Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 9th, 2012

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Good morning. Welcome, everybody, to meeting number two of the ongoing statutory review of the Lobbying Act.

I want to welcome our witnesses.

Before we proceed, I want to advise the committee that the commissioner has confirmed that she is available to come for the second hour on Thursday, February 16, which is what we had agreed to. We have not yet been able to confirm an appearance by the minister. We have proposed three dates, and at this point the minister is not available on any of those dates and has not come back with an alternative date.

As usual, we will start with our witnesses. Each of our witnesses will have ten minutes to present.

Mr. Andrews?

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

This is just a question. Is there any interest in reviewing whether we'll go back and maybe invite the RCMP to come as well? There has been some discussion, and we've had a few questions on this. Is there a willingness to revisit that one to see whether it's an option?

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Mr. Andrews, I wonder whether we could defer that discussion. There has been a notice of motion, which I think all committee members will have received, that raises that issue around the RCMP. Let us defer that discussion until our motion is before the committee, which will be on Tuesday.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

That's fair enough.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Going back to the witnesses, the witnesses will each have ten minutes to present. As usual, for the witnesses' information, the first round provides for seven minutes of questioning from the members, which will include the member's question and the witnesses' response.

We have agreed to start with Ms. Yates.

Ms. Yates, it's your ten minutes.

[Prof. Stéphanie Yates, Professor, Department of Social and Public Communication, Université du Québec à Montréal]

Good morning. I would first like to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to make a presentation.

From the outset, we can say that the Lobbying Act as passed in 2008 works well, since most lobbyists submit to it in good faith, and that the Registry of Lobbyists is a relevant, credible, accessible and useful source of information.

However, four years after the Lobbying Act was passed, we must conclude that some gaps remain, which, even if they concern relatively marginal issues, fuel cynicism and suspicion among political observers. The statutory review of the Lobbying Act is thus an excellent opportunity to improve the legal framework—

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Ms. Yates, could you slow down just a little, to allow the interpreter to keep up?

[Prof. Stéphanie Yates]

Okay.

The statutory review of the Lobbying Act is thus an excellent opportunity to improve the legal framework for lobbying and its related activities in order to restore confidence.

My presentation will centre on what we see as three major gaps in the act as it stands: the revolving door, the fact that some activities are not registered, and the lack of transparency for the funding of certain organizations that engage in lobbying activities.

Let us first look at the revolving door. The revolving door problem refers to public office holders (POHs) moving into jobs in the sectors they were responsible for while in office or, conversely, professionals in these sectors becoming POHs.

The revolving door is generally associated with the creation of an influence network that can obtain benefits for its members, particularly through access to inside information from outgoing POHs or the complacency of incoming POHs toward the sector they will regulate and in which they were previously employed.

A number of jurisdictions have tried to better constrain their departures by establishing post-employment rules. These rules impose a waiting period before outgoing POHs can become lobbyists for a sector they were previously regulating. The Lobbying Act seems the strictest in the world in this regard, as it imposes a five-year waiting period on public office holders before they can become lobbyists.

However, it seems that beneath this harsh veneer there are in fact major gaps, of the sort that the spirit of the act is regularly violated. This is a result of the extremely narrow definition of what constitutes a lobbying activity. The Lobbying Act focuses on oral and organized communication with a POH. As a result, a former POH who uses inside knowledge of a file to establish a political strategy for a given client and prepares that client for a possible meeting with one or more POHs would not be lobbying under the restricted definition of the act, so long as the former POH does not communicate personally with the POH in question. Yet, it seems quite clear that in such a situation the client would have a leg up on competitors by having access either to inside information or informal information that fosters the relationship with the POH being lobbied. We believe that both situations are contrary to the spirit of the act, especially the logic behind establishing post-employment rules. Indeed, these concerns call for redefining what constitutes lobbying. We will return to this point.

Second, I would like to look at the issue dealing with activities not included in the Registry of Lobbyists. Under the Lobbying Act, paid lobbyists must register their lobbying activities in the Registry of Lobbyists if lobbying is a significant part of their overall duties. The threshold for deeming lobbying activities to be a significant part of one person’s duties was set at 20% of those duties.

In her first five-year report, the Commissioner of Lobbying mentions her concern about the effects of the 20% rule, which seems to be a major obstacle to transparency, as a number of lobbyists are choosing not to register their activities on the basis that they do not reach the 20% threshold. To rectify this problem, the commissioner recommends eliminating the significant part principle so that any lobbying activity must be registered.

