Obviously I'm going to speak in favour of the amendment for one particular reason: what is the assumption with this article? One is that commissioners can't do their job at hiring their own staff to ensure that they are non-partisan. It's hard to see this as anything else but an insult to the commissioners and their management acumen, their ability to ensure that their own staff is non-partisan. We selected and we'll continue to select these people for a very good reason: because they're professionals. They do an amazing job at what they do. I remind the committee that there has been no case of blatant partisanship on behalf of any of the offices of the commissioners. What are we telling them? Here is this great position of responsibility, and, oh, by the way, you can't do your job. You're not capable of weeding out intensely partisan staff or keeping your staff and your shop professional, objective, and non-partisan.
Also, fundamentally there's no distinction in this between a position of importance like the commissioner and the administrative assistant who has no public profile at all. Are you going to expect the administrative assistant, the public servant, to essentially bare his or her partisan life for the entire hiring process? Hiring should be based on merit, and post-having been hired, that's another matter because then there are fundamental expectations that are in place with regard to the objectivity of your work as a public servant. Those expectations are very clearly made out in the Public Service Employment Act, as I mentioned before.
It's hard to see this as anything else but an attempt to screen non-Conservative public servants in the commissioner's office. Why would you want to know as a hirer what a person's political experience and activities were—let's take the administrative assistant, for example—before hiring that person at a commission if it isn't to screen out potentially critical people of a particular government, of a particular stripe? It arms a government with too much power, and it's useless and redundant because there are already rules in place. It's useless and redundant.
Mr. Adler, as the person who actually drafted this particular clause, what were your intentions? You have been given permission to answer if you would like. I wonder what your intentions were with regard to this particular article.