Sticky fingers all over political appointments

There’s nothing like crass politics.

That’s what we saw with the Liberal’s reaction to veteran journalist Mark Patrone’s appointment to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

Dartmouth MP Mike Savage went so far as to get ethnic, a low-point in politics if there ever was one.

What Savage is reported to have said is something you say to a person’s face, preferably as a joke, not with the distance of a microphone.

Did Patrone’s one-time Tory candidacy give him a leg up? Possibly, but I’m sure his 27 years in the grassroots of the media business had much more weight.

And, what if his candidacy was a factor? I recall the big kerfuffle over patronage in the province in the early 1990s, when Tory Premier Donald Cameron and his Liberal successor, Dr. John Savage (Mike’s dad), tried to get rid of it. Well, they each found in their own ways there is a need to have your own political people – of like mind – on commissions and in certain implementation positions to ensure your policies are translated into reality. Is that patronage?

No, it’s good sense.

Meanwhile, where do the Liberals get their snarkiness? After all, just look at what they’ve done with the senate. By packing it with hacks for so long, they’ve practically destroyed a valuable chamber of sober second thought by a nation’s accomplished citizens. The damage is to the point the only recourse is to either abolish it, as the NDP advocates, or reform it to the point it’ll be merely another batch of arm-jacking politicians.

There is a place for solid experience in appointments - even with some political colouring, without folks casting aspersions for their own political gain - and, especially from ones whose hands are so sticky with the residue of such carryings on in the past.