I have looked into Bill C-2 quite carefully. I'm not one of the architects of Bill C-2, but in my job I've had to be careful with it and to analyze this carefully. I can only give you what my view is of the matter around this. In my view, the neutrality of the public service is not, in any way, shape, or form, jeopardized by this piece of legislation.
I will go back to first principles. The public service is there to serve the government of the day with respect to the policies that this government wants to put forward, but never, ever in a partisan way. What we're doing is providing options, providing advice on those options, providing different variations on themes, but it is always the government that makes those decisions. That is the reason the policy development on that side of the operation remains something that takes place between the bureaucracy and the government of the day.
What Bill C-2 is saying is that we are going to get the deputy ministers, who are not political actors, to go before parliamentary committees and explain how they manage the resources that have been given to them. That, to my way of thinking, sir, has nothing to do with politics. It has a lot to do with good management, and there is, therefore, nothing partisan that would, in any way, shape, or form, infringe on the neutrality, so to speak, of the public service.
That is what this piece of legislation is doing. Let's face it, it is putting into legislation what has been the practice for the past 100 years, and it's good that it's now in legislation. Once called upon, deputy ministers will appear before committees and will explain how they manage the resources, not the advice they have given to ministers because that falls into a different category, and rightly so, in my humble estimation. With respect to the resources, we'll come to tell you how they have been spent.