John Gomery was instrumental in shoehorning Stephen Harper into power. He even posed for photos shaking Harpo's hand as Lardo stood at the alter of transparency like a true believer.
Oops. Fooled ya, Johnny!
A report in the Toronto Star quotes Gomery, speaking for a position of complete irrelevance, as dissatisfied with today's Harpo.
"I have to tell you, I'm very disappointed," Gomery said from the farm in Havelock, Que., where he now lives in retirement.
He said most of the changes he proposed fell into a "black hole" of indifference or were rejected out of hand.
Gomery's scathing indictment of the previous Liberal government was widely credited with helping the Conservatives come to power in 2006.
Gomery recommended a reversal of a decades-long trend to centralize power in the hands of the prime minister.
It was a goal Harper appeared to share when he was in opposition, says Gomery. But since taking power "there's more concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office than we've ever had before, which is quite remarkable in a minority government, but he's pulled it off."
Gomery also slammed Harper for abandoning the effort to install a new appointments commissioner to ensure that merit – not patronage – would be the main criterion in naming people to the boards of Crown corporations and other key posts.
Yeh, but Harper doesn't think much of merit appointments either. He fires those qualified appointments when its necessary to cover for the stupidity and incompetence of himself and his ministers.
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