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It's no secret that the federal government has had a tough time filling vacancies for Governor-in-Council appointments.  You name the position, you can find a problem with the process officers of parliament, senators, judges (with the exception of the Supreme Court that process went exceptionally smoothly), and tribunal adjudicators.  As backlogs pile up, a slow-moving crisis is unfolding before our eyes.

When they came into power, the Liberals decided that they were going to try and reform the appointment process in order to bolster the diversity in the ranks of those being appointed.  With white men still the overwhelming majority of appointments being made up to this point, it was clear that something needed to be done in order to start the culture change that needs to happen at the top in this country.  That the government did, however, was probably not the best way to go about it.  In creating an "open, transparent, merit-based process" (as Government House Leader Bardish Chagger likes to rhyme off), they went from a system of nomination, to one of self-selection.  In other words, the process shifted from seeking out qualified candidates in their fields, to one where they relied on people applying for the jobs instead.

There is a certain amount of merit to this shift, I will grant you.  There has been a long-standing problem in the appointments process in this country where those who do the appointments tend to look inside their own box.  When writing a story on reforming the judicial appointment process over a year ago, I spoke to Senator Mobina Jaffer about it, and she pointed out this very problem, which is why reforms were necessary.

"Over the years, people kept saying no, no, no, so people stopped applying.  This is the same thing that happened with women — they stopped applying, then the chief justice [of B.C.] set up a proactive way to bring people in," Jaffer said.  "I have the greatest respect for the judicial committees, but you only select people you know well.  If you're out of the box, they don't select you."

And this is part of the where the law of unintended consequences starts to come in.  By shifting the focus from nominations to applications in order to try to attract more candidates who are coming outside of the box, and trying to get those potential nominees who stopped applying because they weren't white men, I fear that the government slowed down their own processes even further than the restructuring did.  Instead of a system geared toward seeking out qualified candidates, it had to shift to trying to reach out to those communities in a different way to plead and cajole for enough qualified candidates from more diverse backgrounds to do the application process.

The complexity of the application process itself has been mentioned as another potential barrier.  For Senate applications in particular, the process has been described as so onerous that one either needs to have nothing else going on in their lives, or to be so convinced of their own merit for the position in order to stick it through that it likely screens out worthy candidates who would be well suited, but who otherwise are put off by the hoops they have to jump through to apply.  That also creates the problem of the people who select themselves for the job having an estimation of their abilities that also has the potential to create problems down the road (and we're already seeing a few examples of new senators who are starting to feel a bit entitled to their entitlements).  Self-selection was probably the worst possible option for the Senate, and yet here we are, and we still have eleven vacancies, because the government can't seem to manage more than one or two every six months, which isn't keeping up with the pace of attrition.

Judicial vacancies are a well-documented problem, but one of the biggest ones facing the government right now is the crisis with the Immigration and Refugee Board.  Because Canada has been flooded with irregular migrants crossing the border illegally, the system is stressed beyond capacity, but there aren't nearly enough IRB members to hear the cases, and when they can only hear two cases a day, it means that the backlogs are stretching to years.  (Note: The IRB's problems are not the Liberals' fault alone: the Conservatives took a well-functioning system, reformed the appointment process and created a massive backlog that I'm not sure the system recovered from before Liberals reformed the process yet again).  This is a very big problem for the government, especially because the lengthy delays create incentives for more migrants to try their luck in Canada in the hopes of avoiding deportation, and if they stay long enough and build enough of a life for themselves, they can apply to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds once the deportation is ordered.  This doesn't mesh with the message that they're trying to send that there is no free ticket to Canada.

It would be tempting to dismiss these problems as all being the fault of "diversity hires," and that things were just fine the way they were, but that's not the case, and a judiciary, Senate, or tribunal system that was increasingly divorced from the realities of those it serves was having an ongoing negative effect for our society at large.  But tackling that problem by moving away from a system that could more easily reach out to other communities with the right training and incentives (and metrics to ensure that this was happening), to one where now they are forced to plead with communities that have stopped applying because of disappointment, is not helping the system.  As backlogs grow, and the consequences of those backlogs become more apparent, it starts to cut to the core of some of the competence of this government, and a realization that they can't get this relatively straightforward issue right.  That could be the bigger problem the closer we get to the next election.