Moreover, to ensure that eliminating this threshold does not restrict access to POHs, the commissioner suggests introducing certain exemptions allowing community and charitable organizations not to register.

We have serious reservations about introducing such exemptions. The Quebec legislature took this approach and, as a result, the Quebec legal framework for lobbying does not apply to any person whose job or function consists in lobbying on behalf of an association or other non-profit group. The result is selective transparency and widespread suspicion of for-profit organizations while non-profit organizations are deemed virtuous in advance and thus removed from the dirty practice of influence-peddling. In the spirit of the Quebec law, these organizations do not engage in lobbying; they advocate for the common good. That may be debatable.

Consequently, we think it is quite clear that introducing a series of exemptions would be a definite step backward for transparency. We believe instead that revamping the definition of lobbying is a much more conducive way to close the two gaps just described.

It seems appropriate to expand the definition of lobbying to include consulting, research and strategizing in preparation for actual lobbying activities. The definition of lobbying entrenched in the American act could be a model in this regard because it refers to both contacts and the efforts in support of them, and specifies that these efforts can serve the lobbying activities of others.

By adopting a similar definition, Parliament would also largely address the concerns of the Commissioner of Lobbying regarding the 20% rule.

This expanded definition would encompass activities in preparation for communication with a POH. It is therefore conceivable that paid lobbyists who currently skirt the registration requirement by arguing that they do not reach the 20% threshold would then have to register. Moreover, it is possible that this change would not increase the burden on small organizations, such as community or charitable groups, which do not focus on lobbying. It would therefore be a clear step forward in upholding the spirit of the act.

However, an expanded definition would also undoubtedly have the detrimental effect of applying to the work of former junior-level POHs, such as political staffers, who are likely to be asked to do preparatory work for potential lobbying activities conducted by their superiors, even though this research might not necessarily be based on inside information.

Expanding the definition of lobbying as proposed would prohibit such preparatory work for the five years following the POH’s time in office. This may seem excessive. It would be a shame if overly strict post-employment rules, which could be seen as a burden in future careers outside the public sector, become a deterrent to accepting a political staff position.

We should therefore review the scope of the waiting period either by revising the definition of those who are subject to it or by establishing different waiting periods based on the strategic importance of the POH position.

Third, I would like to clarify the nature of certain organizations in the Registry of Lobbyists. While the nature of most entities in the Registry of Lobbyists is clear, the goals of certain less well-known groups may be less clear to the layperson. It is often particularly difficult to determine these groups’ funding sources, even on their official platforms.

This lack of transparency is worrying, given the existence of astroturfing. This rapidly growing phenomenon is expressly about pursuing a communications strategy whose true source is hidden and which falsely claims to be citizen-based. Let us think about MONCHOIX in Canada, for example. This so-called citizen-based group that claims the right to smoke in public places is in fact funded by large tobacco companies.

By simply adding to the registry a requirement that organizations reveal their external funding sources when they exceed a certain amount, Parliament could take concrete action on this issue and provide more transparency for one aspect—funding—at the heart of the influence game.

Consequently, we believe this measure would affect only certain organizations, such as coalitions, whose funding sources can be obscure, and especially astroturf groups. By revealing the background of these groups, this measure would do much to curb astroturfing.

Taken together, our observations lead us to make three recommendations to improve the Lobbying Act.

First, we recommend that the definition of lobbying activities be expanded to include activities in preparation for communication with public office holders.

Second, given this first recommendation, we suggest that the scope of the waiting period be changed to account for the circumstances of some POHs, who could see political experience as a major burden to any future career.

Third, to increase transparency regarding the background of certain pressure groups, we recommend that the external funding sources of any organization employing a registered lobbyist be included in the information declared in the Registry of Lobbyists when this funding meets a certain threshold.

I hope that these remarks will be useful to you. Thank you for your attention.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Thank you, Ms. Yates.

We'll now go to Mr. Chenier.

[John Chenier, Editor and Publisher, ARC Publications]

Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee on this review.

After writing about lobbying and lobby legislation in Canada and elsewhere for more than 20 years, I've come to the conclusion that reviewing lobby legislation is a bit like taking a long trip with a carload of children. Sooner or later—hopefully later—the inevitable cry of “Are we there yet?” drifts up from the back of the car.

