Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on May 16th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to call the meeting to order.

This is the legislative committee on Bill C-2, meeting seven. The orders of the day, pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, April 27, 2006, are Bill C-2, an act providing for conflict of interest rules, restrictions on election financing, and measures respecting administrative transparency, oversight, and accountability.

Our witnesses today are from the Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists: Mr. Nelson, who is the registrar, and Bruce Bergen. Good morning to you.

We have also the Canadian Society of Association Executives. With us are George Weber, who is the chairman of the board, and Michael Anderson, who is the president and chief executive officer.

Finally, we have, from the Government Relations Institute of Canada, Leo Duguay, president, and there is someone else, who may or may not be involved.

[Leo Duguay, President, Government Relations Institute of Canada]

And Lisa Stilborn, the vice-president.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, and good morning to you. Thank you all for coming.

Normally what we do, as you know, is we have some preliminary comments, and then members of the committee would have an opportunity to ask you questions.

So I would look first to Mr. Nelson.

[Michael Nelson, Registrar of Lobbyists, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll make some brief comments.

Members of the committee, Mr. Chair, I'm very pleased to be here today. As a point of departure for questions you may have for me regarding the lobbying provisions in Bill C-2, I thought it could be useful to you if I were to provide a brief synopsis of the operation of the current legislation, from my perspective.

First, I'll offer some statistics from the registry of lobbyists. Members will recall that the Lobbyists Registration Act defines three categories of lobbyists: consultant lobbyists, who are hired by individuals, businesses, and others to communicate with public office holders; in-house lobbyists for corporations, who are employees of entities that operate for profit; and in-house lobbyists for organizations, who are employees of organizations that operate on a non-profit basis. There are various provisions in the act that require registration in one of these categories, but the most important of these are that communication with public office holders takes place and that there is compensation involved.

As of May 15, 2006, there are 4,752 lobbyists registered. The breakdown of this number is as follows: 699 consultant lobbyists, with 2,330 registrations; 1,764 in-house lobbyists working for 274 corporations; and 2,289 in-house lobbyists working for 376 non-profit organizations. This breakdown shows that although it's often consultant lobbyists who have the highest profile in the media, there is actually a great deal of variety among those required to register under the act. I mention this because I have observed that the act has broad application.

For example, measures in the act that may have been intended to target the activities of former public office holders who lobby on behalf of large corporations can also apply to a staff member at a university who is discussing policy with Health Canada, or the CEO of a ten-person company who is applying for financial assistance from ACOA.

The registry itself is available through the Internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There is no charge to access it and staff have been working hard to improve the search capabilities. The registry is well known among lobbyists and it is the most used registry by public office holders.

That said, my assessment of awareness of the act, how it operates and who needs to register is that it is low. With public office holders in particular, I see a need to clarify the requirements of the act through education and awareness. I am convinced that this will go a long way towards increasing compliance with the legislation.

For example, even with the limited awareness and education efforts my office has been able to undertake over the past several months, combined with the higher profile of lobbying in the media, I know that there are more public office holders checking the registry before they agree to meet with lobbyists. More education will pay dividends in registrations. So will more enforcement.

As members are perhaps aware, there is virtually no evidence that there are consequences for ignoring the Lobbyists Registration Act or the Lobbyists' Code of Conduct, no convictions, no fines, no jail terms, no code of conduct reports tabled in Parliament.

While the current act provides significant powers to the registrar to conduct an investigation under the Lobbyists' Code of Conduct, there are virtually no powers currently provided that would enable the registrar to gather the evidence required to either launch a Code of Conduct investigation or to construct a solid base from which the RCMP can investigate possible breaches of the act.

I will stop here, Mr. Chair.

I look forward to contributing to your deliberations on this bill. I hope to see a legislative outcome that will help to ensure that confidence in Canadian federal institutions increases to enhance accountability and transparency in the lobbying of public office holders.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Nelson.

Mr. Weber.

[George Weber, Chairman of the Board, Canadian Society of Association Executives]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and honoured members of the committee.

Good morning. Bonjour.

The Canadian Society of Association Executives, commonly called the CSAE, welcomes this opportunity to comment on Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act, and is pleased to participate in its review on our members' behalf.

As the chairman mentioned, my name is George Weber. I'm the current chair of the CSAE. In my day job, I'm the executive director of the Canadian Dental Association. With me this morning is Michael Anderson, the CSAE's president and chief executive officer.

The CSAE is the professional organization of 1,600 men and women who manage many of Canada's most progressive trade, professional, occupational, philanthropic, and common-interest organizations, which in turn consist of 14.5 million individual and two million corporate members. An additional 600 business members that provide services and products to the sector also comprise an integral part of the CSAE's membership.

The CSAE and its member organizations support government initiatives to strengthen the rules and institutions that ensure an increased transparency and accountability to Canadians. We share those goals, and with the exception of two concerns are pleased to support the overall legislation commonly short-titled the Federal Accountability Act.