Photo Credit: CBC News

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


Time will tell how Ontario's $14-per-hour minimum wage experiment shakes out for a majority of earners and the businesses that employ them.  For the moment, it is possible to believe all of the following without being either a heartless monster or an economic ignoramus:

  1. Minimum wage workers deserve the opportunity to make a decent living.
  2. This wage increase was pushed through without due consideration for hours worked, benefits, or job totals.
  3. Some businesses, mostly larger ones, may be able to find mechanisms to absorb the cost of the increase without cutting those three things.
  4. Some businesses, mostly smaller ones, may not.
  5. There are other ways to create an environment for well-paying jobs.

Already, though, Canadians have begun to give Tim Hortons the "heartless monster" designation.  Some Ontario franchisee have responded to the wage hike by cutting paid breaks, some health benefits, and other perks.  According to their professional association, this was the best they could do without reductions in prices or supply costs from their head office.  The company fired back, condemning the use of front-line staff "to further an agenda or be treated as just an 'expense.'"

In spite of this, customers are turning on the company at large, declaring January 9 #NoTimmiesTuesday, the day they got their coffee and baked goods elsewhere.  Some decided to extend the boycott beyond a single day, vowing to patronize independent coffee shops from now on.  Protesters, mostly labour activists, descended upon locations across Ontario, armed with bizarrely childish chants.  Marketing experts are aghast at the company's failure to control the damage.

Among the pundits, the most direct attack so far comes from Edward Keenan at the Toronto Star, who remarks that Canadians have finally woken up to the reality that Tims is "just another cold-hearted corporate behemoth" despite years of painstakingly crafted goodwill.  He doesn't sound very happy about this admission.  Therefore, allow me to do the celebrating for him: My friends, our sludgy, reheated, beige, sugar-loaded, self-parodying national nightmare may finally be drawing to a close.

While words like "beloved" and "cherished" and "storied" continue to abound in coverage of Tim Hortons, a Maclean's survey from October 2017 revealed that it was only the fourth-most popular chain in Canada.  It wasn't even the most popular chain with a Canadian headquarters; that honour goes to Mississauga-based Second Cup, coming in second between McDonald's and Starbucks.  Given the paucity of Second Cup's marketing, and their retail footprint (294 locations as of 2016) being only one-twelfth that of Tims (3,665 locations as of 2016), there can only be one answer: People like the product better.

Tims has tried, bless them, with such exciting culinary innovations as "artisan-style grilled cheese" (a basic grilled cheese sandwich with panini press marks), pumpkin spice everything, and espresso-based coffees made with actual espresso.  These transparent attempts to compete with Starbucks have not radically altered the chain's true appeal: that it is convenient, cheap, and tolerably edible.  It's the place we go when we need a quick hot breakfast on the way to school, or a caffeine jolt before hitting the highway, or a box of snacks for the weekly meeting.  We go because it's there.

Tims is far from the only national corporation with more abundance than quality; there's Shoppers Drug Mart, for instance, or CIBC.  The reason we "cherish" it has more to do with the company's ad agency than the company itself.  They have put together a classically Canadian brand that the Conservative Party advertising staff could only dream of: the coffee of hockey players, hockey parents, road trippers, empty nesters, newcomers, pensioners, and people who own both small businesses and dogs.  Tims has less of a customer base than a voting bloc.

But now?  A brand is only as strong as the company's choice to live by it.  In failing to safeguard the interests of its lowest-paid workers, Tims has shot that brand right in its skate-clad foot.  It will take significantly more time for the company to recover from this than they did from the in-store Enbridge ad debacle of 2015.  In that time, its loyal customers may discover coffee they plain like better.  This is good news for those of us who have never liked seeing everything right with Canada reduced to a watery brew, a thawed-out pastry, and multiple visiting moose.

I will close with a question: What kind of "artisan" uses processed cheese in their sandwich?  Really, Tims.

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics

Written by Jess Morgan

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.