This review of lobby legislation marks the sixth or seventh time—I forget which—that the question “Are we there yet?” has been posed since the legislation with respect to lobbying was passed into law in 1998.

Each review has come to the same conclusion: “No, we are not there yet.”

Part of the reason for that answer is that it has never been clear where the legislation was supposed to take us. We didn't know where we were supposed to go, or what the purpose of lobby legislation was.

Perhaps the ultimate destination was clear to some, but even then, the way to get there remained a mystery, perhaps because the road to get there hadn't been built yet. Maybe it still doesn't exist. It's like the New England saying “You can't get to there from here”.

What have been the course corrections so far? We're requiring more precise, accurate, timely, and current information from lobbyists in each iteration, we've sharpened the definition of lobbying, and we've lengthened the time to charge those in violation of the act from six months to two years to ten years.

The purpose of these revisions has been to ensure compliance by changing the definition and lengthening the time to prosecute violations, and to increase transparency. As a result, we do know much more than we knew back in 1998 about who is attempting to influence government.

Yet with all this time and effort, the registry still cannot give a definitive answer as to who is lobbying for whom and for what ends. Perhaps it may never succeed in this regard. Often attempts to strengthen one aspect of lobby legislation entice lobbyists to make use of hitherto unused or unknown avoidance tactics.

For example, in the U.S., the last major overhaul of lobby legislation by the previous Congress, spurred on by the Abramoff scandal, led to the disappearance of 3,000 people from the registry of lobbyists, but not, I might add, from the D.C. community of lobbyists. Part of that disappearance from the roster was also due to the Obama administration's effort to ban lobbyists from sitting on advisory boards and panels.

In Canada it would appear that strengthening post-employment guidelines may have led to more use of the 20% rule to avoid registering as lobbyists, and avoiding the post-employment ban in the process.

Let me say for the record that I concur with the suggestions or recommendations put forward to this committee by the Commissioner of Lobbying, Ms. Shepherd, on December 13.

I think the 20% rule should be suspended, but I also think it would be necessary, as Ms. Shepherd suggested, to craft some regulations to prevent a deluge of new registrations. You would not want the removal of the 20% rule to force all those many constituents and others who troop up to your offices day in and day out in the increasing number of lobby days to register as lobbyists. On the other hand, it is important to ensure that while the registry should be free of these foot soldiers, it captures the activities of all those involved in organizing these and other grassroots events.

With respect to the enforcement of rule 8 of the code of conflict, which is perhaps the most controversial measure, I think it critically important that this review provide the commissioner a clear and firm mandate in carrying out this difficult task.

I've been a student of public policy making since the 1970s, and I have worked on and off in various government policy units until 1986. When we began publishing The Lobby Monitor in 1989, I was aware that having a lobbyist who was known to be in regular contact with the prime minister or the minister working on behalf of a client involved in a file would have a major impact on how those inside government would handle your file.

There is no doubt in my mind that the lobbyists' known connections to political parties matter. They matter to the client, and they are often used as a major marketing tool. They matter to the public officials involved in the file. If they are not astute enough to recognize that, they shouldn't be where they are. They certainly matter to the public in terms of their perspective of how government works.

We will never be able to sever the connection between the world of government relations and politicians, but it is essential that we moderate it.

In my view, the unhealthy situation that existed between 1986 and 2009 was untenable. While it is true that balance may be reached in the internal decision-making process by equalizing opposing lobby forces, that does nothing for the public perception that hiring friends of the party is the way business is done.

In other words, you would often have the situation whereby people would say, “They have their lobbyists and we have ours, and it equalizes out”. Well, that might equalize out on the inside, but from the outside there's still the perception that everyone is hiring friends of the government or friends of politicians to get things done, and that is not a healthy perception.

Lobbying legislation is only one of four pieces of the whole that governs the conduct of government. The others are the conflict of interest code that guides the conduct of public servants, the Office of Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner in the Commons, and the Office of the Senate Ethics Officer. All of these are essential to the health of our political institutions. Proper enforcement of rule 8 is, in my view, necessary for the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying to fulfill its part in the overall ethics mandate.

Thank you. I'd be happy to answer any questions later.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Thank you, Mr. Chenier.

Mr. Conacher, you have 10 minutes.

