Dr. Edward Keyserlingk's letter to Pat Martin

The following letter was sent by former Public Sector Integrity Officer (PSIO) Edward W. Keyserlingk to MP Pat Martin, Chair of the Government Operations Committee, on December 15, 2010, immediately following the appointment of Mario Dion as interim Public Sector Integrity Commissioner (PSIC).

Keyserlingk expresses his dismay at the appointment of Dion as interim Commissioner, makes some observations about the inadequacy of the appointment process used for both Dion and former Integrity Commissioner Christiane Ouimet, and offers proposals on three topics: 1) for Integrity Commissioners to be chosen from outside the bureaucracy; 2) for a much more thorough appointment process for finding and selecting suitable candidates; and 3) for PSIC's primary role as an investigative agency to be re-emphasised, not the 'preventive' role that Ouimet had invented.