointments commission in the 2008 election platform. It states:

We will appoint members to the Public Appointments Commission. . . . A re-elected Conservative government will ensure that the Public Appointments Commission gets up and running.

That is in the 2008 Conservative platform, honourable senators; but one has to conclude that there was never any intention to fulfil that promise. Here we are in 2011 and we still have no public appointments commission. Promises made, promises broken.

This government has also promised to be fiscally conservative, honourable senators — that is with a small "c." I suspect we may hear a whole lot of speeches on the broken promises alone with respect to fiscal responsibility.

The government has actually managed to spend millions of dollars on this nonexistent, non-appointed commission. That is true, honourable senators. This nonexistent commission has a bureaucracy and a secretariat. It has appropriated more than $1.5 million in the past three years to run a fictional commission and the secretariat, which is sitting there waiting for the commissioners to be appointed.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Harper has earned the title the "patronage king" for his thousands — literally thousands, some 4,670 — of patronage appointments that have been made with flagrant disregard for the election promise to Canadians.

Appointments that would have taken place through this commission, honourable senators. Appointments that continue to raise concerns as boards and agencies are being filled with well-connected friends of prominent Conservatives, including senior staff to the Prime Minister, Conservative Party donors and unsuccessful candidates.

However, honourable senators, I do not want you to misunderstand this statement. Just because someone participates in the political process, it should not be a reason for excluding that person from consideration to an appointment. However, that person should also be qualified for the appointment, quite apart from his or her political affiliation.

The problem, honourable senators, as you have seen from the questions that were asked during Question Period with respect to the CRTC, is that there is no independent commission to ensure that the appointment is based on merit. Hence, the public quite naturally lacks confidence in the appointment process and otherwise qualified individuals are tainted with the "political hack" brush. This is not good for the political process and this is not good for the governance of our country.

The Leader of the Government in the Senate, honourable senators, stalwartly maintains that her government fully intends to live up to the commitment to appoint a public appointments commission. She said that in December 2009 in response to a question I asked of her.

Clearly, Canadians deserve more, honourable senators. Surely two elections, five years and almost 5000 appointments later, it is not too soon to expect Mr. Harper to fulfil a two-time election campaign promise.

Honourable senators, it is time for honesty, clarity and accountability. If the Harper government has a sense of honour, it would immediately engage in discussions with the opposition parties to find an acceptable candidate who had the confidence of Parliament for this important job and who both sides of this chamber accepted. Until then, honourable senators, Canadians have but another promise made and another promise broken.

Honourable senators, just like the fixed election dates, the promise will be gone with a whim.

Some Hon. Senators: Hear, hear.

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