Gwyn Morgan

former President and CEO - Encana Corporation

Gwyn Morgan, P.Eng. is a director of several large corporations in Canada, including EnCana Corporation and SNC-Lavalin. He is also on the board of trustees of the Fraser Institute, a Director for The Manning Centre for Building Democracy and a non-executive Director of HSBC. He is most noted for being the former President and CEO of EnCana Corporation.

In 2006, Morgan was appointed by Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper to chair the new public appointment commission. However, the appointment was rejected by opposition Members of Parliament (MPs) due to statements Morgan had made linking refugees with crime in Canada. NDP and Liberal MPs objected to Morgan's linking of refugees to crime, comments he made when he was in business and not directly involved with federal politics.

Morgan's defenders noted that the federal Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada agency ran a program from 1999 to 2003 under the governing Liberals called Project Early Intervention that targeted children in a community "made up of recent Arabic and Somalian immigrants" with the goal of reducing crime. In addition, in 2004, Canada established a national action plan, aimed in part at reducing violence, called A Canada Fit for Children which said "children of recent immigrants and refugee children are more likely to experience economic disadvantage with its associated risks." For these reasons, the attack on Morgan was seen by some as a veiled partisan attack on Prime Minister Harper.

There were also concerns raised that Harper's first nomination for the new post was a fundraiser for the Conservative Party of Canada; since the position was intended to reduce or eliminate the use of public appointments for "patronage" purposes, Opposition MPs saw the appointment of a Conservative Party partisan as inconsistent.