Well, I believe very strongly in the independence of the office, and I believe very strongly in the importance of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages having a strong relationship not only with Parliament as an abstraction but with parliamentarians and with parliamentary committees.
I really appreciate the relationship I have with the Standing Committee on Official Languages, both in the House and in the Senate, and in addition to formal appearances before committees, I try to maintain less formal contacts with members on those committees from each of the parties. There have been instances when, for example, one of the parties was putting forward a private member's bill where our legal branch was available for consultation, not only for that party but for other parties as well. We make it clear to MPs from all parties that we're available, not just to Parliament in the abstract and the committee in specific, but to parliamentarians from all parties.
If a party comes or if a member comes and says, “I'm working on a private member's bill; what do you think?”, we will make it clear that we will provide advice, but we will provide the same advice to the other parties as well, because the other parties may say, “Here's this private member's bill, and we're trying to decide whether we're going to support it or not.”
So we don't give partisan advice as to whether a party should support a bill, but we will give our interpretation of what a bill means.