OTTAWA — Senior ACOA officials bent hiring processes so Conservative staffer Kevin MacAdam could apply for a management job, a Public Service Commission of Canada investigation has found.
MacAdam won the job in 2010 but the commission revoked his appointment late last year. The investigation has been sealed until now because MacAdam and other ACOA officials are appealing the commission’s decision in Federal Court.
“The evidence shows that, on the balance of probabilities, key decisions in the (hiring) process were based on Mr. MacAdam’s circumstances as a minister’s staff member,” says the commission’s report.
In particular, the commission found ACOA officials opened up the position of director general of operations for Prince Edward Island to applicants outside ACOA and did not require the applicants to be bilingual, even though the job required it.
Those moves effectively allowed MacAdam to qualify for the post. He was awarded the position in late 2010 and immediately started two years of French-language training at his home in Ottawa before beginning the job, which paid in the range of $116,000 to $136,000.
The investigation implicated current ACOA president Paul LeBlanc. LeBlanc knew MacAdam was interested in the operations director’s job for P.E.I., and the commission found LeBlanc was more involved in the hiring process than he initially let on.
The job was new and filling it wasn’t considered mandatory. Staff warned that putting someone in the post could have significant financial implications, especially factoring in the cost of French-language training.
But the commission heard testimony that LeBlanc pushed the process along quickly.
The creation of the process itself was unorthodox. One longtime employee, Brian Schmeisser, was looking to move up but was told he didn’t meet the language requirements of a senior director position.
He wrote an email to his bosses, including LeBlanc, complaining of ACOA hiring unilingual anglophones for senior jobs but saying they couldn’t appoint someone internally because of language requirements.
Schmeisser’s boss, ACOA P.E.I. vice-president Patrick Dorsey, later told him he “needed a change” and recommended a job in the P.E.I. provincial government. ACOA offered to pay half of Schmeisser’s provincial salary.
Schmeisser accepted the transfer and told the commission he would retire at the end of the term.
His ACOA job was then wrapped up in the new position that MacAdam eventually won.
There was reason for MacAdam to be anxious to move into the civil service. He had worked as deputy chief of staff for Peter MacKay when MacKay was the minister responsible for ACOA. When Keith Ashfield took over as minister of state for ACOA in 2010, three MacKay staffers carried over but Ashfield’s office did not have the money to keep them, according to the commission’s report.
Two of the employees were placed in positions at ACOA and its regional wing, Enterprise Cape Breton Corp., the report said. The third, MacAdam, was made Ashfield’s deputy chief of staff.
In the summer of 2010, someone more qualified to be deputy chief of staff was hired into Ashfield’s office in a new position, the commission found. When MacAdam left to join ACOA, the other employee swapped into his job.
The commission ultimately found that LeBlanc, Dorsey, former ACOA president Monique Collette and Kent Estabrooks, ACOA’s director general of special projects, acted improperly by bending the appointment process to allow MacAdam to qualify.
The commission found no evidence of interference from either MacKay’s or Ashfield’s office.
MacAdam, Dorsey and Estabrooks are all appealing the decision and say the commission was wrong to jump to many of its conclusions.
They argue the decision to open the job to external candidates was made to broaden the scope and attract the best candidate. They say the decision not to require bilingualism was based on past unsuccessful attempts to find qualified bilingual candidates.
Though the commission found the ACOA executives committed “improper conduct,” there is no legislative definition of that term. Dorsey is arguing the commission was unreasonable to define the term in order to suit its investigation.
Dorsey says no ACOA policies were breached in hiring MacAdam and he also accuses the commission of ignoring evidence that MacAdam was qualified for the job.
Original Article
Source: thechronicleherald.ca
Author: PAUL McLEOD
MacAdam won the job in 2010 but the commission revoked his appointment late last year. The investigation has been sealed until now because MacAdam and other ACOA officials are appealing the commission’s decision in Federal Court.
“The evidence shows that, on the balance of probabilities, key decisions in the (hiring) process were based on Mr. MacAdam’s circumstances as a minister’s staff member,” says the commission’s report.
In particular, the commission found ACOA officials opened up the position of director general of operations for Prince Edward Island to applicants outside ACOA and did not require the applicants to be bilingual, even though the job required it.
Those moves effectively allowed MacAdam to qualify for the post. He was awarded the position in late 2010 and immediately started two years of French-language training at his home in Ottawa before beginning the job, which paid in the range of $116,000 to $136,000.
The investigation implicated current ACOA president Paul LeBlanc. LeBlanc knew MacAdam was interested in the operations director’s job for P.E.I., and the commission found LeBlanc was more involved in the hiring process than he initially let on.
The job was new and filling it wasn’t considered mandatory. Staff warned that putting someone in the post could have significant financial implications, especially factoring in the cost of French-language training.
But the commission heard testimony that LeBlanc pushed the process along quickly.
The creation of the process itself was unorthodox. One longtime employee, Brian Schmeisser, was looking to move up but was told he didn’t meet the language requirements of a senior director position.
He wrote an email to his bosses, including LeBlanc, complaining of ACOA hiring unilingual anglophones for senior jobs but saying they couldn’t appoint someone internally because of language requirements.
Schmeisser’s boss, ACOA P.E.I. vice-president Patrick Dorsey, later told him he “needed a change” and recommended a job in the P.E.I. provincial government. ACOA offered to pay half of Schmeisser’s provincial salary.
Schmeisser accepted the transfer and told the commission he would retire at the end of the term.
His ACOA job was then wrapped up in the new position that MacAdam eventually won.
There was reason for MacAdam to be anxious to move into the civil service. He had worked as deputy chief of staff for Peter MacKay when MacKay was the minister responsible for ACOA. When Keith Ashfield took over as minister of state for ACOA in 2010, three MacKay staffers carried over but Ashfield’s office did not have the money to keep them, according to the commission’s report.
Two of the employees were placed in positions at ACOA and its regional wing, Enterprise Cape Breton Corp., the report said. The third, MacAdam, was made Ashfield’s deputy chief of staff.
In the summer of 2010, someone more qualified to be deputy chief of staff was hired into Ashfield’s office in a new position, the commission found. When MacAdam left to join ACOA, the other employee swapped into his job.
The commission ultimately found that LeBlanc, Dorsey, former ACOA president Monique Collette and Kent Estabrooks, ACOA’s director general of special projects, acted improperly by bending the appointment process to allow MacAdam to qualify.
The commission found no evidence of interference from either MacKay’s or Ashfield’s office.
MacAdam, Dorsey and Estabrooks are all appealing the decision and say the commission was wrong to jump to many of its conclusions.
They argue the decision to open the job to external candidates was made to broaden the scope and attract the best candidate. They say the decision not to require bilingualism was based on past unsuccessful attempts to find qualified bilingual candidates.
Though the commission found the ACOA executives committed “improper conduct,” there is no legislative definition of that term. Dorsey is arguing the commission was unreasonable to define the term in order to suit its investigation.
Dorsey says no ACOA policies were breached in hiring MacAdam and he also accuses the commission of ignoring evidence that MacAdam was qualified for the job.
Original Article
Source: thechronicleherald.ca
Author: PAUL McLEOD
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