Information & Ethics committee  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 carlo

Information & Ethics committee  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 l

Information & Ethics committee  Total transparency in the policy process would be the 15-second answer.

Information & Ethics committee  Oh, I get your drift. That is probably the thorniest problem the commissioner has to deal with. You've dealt with war rooms, working on campaigns, and being part of campaign teams. But when you get to this region where someone is a spokesperson for the party in the media, it is o

Information & Ethics committee  It doesn't matter. If you're there representing the views of the party, then you're perceived as being for the party.

Information & Ethics committee  Again, it comes back to how the commissioner interprets rule 8 under the Conflict of Interest Act. She went down that path before the election. She's been challenged on the notion that if I am a spokesperson for the party in the media, I'm not really a spokesperson; I've just bee

Information & Ethics committee  Of course you get paid by the media to do this. You're supposed to. That's not the problem. The problem isn't that the media pays them; it's the fact that they represent the party and they also lobby. They represent the party on a very public stance. Everyone knows that, and it

Information & Ethics committee  Right. It seems to me that if you want to be a commentator on political affairs, that's fine. Just don't be a lobbyist.

Information & Ethics committee  There are so many different ways in which different countries have approached this. The one common feature is that there's always resistance from the lobby community. I've been watching Europe for the last 10 years, where they have been trying to institute some sort of lobby la

Information & Ethics committee  I just want to add that it's not only “who”, but what they're doing, so it goes beyond just having their name on the registry. That's essentially what we had in 1989: a name on the registry. It's also who they're seeing, what they're doing, and why they're doing it, which is the

Information & Ethics committee  I have just two points. One, it's easier in the U.S. to define lobbying because lobbying is not tax deductible. Their national customs and revenue has defined what is lobbying and what is lobbying activity, and therefore expenses are not tax deductible. The other thing is that i

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, on all counts. All the cases that have been referred to the RCMP in the past, including the first one we referred way back in 1992 or 1993, have been dropped for one reason or another, for one technicality or another. Either it was unpaid lobbying or it was beyond the terms.

Information & Ethics committee  Very brief, the difficulty has always been to define what lobbying is. That has always been the loophole that people have used. It was initially an attempt to influence, and, therefore, for the first 10 years we had lobbyists calling to just get information—they weren't attemptin

Information & Ethics committee  I'm afraid I have to disagree somewhat with Ms. Yates on the 20% rule. I think it does have to be changed. I think it does have to be removed, and removed in such a way that we don't include all the people who are coming on lobby days, like constituents. On the other hand, it doe

Information & Ethics committee  I would also say that having the power to fine someone communicates a message to the public as well. If there's a $25,000 penalty and the penalty is indeed applied, then people say, “Oh, wow, the maximum was applied here.” But when you have no penalties whatsoever, other than a