Monday morning, Auditor General Michael Ferguson released a special examination report on Export Development Canada, and while he noted that the Crown corporation had problems related to its risk management framework, he also noted that eight of its 12 sitting Board members had their terms expired, but that they continued to serve anyway.  He also noted that there was the potential for problems if all of those eight positions were turned over at once, which could compromise oversight continuity.

This was the fourth special report on a Crown corporation in recent months that all pointed to problems with board members.  In the case of both Ridley Terminals Inc. and the Great Lakes Pilotage Authority, the lack of board appointments meant that there was insufficient oversight of management, which led to spending problems in both cases.  Clearly a problem has been identified.

These Crown corporation boards aren't the only places where this government is failing to make needed appointments.  We've heard time and again about how they are slow to appoint judges, which are leading to court delays and in some cases, those delays leading to charges being stayed (particularly when the accused involved are adept at working the system).  And while the Justice minister insists that she made more appointments by a single justice minister in decades last year, there remain too many vacancies on the courts, and the government is slow to fill them.

The Immigration and Refugee Board is another area where the lack of appointments is causing a lot of problems for both immigration appeals and refugee appeals.  I recently spoke with immigration lawyers about how the delays caused by the lack of bodies on the Board are impacting their clients, and it's having a major effect, from lost time spent preparing for hearings that need to be cancelled, to delays in family sponsorship that in one lawyer's case meant that her client's father died while they were waiting for a hearing.  And with the current influx of irregular migrants crossing the borders because of the Trumpocalypse to the south of us, the lack of bodies (and resources) to hear these claims is causing a major backlog that you would think the government would want to address.  But as of mid-April, six out of 44 positions remained vacant, which is a not insignificant proportion.

The Senate has still twelve vacancies more than ten percent of the chamber, and most pressing are the vacancies for the Northwest Territories and Yukon, because they only have a single seat and are going unrepresented something that should be scandalous.  To make it worse, one of the members of the government's merit-based appointment committee told the Hill Times that the PMO is sitting on more than 100 vetted candidates to fill those positions, that represent key skill gaps that the Senate faces, but some of those particular candidates to fill those gaps have not been appointed.  And this points to the fact that there is a definite bottleneck in getting those appointments finalized, which is a sign of poor management or possibly incompetence in getting these through to the finish line.

It took this government months to fill needed Independent Officers of Parliament positions, and we're still waiting on a Chief Electoral Officer weeks ago, it sounded like one had been chosen, but that remains unconfirmed.  For a government that is putting forward major electoral reform legislation, this would seem to be a pretty big absence to have.  And soon, we'll be without a Parliamentary Budget Officer as well, which will compound this government's slow-moving crisis.

And this has reached the point of crisis, though you'll never hear them say that.  They will point to the fact that these are open and transparent processes, and that they are ensuring that the appointments look like Canada which is great, but they went about it in the wrong way, ensuring that all processes involved people needing to apply rather than having people tasked with seeking out nominees, and that has slowed down the process immeasurably, and in some cases, it meant that the government had to hire head hunters to still find candidates that they should have been doing in the first place.  And the longer it goes, the more we're going to start hearing calls for reforming the system even further, which should also be alarming.

In particular, the Auditor General has been suggesting that when it comes to Crown corporations, that if the government can't make their appointments in a timely fashion that these corporations strike appointments committees in order to hire their own board members, taking the government out of the process entirely.  This should be alarming because it would mean the further degradation of our system of Responsible Government, because it removes the accountability of making these appointments from the government of the day.  Our system of government works because a government that commands the confidence of the Chamber can be held to account for its actions, and appointments are very much a part of what that entails.  The Auditor General has a demonstrated record of not understanding this fact particularly given his recommendations around external auditors for the Senate, as though it were a government department and not a self-governing chamber of Parliament but his recommendation to turn further toward technocracy as a way to deal with this government's shortcomings should be alarming.  And more alarming because people think that the idea has merit.

If this government knows what's good for it not to mention for governance in this country they will need to step up and do something about the bottleneck in PMO in order to get these appointments made, and to get these boards and oversight bodies back to their optimal operations.  This is a mess of their own making, and they need to stand up and take responsibility for it rather than pat themselves on the back for the quality of their appointments.  And while the outcomes may be better we do need more diverse appointments the process is a problem, and it's one that they should be held to account for.

Photo Credit: National Post