October 11, 2024
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Apart from inertia, there’s the not-implausible suspicion the prime minister and his cabinet see such appointments mainly as convenient means to attract support from targeted voting groups.

New human rights boss shows Liberals have no idea how to vet candidates

Whether it’s hiring an antisemite to design anti-racism training or feting a former Nazi in the House, this government seems unable to perform a simple Google search

Any time the federal government hands out one of the many grace-and-favour appointments it has in its storehouse of vote-attracting enticements, you have to think the job interview goes something like this:

Q: Do you speak any of the official languages?

A: Yes.

Q: Have either you or your relatives, or people similar to you or your relatives, driven other people off their land, knowingly or unknowingly, even in previous centuries?

A: I don’t think so.Q: You’re in. The pay is $100,000, you can work from home and we make no effort to track how you’re doing. Does that suffice?A: Um, I guess. Is there a pension?

The latest example of this casual approach to vetting is Birju Dattani, the new head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Dattani, who’s heralded as the first Muslim and “racialized” person to hold the job, previously served on human rights bodies in Alberta and the Yukon. His official appointment asserted he was arriving at “a pivotal time for the Canadian Human Rights Commission,” and brought “a wealth of both professional and personal lived experience to this role.”

Problems arose soon after.

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