Thursday 26 June 2008

Government termination of long-time civil servants a witch hunt

An article by Regina Leader-Post senior political reporter, Murray Mandryk, in the Thursday, June 26, 2008 issue of the paper reveals that the Sask. Party government engaged in what can only be described as a witch hunt when they terminated long-time civil servants as part of their so-called "transition" to power.

The article further reveals that the person who (it appears) was actually calling the shots is an unelected individual from the "transition team" - presumably appointed by the Premier.

You can read the complete article by clicking here. It's a stark illustration of how ideological, vindictive and just plain mean-spirited the new government is. And that a small, tight group of unelected, unaccountable, conservative party loyalists are the ones who are actually running the show.

There is a follow-up article by Mandryk in the June 27 paper entitled: Krawetz testifies, hearing concludes. Excerpt:
"Deputy Premier Ken Krawetz said he had neither personal reasons nor any information to suggest that former civil servant Allan Walker could not have performed his job for a Saskatchewan Party government.

Such personnel assessments were "largely made by Doug Emsley" -- a long-time party supporter and private businessman briefly contracted to work for Premier Brad Wall's office during the transition phase, Krawetz testified at a Public Service Commission hearing Thursday. It was Emsley that had a "discussion" with Advanced Education, Employment and Labour Deputy Minister Wynne Young on who had "lost the confidence of the government."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is horrible, but no worse than the NDP's actions in purging long serving rank and file staff in Crown Corporations after they came to power.

They called it 'process re-engineering' at the time, but in reality, the intent was to rid the Crowns of people of high professional integrity so the political bagmen could do their dirty work uninterrupted.