OTTAWA – Today, given Prime Minister Trudeau’s appointment fiasco with David Johnston, Democracy Watch called on the Trudeau Cabinet to stop its multi-year charade and establish an actually independent, merit-based appointment process for all public inquiry commissioners, and all federal democratic good government watchdogs.

The Trudeau Cabinet has, finally, shown openness to having opposition parties participate in choosing the commissioner(s) who will investigate foreign interference in Canadian politics.

However, the Trudeau Cabinet is currently completely controlling secretive processes for handpicking the following watchdogs, all of whom enforce key democracy laws that apply to the Cabinet:

the Interim Ethics Commissioner;
the Ethics Commissioner;
the Integrity Commissioner, and;
the RCMP Commissioner.