Information & Ethics committee  It may depend on exactly what provisions we're talking about. If a minister has questions about how the cabinet system works, he may actually sit down and have a discussion with his deputy minister about that, or the clerk, but if we're talking specifically about the standards of conduct, one would expect that those are the questions that a minister would engage the Prime Minister or some of the Prime Minister's staff in.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't think it is the only consequence. There is an ambit of consequences from the informal to simply having a discussion, saying “Don't do it again”, ramping all the way up to the ultimate of either a firing or a resignation.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't know either way.

Information & Ethics committee  It is absolutely up to the Prime Minister to determine in any given case what are the appropriate consequences.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't have one. It is not for me to opine upon any specific circumstance or set of facts in terms of the application of this particular guide.

Information & Ethics committee  Ms. Boyd may want to jump in here if I get a little bit off track, but annex H is basically a culmination of practices that have been developing around advice provided to public office holders on political activities. The desire was to get it all down in one place, thus annex H was born.

Information & Ethics committee  The current edition is from 2008, and revisions to the guide come about in one of two ways. Either the Prime Minister asks us to sit down and revisit it, or we suggest to the Prime Minister that it may be time to revisit it because certain things have changed. Normally when there is a change in Prime Minister, they want to take an examination of the guide, as it is their statement to their ministry of their expectations.

Information & Ethics committee  As much as anything else, it's about finding a place where you can speak to public office holders. This guide is disseminated and is part of the orientation sessions we hold with new appointees. I understand it is primarily directed at ministers and ministers of state, but it does speak to all public office holders in various forms.

Information & Ethics committee  Annex G gets into that, and again, it's how the two operate together.

Information & Ethics committee  I think the Prime Minister is free to seek advice from wherever he wishes on this, whether it is his staff, whether it is the Privy Council Office, whether it is outside, independent people.

Information & Ethics committee  Does the guide do enough to protect public servants so that they don't compromise their ethics? The ethical rules for public servants are found in their own code of values and ethics. Basically, everyone in the public service has a responsibility to live those values and ethics, to talk about them, and to ensure in the way they conduct their work that they're respecting them.

Information & Ethics committee  One change arising out of the Federal Accountability Act was the introduction of the accounting officer model and the impact it has had on the attention and care that deputy ministers pay to the management of their organizations. I don't want to overstate this, because I think deputy ministers have always paid attention to the management of their organizations.

Information & Ethics committee  Could you repeat your question?

Information & Ethics committee  You are asking when the most recent meeting took place. There's nothing structured, in the sense that we have a regular meeting with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. We will occasionally have dialogue around the interpretation of provisions of the legislation.

Information & Ethics committee  My particular role in implementation was in my previous job, when I was executive director of strategic policy at the Treasury Board Secretariat. I was responsible for coordinating the government's implementation of the legislation. Much of that work had been completed by the time we got into 2007.