Legislative Control of Cabinet Appointments to the Public Service: A Canadian Case-Study in the Political Limits to Parliamentary Reform

This paper analyses an important Canadian experiment in the legislative scrutiny of political appointments by the executive. Since 1991, the Ontario Legislature's Standing Committee on Government Agencies has routinely interviewed cabinet appointments to semi-independent agencies, which are a major policy instrument at both federal and provincial levels in Canada. The Committee was assigned this task on the assumption that partisan Members could agree on criteria for questioning witnesses about their qualifications, and that the government would be willing to withdraw candidates exposed as inadequate. At the same time, the governing party retained the discretion to make partisan appointments. An examination of how the Committee conducts interviews reveals a tension between the Members' role in holding the executive accountable, and their identities as partisan politicians. In large part, the Committee has become a forum for debates on the appropriate limits to patronage in appointments to public bodies.