HYPOCRISY ALERT: Mulroney-style patronage from Stephen Harper’s Conservatives

Yesterday, Conservatives announced the creation of a new crown corporation for Minister Lisa Raitt: the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority.

Ms. Raitt has in the past received a lot of love from port authorities, including the time a fundraiser was organized for her by the Toronto Port Authority.

Conservatives have taken these newly created patronage posts and appointed:

“Mark McQueen as Chairperson of the Board of Directors, and Mr. William Graham and Mrs. Caroline Mulroney Lapham as Directors.”

All three are donors to the Conservative Party. Perhaps as homage to the previous king of Tory patronage, Conservatives have made Brian Mulroney’s daughter Caroline their latest patronage appointment.

Two of these appointments, Mr. McQueen (Rosedale) and Ms. Mulroney Lapham (Forest Hill) hail from Toronto while the third, Mr. Graham, lives in Komoka – over 200 kilometres away from Windsor.

PATRONAGE: A PROUD TORY TRADITION

Who can forget in 1993, when young Reformer Stephen Harper condemned Brian Mulroney for filling “every patronage post in the government” before he left office.

Or in 1995, when Mr. Harper stated: "We don't think as a party that patronage has any place in the Parliament of Canada."

And of course in 2005, when then-Leader of the Official Opposition Stephen Harper declared that patronage “has got to stop, and when we become government, it will stop.”

Now, the Harper Conservatives are hypocritically appointing Brian Mulroney’s daughter to a plum patronage post.

Canadians deserve so much better.