It's a very good question and a very interesting question.
I'm not really in a position to talk about control. Those would be the kinds of directions that might come to public servants about what they can and cannot say. I think I have said before this committee that there I can only speak about my own personal experience, and I have no difficulty. I relate freely with Parliament, I relate freely with the media, and I have had no directions or controls, nor have I run into any problems with any of the policies.
The question about politicization is a very big preoccupation of mine. As a background to that, in the early days there was a total ban on political activity on the part of public servants. That has since changed. We had a court case in the early nineties. It used the charter to say that public servants actually have political rights. They can be politically active, but they must do it in such a way as to not compromise the non-partisan nature of the public service. When the new legislation came in, that charge was put with the Public Service Commission. We actually have two regimes that we are very preoccupied about. One is that public servants get appropriate permission to run for political office. That has required us to put in place a separate unit that does that work. I've had some court challenges, which have reminded me to follow due process in that. It covers municipal elections. On average, there are about 50 or 60 public servants who are running for political office. Our preoccupation there would be that this political involvement in no way compromise the non-partisan nature of their job. We have to do a lot of analysis on the job. We do have discussions about changing people to different types of jobs, and, if they lose, where they go back to.