Harperman case: Can public servants be political activists? – Politics – CBC News

I agree with Savoie and Sheppard on this:

Donald Savoie, the Canada Research Chair in public administration and governance at the University of Moncton, disagrees.

“In my view, regardless of what the Supreme Court might say, public servants should not become political actors, especially in the middle of campaigns,” he said. “They are not political actors. We have political actors; they are politicians.”

He said you can’t be politically active and non-partisan at the same time.  “If you start handing out flyers and you appear in videos, you become a part of that — you become partisan. You can’t be half-pregnant,” he said.

…. But [Robert] Shepherd says the responsibility to speak truth to power does not give public servants permission to engage in political activism.

“The expression or the vehicle for doing that is to use internal avenues, not to be activists outside of the established mechanisms within the public service,” he said.

A public servant concerned about government policy who exhausts all other avenues and chooses to go public, he says, must be willing to accept the consequences.

Source: Harperman case: Can public servants be political activists? – Politics – CBC News