There may be a few more political appointments next week, say Liberal insiders, but critics expecting an orgy of patronage in Jean Chretien's last days in office will have to find another stick with which to beat the departing prime minister.
Mr. Chretien appointed one senator Friday and filled a new, nine-member advisory board for a proposed political history museum that may never get off the ground.
While three Senate seats remain vacant, there just aren't that many plum order-in-council jobs to be filled, said a source in the Prime Minister's Office.
Besides, Mr. Chretien has spent the last year repeatedly stating he won't leave office amid the kind of legendary patronage quagmire that swamped John Turner when he succeeded Pierre Trudeau two decades ago.
"There will be some appointments as we have every year," Mr. Chretien said in a May interview. "There will be nothing that will be packaged at the last minute as it was, say, in 1984."
Instead, Mr. Chretien has been carefully pensioning off party stalwarts in piecemeal fashion, while leaving a lot of political debts unpaid.
This summer, he gave his former press secretary, Patrick Parisot, a job as ambassador to Portugal and sent former Liberal MP Georgette Sheridan to the Tax Court of Canada at a hefty salary of $216,600.
Longtime backbench supporter Mac Harb went to the Senate this fall, while Percy Downe, Mr. Chretien's former chief of staff and patronage adviser, landed in the upper house in June.
Former Public Works minister Alfonso Gagliano remains ambassador to Denmark, where he was shipped last year after a series of scandals under his watch. Only a diplomatic furore in June stopped Mr. Chretien from promoting his old Quebec ally to a posting at the Vatican in Rome.
On Friday, a day after receiving a slew of flattering tributes during what was likely his last appearance as prime minister in the House of Commons, Mr. Chretien settled another account.
He appointed Terry Mercer, national director of the Liberal Party of Canada, to represent Nova Scotia in the Senate.
The prime minister also named nine Canadians - led by author Charlotte Gray - to a board that will provide advice for the development of a new $90-million Canadian History Centre in downtown Ottawa.
The proposed centre is considered a personal legacy project of Chretien's and has caused considerable consternation among directors of existing, cash-starved museums.
A week ago, the Ottawa Citizen reported that virtually nothing has been done to develop the centre since its splashy announcement last May, and speculated it could be among the first projects axed by incoming prime minister Paul Martin.
In patronage terms, the part-time, apparently non-partisan board Mr. Chretien appointed Friday is thin gruel.
Mr. Chretien's record of Senate appointments is far more partisan.
Of 74 senators he's appointed during his 10 years in office, 73 have been Liberals. Fifty-four of the 102 sitting senators now owe their appointments to Mr. Chretien.
Yet Mr. Chretien gets only a middling ranking when it comes to prime ministerial largesse.
Trudeau packed the Senate with 81 appointees during his years in office, the same number as Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
Sir John A. Macdonald appointed 91 senators, but had the benefit of starting fresh at Confederation.
The undisputed champ was William Lyon Mackenzie King, who appointed 103 members to the upper chamber.
Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney, by contrast, managed only 57 Senate appointments during his eight years in office.
The Senate can be a poor gauge of patronage, however.
There are roughly 3,000 order-in-council appointments at the prime minister's fingertips, and Mulroney is said to have handed out more than 500 federal jobs in his last six months in office. His defenders say the Tories left 383 vacancies on the books, including 40 full-time well-paid jobs