Our first concern relates to the restriction on lobbying activity that enshrines a five-year prohibition on lobbying activities for ministers, their staff, and senior public servants. We believe that government officials should maintain the right to move freely from government service to the not-for-profit sector in view of the unique relationship that non-profit organizations currently enjoy with the federal government.

Senior staff and CSAE member organizations who lobby government are defined by the Lobbyists Registration Act as in-house organization lobbyists. They lobby government officials, and their primary focus is to seek common good for all their constituents.

It is our position that eliminating this five-year moratorium or replacing it with a more reasonable period would ensure the continuing maintenance of a unique exchange of information and consultation that currently benefits both the government and the sector. Failure to remove this time constraint will ultimately dissuade government officials from working for not-for-profit organizations that provide societal benefits to Canadians.

Our second concern is the obligation to report all contacts with designated government officials. The act requires that in-house organization lobbyists record all registerable activities--with certain exceptions, such as chance encounters that may take place with senior officer holders--including who was met and what was discussed, and lobbyists must file regular reports with the registrar. And it will be monthly, as noted in the proposed legislation.

The CSAE is concerned that new and more frequent reporting requirements may lead to situations where contact with government officials is severely curtailed or avoided altogether. The free flow of information--research, knowledge, and consultation--between the government and the sector will be curtailed, and as a result, the informed decision-making process that currently exists will be weakened.

Will recording contacts with senior public office holders truly advance the public policy process to address issues in the public interest?

As you know, many not-for-profit organizations currently register twice annually--and Mr. Nelson has just noted the numbers, which are larger than for corporate or consultant lobbyists--through the Lobbyists Registration Act registrar. They provide updates on the issues and subject matter discussed as well as the government department or institution contacted.

We are concerned that increasing this compliance requirement will prove to be an onerous, time-consuming burden that will result in a loss of productivity for the many not-for-profit organizations currently facing resource constraints. As an aside, we should be aware that one-third of our membership have one to four staff members, so we're just adding an additional burden to their already heavy workload.

We encourage the committee to maintain the current reporting status for in-house organization lobbyists.

Honoured committee members, on behalf of the members of the CSAE, I would like to thank you for the time you've allowed me to express some of our concerns. We would be pleased to respond to any questions or points of clarification you may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Weber.

Mr. Duguay.

[Leo Duguay]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee, we are pleased to appear before you here this morning. I am the President of the Government Relations Institute of Canada and I am accompanied by our Vice-President, Lisa Stilborn.

Members, we represent the lobbyists you don't read a lot about. The members of our association are registered lobbyists, and you already know who we are, what public offices we've held, who our clients are, and what policies, rules, regulations, or legislation we're trying to effect. You already know quite a bit about our membership.

Our board has an interesting cross-section of pretty much all the people who lobby in Canada. We have people on our board who represent Bell Canada, the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers, the Credit Union Central of Canada, and a bunch of others who, like me, are consultant lobbyists. We represent in some fashion almost all the people who are registered lobbyists.

To begin, I want to express our strong support for the principles underlying Bill C-2, namely transparency and accountability. Since its inception, our association has supported every attempt to make lobbying more transparent. We are supportive of almost all the elements of the changes that you're proposing to strengthen the Lobbyists Registration Act.

Before I get into specifics of the act, let me go back to the preamble of the Lobbyists Registration Act as it was initially formed. If you accept these principles, then you'll easily be guided to what can and should be done.

The preamble said:

WHEREAS free and open access to government is an important matter of public interest; AND WHEREAS lobbying public office holders is a legitimate activity; AND WHEREAS it is desirable that public office holders and the public be able to know who is attempting to influence government; AND WHEREAS a system for the registration of paid lobbyists should not impede free and open access to government....

This preamble reinforces the government's ongoing position that the lobbying profession is legal, ethical, and in the public interest—and we couldn't agree more.

We also support the majority of the changes in the act, including stronger investigative and enforcement provisions. The vast majority of the people we represent are fully compliant with the law. It's been our position for some time that more resources should be dedicated to enforce this law so that the actions of a small number don't tarnish the reputation of the whole industry. As a matter of fact, I would point out that none of the people involved in the Gomery commission had in fact registered.

Clearly, I can only say to you that we represent the lobbyists who register. We all know that over time there have been some who don't register. But I don't think the concept of resolving the problem of those who don't register by adding more requirements to those who do register is going to be of much help to you.

We support the creation of an independent and empowered commissioner of lobbying who is accountable to Parliament.

In terms of the other changes to the act, we really only have two comments that we would like to make, and then I'd like to propose an amendment.

On the five-year rule, everyone in industry understands that a cooling-off period is necessary. Will a five-year period be much better than a four-year period, a three-year period, or a two-year period?

The question that you are required to answer, as we are, is this. Will this prevent good and experienced people from entering the public service? That's the first part. As George Weber pointed out, will this prevent good public servants from working for good corporations, good associations, or good lobby firms that service good corporations or good associations?

The second one is the matter of recording contacts with senior public office holders and the concept of who, what, where, and when. If you ask your colleagues, I think you will find that our concern is legitimate. The question we ask all the time is this: Will this put a chill on meetings that are in the public interest? Will civil servants who should meet with clients we represent, with associations, and with corporations say they don't want to meet with people because it may be misconceived?

