—is what legal and constitutional provisions impact on that.
As much as we want to see that individuals achieve the best and that there is a level playing field, we want to see that Canadians are well-served by their public service. The quality of the service provided by the public service is the one thing I've been consistently impressed with, first in my prior department and now in the current one. Most of my career was spent as a public servant in the province of Manitoba.
One of the things that has been fundamental to the construction of an independent, non-political public service is the merit principle. This principle is placed in a context in many ways, one of which is to ensure that those who come to our country and are not part of the mainstream fit in as quickly as possible.
The civil service has done some good things in that respect. Are there improvements we can make? As I understand it, there are improvements that we can properly and legally make in order to encourage people.
This might be of no interest to you, but it was fascinating to me. When I spoke at the school for new crown attorneys, what was remarkable was how many women there were. In fact most of them were women. That was an interesting thing for me.
When I started out prosecuting many years ago in Manitoba, it was virtually all male, and not necessarily anything but sort of Anglo-Saxon males. Those were the lead people in the department.
That has changed. I see it changing in our—