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. Every one of us in the public service carries with us those ideals of being non-partisan, of providing the best professional public policy advice we can to the government of the day, and of loyally implementing the agenda of that government. Certainly I think writing down these expectations helps. Trying to be as clear as one can be in writing about the role of the public service and its relationship with ministers helps. But at the end of the day, it's about the individual actions individual ministers, members of Parliament, senators, and public servants take. How each of us conducts our relations with each other and how that plays out determines whether we're protecting that notion of a non-partisan professional public service.