Opposition blasts appointment of former Liberal candidates to top civil service jobs

The opposition parties are raising concerns over the premier's appointment of former Liberal candidates to high ranking civil service posts.

"This is a premier who's talked about merit-based appointments and taking the questions of politics out of appointments and here we see a large number of appointments and people who moved into key roles who have very strong ties to the Liberal party," said Progressive Conservative leader Paul Davis.

Three former Liberal candidates were appointed as assistant deputy ministers during Wednesday's civil service shake up.

Davis also flagged Tony Grace, who served as executive assistant to Liberal Brian Tobin when Tobin was premier. He had been working as a trade policy analyst before Premier Dwight Ball promoted him to an assistant deputy minister.

Ball said he put people into those positions because of their skills, not their experience with the Liberal party.

But Davis said this flies in the face of promises to take partisanship out of appointments.

"It's about the fact that Premier Dwight Ball and the Liberal party said they'd do a merit based process, they believe in having the best people not because of their political affiliation," said Davis.

"He said it's not about that, but in this case, what happened yesterday, was these key positions have gone to people who have been very close to the Liberals." 

Not part of new appointment process

The Liberals established an independent appointments commission as their first piece of legislation.

It will oversee appointments to government agencies, boards and commissions, but wasn't involved in Wednesday's appointments to core civil service positions.

"They've really made it clear that was more about window dressing than it was about real change," said NDP leader Earle McCurdy.

"I think that really takes the legs out from under their much ballyhooed claim that they're all about taking the politics out of public appointments."

Neither McCurdy nor Davis are questioning the qualifications of the people being appointed. Both said this is about the process and the optics.