[Duff Conacher, Board Member, Chairperson, Government Ethics Coalition, Democracy Watch]

Thank you very much to the committee for this opportunity to appear before you as the chairperson of the Government Ethics Coalition, which is made up of more than 30 citizens groups from across the country, from various sectors of society, with a total membership of three million Canadians.

You have the submission of the coalition—10 pages with 10 key recommendations. It all adds up to, quite simply, a simple choice: will you strongly recommend changes to the Lobbying Act to end secret, unethical lobbying and to make enforcement effective, or will you ignore the loopholes and leave them open and not make recommendations to close them or to make enforcement effective?

The act is so full of loopholes it should not be called the Lobbying Act; it should be called the “some lobbying by some lobbyists act”, because that's all it requires: disclosure of some lobbying by some lobbyists. Because secret lobbying is legal, unethical lobbying is legal. Secret, unethical lobbying is legal even for cabinet ministers the day after they leave office because of loopholes in the act. They have to be a bit careful about whom they lobby mainly because of rules in the Conflict of Interest Act, not the Lobbying Act. And they have to be a bit careful for whom they lobby and on what they lobby, but they can lobby cabinet ministers, senior government officials, and everyone in the government and the opposition parties and the public service. Cabinet appointees and every government institution can lobby in secret the day after they leave office. That's how bad the situation is.

There are no valid excuses for failing to close the loopholes and failing to strengthen enforcement. You simply have a choice. Will you endorse, as every committee and every party and every government has endorsed right back to Confederation, secret, unethical lobbying and ineffective enforcement, or will you strongly recommend that the loopholes finally be closed and the enforcement be strengthened so that secret, unethical lobbying is illegal? It's not that it will be stopped. People will always try to violate every law that exists. That's not a reason to leave the loopholes open. Some people say you can't legislate morality. They're twisting that saying. That saying means that no matter what you do, some people will be immoral. It doesn't mean you leave loopholes open because some people will be immoral. So you have this choice.

This is the tenth committee hearing for the House or Senate I've attended on this subject since 1993. No committee has made these recommendations; no government has made the changes. No opposition party has ever introduced a private member's bill, but every party in opposition has complained about secret, unethical lobbying.

Will you either continue playing the game that's been going on since 1988 or finally clean up your acts by making the recommendations that will clean up the Lobbying Act and related laws to finally clean up the federal government?

Why should you do this? The Supreme Court of Canada, the Federal Court of Appeal, the UN, the OECD, the World Bank, the IMF, and every other international institution says you don't have a democratic good government if you allow secret, unethical lobbying. If that's not reason enough, how about how you look at yourself in the mirror if you're not going to make these recommendations? What will you say to your children and your grandchildren? That you had a chance to recommend ending one of the most fundamental problems that undermines democratic good government but didn't take that opportunity? Instead, as again every committee has done since 1988, you just kept your eyes closed to secret, unethical lobbying and pretended that everything was fine.

What major changes are needed? The coalition is making 10 recommendations. I'm going to focus on a few of them because the devil truly is in the details.

As you've heard the other two speakers and every other witness talk about, there are loopholes that allow for unregistered secret lobbying. Those loopholes must be closed. But some of them haven't been mentioned before the committee. It's not just the 20% rule that is exploited to lobby in secret. It's also that you can lobby about the enforcement or administration of a law, regulation, code, guideline, policy, subsidy, or tax, and not register. That's a gigantic loophole. Tons of lobbying goes on about enforcement and administration of laws, but no registrations are required for it.

The paid and unpaid lobbying is also a gigantic loophole. All you have to do is arrange to have someone pay you to do other services for them and you do the lobbying for free.

A lot of people have emphasized over the years that they're worried most about these paid lobbyists, that they're the worst. Actually, the unpaid lobbyists are as bad. They are the ones you should worry about more in some ways. They are the cabinet ministers who leave and have their nice gold-plated pensions and make a few calls for friends for free. They have enormous influence on the inside and they don't have to register because they're unpaid.

You either solve this problem by closing these loopholes, including requiring unpaid lobbying to be registered, or, as the Conservatives promised in 2006, you flip the onus and require everyone in government, in every institution—in opposition parties, Parliament, staff, and everyone—to disclose anyone who communicates with them about their decisions.

