Good evening.
I thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to this bill. I'm here in my capacity as an independent journalist winding up a laborious book on lobbyists, specifically consultant lobbyists. Its main title is The Hired Guns. It's published by Penguin Books Canada Limited. In my career I've also been a lobbyist.
I'm not here to promote my book but to make a few comments based on many years of researching and interviewing the three points of a lobbying triangle: lobbyists, clients of lobbyists, and the people lobbied--public office holders.
I have some proposed changes to this bill. I will review these very soon.
I'd first like to make some general comments. My general feeling about the bill is that it is too extreme in its solutions, while at the same time ignoring other larger issues of which lobbying is symptomatic.
My feeling is that lobbyists are a legitimate part of the system but that they're at the line beyond which their activities are questionable. That line varies for everybody. I assure you, they often go beyond that line in many ways. One place to draw the line is when they aren't selling their expertise but rather their relationships.
I have a few comments about the three points of the lobbying triangle. First, lobbyists provide substance and access in varying proportions. Some most certainly are door-openers, some are very political, and some have never set foot in a political campaign but lobby with considerable expertise.
The second point is clients. If you talk to the thousands of organizations and companies that hire lobbyists, as I have over the last four years, you will hear how grateful they were to have help with the labyrinth that they say is Ottawa. I would say that 60% to 65% of clients are quite happy with their lobbyists. That's not a lot, but it's considerable.
The third point is public office holders. They always talk about the access and substance talents with a bias, of course, for the latter, but whether it is politicians or bureaucrats, many public office holders appreciate the information, the summing-up of an issue, and the industry updates that a lobbyist brings.
This applies to bureaucrats as well, who people often assume are not interested in hearing from lobbyists. Many bureaucrats actually rave about lobbyists. Of course, there are those who refuse to meet with them, too.
My point is that lobbyists have some value to the system. I want to stress the information flow role. Good public policy gets as many channels of information flowing into it as possible. A good public office holder can see a lobbyist's bias and distinguish a lobbyist who is bringing value-added from one who is just trying to earn his or her retainer and go home.
Those are my general comments.
One big picture item that your bill won't fix is the pervasiveness of lobbying, and I don't see it looking at this. The range of organizations and bodies hiring hired guns is incredible. They include hospitals, zoos, universities, ice cream companies, and stores. Lobby associations hire hired guns as well, amounting to something that I'm calling layered lobbying.
Why? This likely reflects the feeling of entitlement that probably started with the charter, but it is very much a sense of feeling cut off from government. I think your bill should try to address this better.
Now, as far as the specifics in the bill are concerned, I think banning contingency fees is an excellent idea. There is no need for a consultant lobbyist to have an incentive to help their clients.
The five-year ban should be reduced to three years, with no loopholes whatsoever. As you likely know, there are loopholes that allow a minister to use a list so that junior staffers are not subject to this ban. Political aids, no matter what their level, are privy to all kinds of information, so you need a rule that is hard and fast. In my opinion, you should eliminate these loopholes.
The ban should not apply to industry associations. There is a long tradition of cross-collaboration between associations and government. These industry associations are themselves not for profit.
Public office holders have told me how much they value the sector-specific input of associations. I've argued with the hired guns about this, but I feel the mindset and approach of associations is different and a long cooling-off period is not necessary.
Five years, I feel, is too long. It will drive the industry underground. People will find more ways to get their message across without registering, which is something that occurs today, as I'm sure you know, but not frequently. And it will prevent politically attuned people from working in politics. If you want average Joes on the Hill doing government relations, pass this bill.
Regarding the recording of names of public office holders by lobbyists, I understand that you want to set up a second registry. I can guarantee this will really tee-off public office holders and put a chill on lobbying entirely. Look at it from the point of view of a public office holder, who will see his or her name popping up on a registry just because he or she agreed to meet with a lobbyist. I suggest, instead, that you use the current lobbyist registry and have a section where the lobbyist fills in two boxes, indicating the number of political people they met with and the number of bureaucrats they met with, and perhaps the dates. That way, no names are recorded. This should be done within two weeks of a meeting.
I also suggest that a 1-800 number be incorporated into the lobbyist registry, and operate weekdays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., with live bodies willing to assist people who are having trouble with the registry. It is pretty user-friendly, but there are definite difficulties with it. Considering this is your only tool for transparency, this would be a good investment of money.
I have two more comments and then I'm finished.
The second big-picture problem is that one of the things that your proposals in this bill is trying to solve is that there is no real way to track how decisions are made in our federal government. I'm not the first to make this point. Recording meetings with lobbyists may help a bit, but one should not overestimate their role. Lobbyists do not make things happen; politicians do. Lobbyists alert, inform, and try to influence politicians, but it's the politicians who move the chess piece across the board, so to speak. Yet our mechanisms for seeing this are very weak.
Lastly, I suggest you amend the lobbyist registry, so that “hybrid” lobby firms—those who lobby on one floor, and do work for government on another floor—are required to declare the latter. This is a huge problem.
