TORONTO -- Education Minister Lisa Thompson is defending the $140,000 salary for a failed Tory candidate to lead a standardized testing organization -- a job that was previously a part-time appointment.

Cameron Montgomery was announced recently as the new full-time chair of the board of directors of the Education Quality and Accountability Office.

The job had previously been a part-time one that came with an up to $225 per diem.

Montgomery unsuccessfully ran for the Progressive Conservatives in last year's election, but his background is in education, including as a professor of education at the University of Ottawa, and Thompson says he was the "absolute perfect fit" to fix standardized testing in Ontario.

But NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says it is another ticket on Premier Doug Ford's "gravy train."

She says Ford wants to have people friendly to him in positions at agencies that he can manipulate.