Newly released documents show Liberal changes to the federal appointments system has yielded a small increase in the number of younger people getting government posts.
Documents from the Privy Council Office show that as of last year, fewer than five per cent of all appointments made under the Liberals' system were of applicants between the ages of 25 and 34. That age group is just under 20 per cent of the population.
The documents don't say where the Liberals made the appointments. For youth, the figures are only in bar charts.
A spokesman for the Privy Council Office says the government plans to "continue to increase youth representation" by working with organizational heads, boards and decision makers.
The government's recently released youth strategy aims to have one youth representative on the boards of 75 per cent of Crown corporations within the next five years.
Months after taking power in late 2015, the Liberals changed how the government makes hundreds of appointments each year to positions such as the boards of Crown corporations and tribunals that make decisions on benefit payments and immigration claims. The numbers don't include senators, judges or a handful of officers of Parliament such as the ethics commissioner, who are not chosen through the same process.
Most of the positions are part-time and only people over age 18 are eligible.
The Liberals' system was meant to make the process more open and less prone to criticisms of political patronage. What the government unveiled was a system it said would make appointments based on merit, where applications are open to anyone and selection committees recommend names based on precise criteria.
The pages of reports, graphs and presentations obtained by The Canadian Press under the access-to-information law provide a detailed look at the outcomes of the Liberal changes.
The documents show, for instance, that the overall number of women appointees increased from 35 per cent in late 2015 to over 40 per cent by last year.
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