Mr. Speaker, with regard to Bill C-15, an act to amend the Lobbyists Registration Act, it is important to note that it really ties to government and transparency and confidence of the public.
The Speech from the Throne referred to the lobbyists act, which we are dealing with today, as well as an independent ethics commissioner and a code of ethics as a package of amendments to look at in terms of Canadian democracy. I think the intent is to try to build people's confidence, to instill some virtues and values once again.
There have been a lot of episodes that have undermined public confidence. I will not go through all of them as I want to focus on the bill itself and also make some reflections, but they have very much distanced people from government. Part of the problem with Bill C-15 is it does not go far enough. It does not provide the confidence that we will have a good package of changes at the end of the day. That is really important because of the transition that is happening in Canadian democracy.
Parties are going through leadership campaigns. Some have already gone through that process and there are still more that have to go through it. There is a sense of renewal, a new stage in terms of our country as things are changing. For that reason, Bill C-15 has missed the opportunity to participate to a fuller extent on that renewal process and public confidence building.
With regard to the bill itself, there is one thing I would like to highlight for the public, and it is important to do so from my perspective of being new to the Hill. It is the actual culture and the involvement of lobbyists on a day to day basis, their position and role and the influence that is sought out. It is not always for ill intentions. Most times it is to make sure they get their point across, that members have access to information, are able to reach people with contacts, and more important, are able to do their work in a comprehensive way.
That also lends itself to a situation where people become vulnerable or situations develop where bad judgments happen. That undermines our democracy.
I can say that since being here, people who would never have wanted to talk to me before suddenly want access to me and my office to espouse their positions. There are some question marks in that process.
Often I have been pleasantly surprised about the way people have approached the issues. It has been very beneficial, even when I do not agree with their position. I have been willing to meet with individuals who have been paid on behalf of an organization, a group or a company to meet with me, and other people who have done it on a voluntary basis, to get their issue to the forefront.
At the same time, without set rules of conduct and penalties, and a significant focus on the whole accountability process, it leads to positions that become dangerously subject to interpretations and situations that influence Parliament. Even members of the government have indicated through public statements that lobbying, especially by people in the corporate sector, has taken place in these halls. They make sure there are changes or at least try to have an influence on the legislation that affects so many Canadians. That is a concern.
I want to outline the actual process and some of the categories of lobbyists. The act defines lobbyists as individuals paid to make representations with the goal of influencing federal public office holders. Three different types of lobbyists are distinguished.
The first is a consultant lobbyist, an individual who lobbies on behalf of a client. That is an individual who is paid outright. The individual may contact members of Parliament on behalf of several organizations and for specific situations. One of the problems with this bill is that individuals in the public service who serve the citizens of our country and have contact with them to advance their positions, whether they be for a corporate interest or other interests in terms of government legislation and resources.
The second is an in-house lobbyist who is an employee of a corporation whose job involves spending a significant amount, and 20% or more is the definition, of his or her time lobbying for the employer. That is where we get some of the cross-distinction of a person's responsibilities. An individual might be going to several different organizations and companies on their behalf.
The third is an in-house lobbyist who is an employee of an organization. The organization must register and the total lobbying duties of all employees taken together constitute a significant part, 20% or more, of the duties of all employees. Once again it is a definition, but the fact is that the organization is developing a strategy, some type of system to have influence on the public system.
The legislation is aimed only at disclosing lobbying efforts. It does not attempt to regulate lobbyists or the manner in which lobbying is conducted. That is one of the difficulties with the legislation, the manner in which the lobbying is being conducted. If there were particular elements that could be prescribed in terms of those lobbying efforts, it might make it easier and once again more transparent for Canadians to understand the context in which lobbying is done.
There are many situations that lobbyists will use, for example, sporting events, dinners and general contacts with an MP's office. They make phone calls and write letters. All those different things come into the context of lobbying. There have also been trips involved. It gets into problematic issues in respect of transparency.
Once we develop the actual game plan or the stream in which the lobbying takes place, there will be more confidence in the actual system here and how it is influenced in terms of the members and the bureaucracy or the public servants who are serving Canadians.
With respect to registration, the bill requires the lobbyist to submit prescribed information and notify the registrar of any changes to information previously submitted, including termination of lobbying activity. The onus of providing the information will fall on that individual person.
