Patronage not always bad

There is a flurry of articles in recent days regarding Conservative patronage. Barbara Yaffe is pretty well bang on in her column this morning noting that the Conservatives deserve a bit of heat given the inconsistency between what they said they would do and what they have done on the file. I agree, although part of me thinks the challenge may have been in overpromising, rather than in the bad delivery.

Government appointments - and there are thousands of them made every year -- should be given only to competent people. Curiously, there has been relatively little complaint that any of the Conservative appointees are totally incompetent. Given that there are more competent people then available positions, it only makes sense that the government would provide appointments to people who share their perspective. Government appointments usually deal with positions that are involved in implementing government policy. Most that I have met, be they Liberal or Conservative appointees, tend to do so with a commitment to the public good. But where subjective judgments come into play, I am not surprised when Liberal appointees tend to think more like Liberals and Conservative appointees like Conservatives. In fact, that sort of makes sense in a democracy.

The irony is that those who are doing the critiquing today hardly have a better record when it comes to patronage, and if given the opportunity to make the appointments, are unlikely to do much different themselves. Maybe the debate ought not to be so much about the appointments but why patronage has become such a dirty word in Canadian politics.