The only exception to that—and it's really the way the act should have been designed in the first place because then you wouldn't have these loopholes—would be the constituent contacting you about a personal concern every so often. If they were organized and had a little community group and they were pushing, it would be disclosed. Then you would capture it all. Secret and unethical lobbying would be ended because secret lobbying, and therefore unethical lobbying, would be illegal.

Turning to this five-year cooling-off period, it was extended in a kind of blunt move that's a bit unfair to all MPs. It should be changed into a sliding scale.

If you're a backbench MP who is not on a committee, then you would sit out for a certain length of time. It should run from one year to five years. It should cover staff of all politicians as well. They're not covered by any ethics rules at all right now.

Depending on whether you were on a committee or chaired a committee or you were parliamentary secretary, you would go up this scale from one to five years.

That's the fair change to make. The fact that a backbench MP who doesn't even sit on a committee has to sit out for five years after they leave—the same length of time as a cabinet minister—doesn't make sense.

That change should be made, but you should not lower the five-year limit. Five years is appropriate for cabinet ministers and senior government officials. It's the length of time that's needed to have a changeover in government so their influence and access is not as potent as it is when they first leave.

In the enforcement area, you should also make changes to the act that require the commissioner to conduct regular random audits and inspections. The commissioner is sitting back too much and waiting for complaints and not proactively out there checking who is communicating with which institutions. It's basic law enforcement to be doing random, regular inspections. Police officers do it; everyone who is enforcing a law does it.

You have to require the commissioner to do it. Give her the clear power and mandate to do this. As well, in the enforcement area, you should require the commissioner and the Director of Public Prosecutions to be ruling publicly, within a reasonable time period, on every situation that raises issues of violations.

If you look back to 2004, there are dozens of complaints that still haven't been ruled on. We don't even know who the complaints are about. From all evidence, often the commissioner is rejecting some complaints without ever publicly stating they have been rejected. The public has the right to know about all the situations that have arisen and what the ruling was by the commissioner.

As well, in enforcement, a key area is giving the commissioner the power and the mandate to impose penalties. On Tuesday you heard all four commissioners from the provinces say this is necessary, and some are saying it's going to cause some sort of conflict. GRIC, the Government Relations Institute of Canada, was complaining that this might cause a conflict; the RCMP and crown prosecutors might be doing something different from what the commissioner does.

I think they misunderstand it. The administrative penalties are not there for violations of the act that amount to a crime but for administrative violations of the act. There would not be a conflict in terms of investigations and having that power to levy fines.

If this were allowed, the commissioner would be able to proceed and make a ruling rather than waiting for the RCMP and crown prosecutors to bounce it around for three, four, five years before she finally can proceed under the lobbyists' code.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Mr. Conacher, I'll ask you to wrap up.

[Duff Conacher]

Yes, I was going to. Thank you.

The penalty should also be there for violations of the code, not just of the act.

To remind you again of another reason why these loopholes need to be closed and the enforcement strengthened, in another context about another law, Prime Minister Harper said on February 26, 2009, “It is essential, for deterrence, to have strong penalties that we all know will be enforced.” That's true for all violations of laws. They should be not just tough on crime but tough on undemocratic crimes and violations of laws.

So I urge you to uphold that ethic and make it a situation such that there will be deterrence, because there will be strong rules and strong penalties that we all know will be enforced.

I welcome your questions about any of the details of the submission we've made. Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Thank you, Mr. Conacher.

We'll now go to Mr. Angus for seven minutes.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

There have been very interesting presentations this morning. I guess one of the things we've been wrestling with is trying to define lobbying so that we have transparency, because if everybody's a lobbyist, then nobody's a lobbyist. That's the concern we have as New Democrats. If everybody who ever comes into my office is treated as a lobbyist, then how's anybody going to go through all the thick woods and figure out who actually is doing the serious business, which is the issue of access to power? That seems to be the fundamental question that has to be addressed.

Mr. Chenier, you talked about how it shouldn't be about friends at a party.

Madame Yates, you talked about the cynicism and suspicion out there.

Mr. Chenier, how do we set up a system? It's never going to be perfect, but it shouldn't be about friends at a party who can make a call and open those doors. That seems to be where we, time and time again, get caught up. Do we have to sweep up every single person in this net to do that, or is there a way we can focus in on ensuring that some people just don't have excessive amounts of access?

[John Chenier]

There are two components to this. One is indeed the enforcement of the rules in the code—rule 8, I believe it is. I think the commissioner has been trying her best to make sure that those people who are involved in partisan politics for any party cannot lobby or are banned from lobbying certain groups or members, and that is a step in the right direction.

