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My father was proud to be a public servant. To him and so many people of his generation, working for the people of Canada was a calling, a duty, an honour.

He, like many of his colleagues, took seriously the notion that federal employees should be neutral, serving whatever government Canadians elected. He never told anyone but my mother how he voted. He avoided expressing opinions about politics throughout his career. Only after he retired and was free from this non-partisan obligation did he publicly share his viewpoint by occasionally writing letters to the editor of the Citizen.

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I’m sure there were moments in his career when he didn’t agree with the decisions made by the government of the day. But I never heard about them.

No doubt for the people working for the federal government over the past 10 years, things have been difficult at times. On the surface, the Conservatives didn’t do much differently from their predecessors – government expanded a lot before there were cutbacks. But like with many things about the Harper decade, it was more about tone than substance. Harper and his team didn’t trust the Ottawa establishment and so they did little to build bridges with them. I’m sure many employees felt antagonized and even marginalized by the government.