Responsibility for administration of the information, disclosure, provisions of the act and the maintenance of the public registry is assigned to the registrar of lobbyists, a position designated by the Registrar General of Canada, being the Minister of Industry. The registrar heads the lobbyists registration branch. The registrar has no powers to investigate under the act. Matters requiring investigation are turned over to the RCMP.
That concerns me. It is good that eventually some files that are not appropriate would be handed over to the RCMP for investigation. We have seen that Groupaction and several other files certainly have not instilled public confidence, but we wonder how much could actually be investigated by the RCMP with regard to its resources. That gives me some concern. If there is not some provision or empowerment in the legislation, there might be some prescreening. There might also be the situation where the registration branch would have an idea of past behaviour, symptoms of some pattern of behaviour. That would certainly be an improvement to the situation.
Simply turning the files over to the RCMP concerns me because there will not be the prioritization which is important with regard to the work that needs to be done. We do not want the RCMP having to select issues or put other issues on a lower priority simply because it does not have the background, the knowledge or the wherewithal, the means and resources, to prioritize those issues. That is a concern. The creation of a data bank, so to speak, of the ongoing issues and also of the individuals and the organizations, would be a benefit in the long run.
Another weakness is the lobbyists code of conduct. The act does not prescribe penalties for the breach of the code, nor does it specify how Parliament is to respond to a reported breach of the code. I find that problematic because once again the transparency is not there. It certainly will not lead to public confidence if we do not know where to proceed at that moment in time. That will be a big issue with our constituents especially with respect to the transparency of things.
What is helpful is that the ethics counsellor, after a breach or something has happened and an investigation, is going to turn the report back to Parliament. We have seen what has happened to several reports here. Once again this does not lead to the changes in the situation that I think we need to have happen.
With regard to improving the act, there are several things that were suggested. I was part of the process on the registration, coming into it as it was partly done in terms of committee work. There are certain suggestions that I think would be important and certainly would help out with regard to the transparency.
One that has been suggested by Democracy Watch is that lobbyists should be required to disclose how much money they spend on lobbying campaigns and their past work with candidates, political parties and governments. I think this is something that should be there and accountable in the system.
We have the data management capabilities to keep track of that. Once again, once we start to create that infrastructure as a reporting system we are going to be able to maintain it quite effectively. We will also see whether or not there are connections. Once again, connections are about transparency, which is really important. That involves the candidates, the political parties and the governments, because they are related in many aspects. The Canadian public knows there are going to be connections, especially if there is a transition of governments. Once again, there is nothing wrong with being transparent and up front about that, because people then can answer questions.
The second suggestion is that lobbyists should be prohibited from working in senior campaign positions for any party, politician or candidate and from working for the government or having business ties to anyone who works for the government. I think that is important, especially with this government where there is consolidation and centrification of power in the cabinet, which is making those decisions. It certainly is very important to make sure that people working on behalf of those individuals are doing it for sincere interest and understand that their work and commitment to the actual political process do not necessarily translate into rewards.
Unfortunately, we have seen significant examples of that not being the case, with some tremendous advantages that have happened with regard to the actual positioning out by being part of something, creating a candidate, creating a minister, or whatever it might be at the end of the day, as related to themselves.
A third suggestion is that the prohibition on lobbying the government for ex-ministers and ex-senior public officials should be increased to five years. I actually discussed this a little in committee work. Right now we have individuals who virtually can work through the public service or who can actually have represented people in Parliament and then very quickly take over in terms of a lobbying position. They literally use their vacation time, so to speak, to move from one job to the next.
I think it is important to note that when public servants and officials are working on behalf of constituents, their knowledge and information should not necessarily be transferable to advance other causes that might be against the will of individuals or competing business interests that are going to be looking at public policy and government expenditures and, more important, the movement of our democracy. It is something that could be changed with regard to the five years; it would create some type of a distancing between the individual files that they worked on and what they are actually going to be lobbying for. I know of specific situations where this has certainly created problems.
We have difficulty supporting the bill because there is going to be a lack of transparency at the end of the day with regard to instilling public confidence. We would like to believe that there would be some elements that would improve the situation. There actually are. There are some modest improvements and we believe they are going to be important, but they are not enough. This is an incredible opportunity. It is a historic change in time that we have right now with regard to a transition of leadership in the country. At the same time we are faced with all these challenges. The bill as it stands is not going to meet the test of improving public confidence in the institutions here. For those reasons, we cannot support the bill.