The other part is, what activities have to be registered? I share your concern that if every person who walked in your door had to register, then probably the registry would be meaningless and the important would be lost in the mundane.

There is, in my view, a definite cut-off point, which is whether or not it is organized. If it is, you have to at least get the organizers and their activities listed on the registry. Again, the lobby days are organized by someone. The people who are coming into your office are quite often organized. They've been trained. They come in with their list of questions or their issues. You're going to be invited to a reception later that evening, and you're going to be talked to again all night by your constituents.

It seems to me, anyway, you can't put all their names on the registry, but you can certainly put down that the railway association or whatever has organized X, and this is what they organized and these are the people they saw, etc.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Conacher, I guess the issue of the revolving door is a real concern for us. I think what made access to power so disturbing before is that if you were a cabinet minister or you were a deputy minister, you could set up a nice little nest egg in the bureau, walk out, go into private practice, come back four months later and walk out with the prize. That was how things were done.

Now we have a five-year rule, and some people say the five-year rule is not fair. But I think it would send a really bad message to Canadians if we have a rule but we're saying we want to weaken the rule.

You talk about a fairness slide so that we ensure we're not overly penalizing members of Parliament who might want to go back to work even if it's in the non-profit sector. You're talking about a sliding scale. How do we define that sliding scale so that we're not sending a message that we're loosening the real clear rules that were set out under the Accountability Act?

[Duff Conacher]

First of all, they're not real clear rules. There's no five-year ban. You can lobby the next day. You just have to be careful—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Yes.

[Duff Conacher]

—especially in the first two years as a minister, because of the conflict of interest rules, not the Lobby Act rules, and one year as a senior government official covered by the Conflict of Interest Act.

For anybody else, again, you just have to join a corporation and lobby less than 20% of the time, or, if you have a healthy pension or you are doing other work, lobby for free and you can do it and you don't have to register. So there is no five-year ban; it's a five-year ban on being a registered lobbyist.

Yes, a sliding scale of one to five years, depending on who you are, is what we're suggesting. You would just have categories. If you were not on a committee, just a backbench MP, you'd sit out for one year. But if you joined a committee halfway through your term, then you would be bumped up to one and a half years or two years and just slide it on up, depending on the power, so that on the opposition party side, opposition critics would sit out more than committee members; on the government side, the parliamentary secretaries would sit out more, then ministers of state, then the full cabinet ministers, and the same with staff.

Staff have to be covered. Right now they're not, except in the leader of the opposition's office, in terms of opposition parties. That would really solve things.

A lot of people don't realize that, in terms of loopholes and who has to register, the 20% rule is totally different for an NGO, for a non-profit or any type of organization. At an organization you have to count up all of the time your staff spends lobbying and pretend you're one person. So if you have five staff and they each spend 4.1% of their time lobbying, that's five times 4.1%, which crosses the 20% threshold, and all five have to be listed in the registration.

The 20% rule has always been there to hide corporate lobbying. NGOs have always had a higher threshold of disclosure, which is perverse because they obviously have less power in most situations than the big business lobbyists.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Yates, you made a really interesting reference to astroturfing, because we see how it is completely distorting the public discourse. A perfect example is Ethical Oil, a total front organization. There seems to be a revolving door between the PMO's office, his key cabinet ministers, and this front group.

My question is, does that come under lobbying? It seems that their job is to distort public discourse. They don't actually need to call the minister because they pretty much have worked for them. Does the issue of astroturf organizations come under this, or is this a separate issue that has to be addressed?

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

A brief response, Ms. Yates.

[Prof. Stéphanie Yates]

Yes, these groups have some activities that do not fall under lobbying. They are actually doing lobbying that could be described as indirect, meaning that they make the media aware and then the media might make public office holders aware. Sometimes, these groups communicate with public office holders. I am thinking of Friends of Science, for example, which has been very active. If that's the case and if that needs to be registered in the registry, it would be very easy to simply add a line or a field for those groups to specify what their major sources of funding are.

That would not fully lift the veil on the issue, but it would at least lift some of it, making some of the activities of these groups transparent, including lobbying. In a nutshell, this is a simple measure that would make it possible to partially lift the veil.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Thank you, Ms. Yates.

Mr. Del Mastro, seven minutes.