The more telling problem is this: Will this compromise commercial confidentiality? In my career, and others can attest to this, we have had examples of confidential conversations with deputy ministers and with ministers.

I'll give you two examples. When a corporation is considering a sensitive merger or acquisition, there have in the past been discussions with senior officials about the possible implications of these mergers or acquisitions and other more technical matters, particularly affecting drug companies or new vaccines on the market. To these, competitors should not be privy.

Least of all is the matter of everyone wanting to know who's doing what in Ottawa. There's a lot of that, and not all of who wants to know and what they want to know is in fact in the public interest.

You may want to ask yourself these questions. Who is it wants to know with the greatest of detail what a company and a deputy minister talked about, when it's already on the public record which policies, regulations and rules, and legislation these companies are trying to affect? When is the public interest to know balanced with privacy and commercial sensitivities? The other one, which we can only dream of as being a horror, is what level of speculation will follow disclosure, and how will everyone respond to the inquiries? What great number of access-to-information requests are we going to get after the tabling that company X met with department B? How many of these kinds of requests are you going to face?

Clearly there are some people in this community who want to know everything. They want to know everything that everybody ever says, and if you made a presentation concerning this legislation, they will follow up these normal requests by asking what the deputy minister said, and what you said, and what the deputy minister said in response.

The other ongoing consideration for you is that we want to ask you to consider your role in this process, because a lot of you are integral to public policy. It's interesting. I was once a member of Parliament, so I know a little bit about the kinds of things you do. We are not in competition with you. As a lobbyist I don't compete with members of Parliament; I do a very different job. You are faced, on a constant basis, with hundreds of inquiries in your offices. I represent five to seven or ten clients in a given year. I have the time to spend two days with a company to discuss matters with them. As my colleague has pointed out, associations have similar amounts of time. You don't have that amount of time to devote to a particular file. Very often the first thing we do on any particular level of interest is to deal with the local members of Parliament on that issue.

We want to move forward and ask you to consider whether the burden of these regulations will be increased for all registered lobbyists, for not-for-profit lobbyists, and for organizations and corporations. We want to propose that a lot of things have not yet in fact been absolutely settled.

In relation to one section--the section dealing with filing a return 15 days after the end of the month to describe the who, what, where, and when of the meeting--it seems to me that better legislation considering privacy requirements and commercial sensitivities would be for Parliament to adopt a law that says these things shall be done--none of us is opposed to doing them--but instead of writing down all of the details of how it should be done in the legislation, you might want to say that the individuals shall file returns in such fashion and time as are set out in the regulations and leave it to the commissioner of lobbying to determine whether it should be three months or whether there should be some exemptions for commercial sensitivities. We're very fearful that if you write the rules in as much detail as you have proposed in this legislation, then common-sense things and sensible requests to keep a matter confidential for two weeks or three months may not be possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Perhaps you could wind up, Mr. Duguay.

[Leo Duguay]

That's my presentation, sir. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

[Leo Duguay]

Your sense of timing and mine are pretty good.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I hope that wasn't a coincidence, because I didn't mean it like that. Thank you.

Mr. Murphy.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses.

This is an open question to each of you. I'm very concerned about the type of communication and reporting. To people out there, to our stakeholders, the word "lobbyist" hasn't got a clear meaning, and it probably has a pejorative one. Thank goodness I'm a lawyer and a politician, because I know how to deal with pejoratives daily.

I think people in the country are wise enough to know that talking to your MP, your mayor, or your city councillor on the steps after church, at a hockey game, or in the supermarket is a form of lobbying. It's just done by private citizens who vote.

What has been done in the past in the Lobbyist Registration Act is to keep this lobbying—politicking, if you like—when it's for remuneration, which none of us deny, in the open: make it transparent. That's what you, as professionals, are all about.

My concern is that by making these amendments to the Lobbyist Registration Act—in fact, just calling it the Lobbying Act, which is the amendment--we will significantly cut down on the legitimate type of communication that can take place.

In the Ottawa Citizen yesterday, Prime Minister Harper may have been a guest at the CFL before he was Prime Minister; Carol Skelton was at the Grey Cup as well, for Telus; and Jay Hill was there, or somewhere, for Bell Canada. Who is to say they weren't just talking about the hockey, baseball, or whatever?

Do you envisage that if the Prime Minister or Mr. Poilievre or Mr. Tonks goes to a hockey or football game--I bet you there won't be too much of that, by the way--and they pay for their own ticket and their own drinks and refreshments, but there is a pre-arranged discussion or phone call, is all of the discussion reportable that takes place at a hockey game or at the bottom of church steps, if you happen to bump into your MP, even though you're a paid lobbyist but working on a file?

How will that stultify the public process? I'm not going to say that it's easy to sell this if it's Exxon trying to drill holes in the north of the country, as much as if it's the Sierra Club saving some birds on the east coast. I mean, it's a laudable goal. How much is it going to hinder you, when I presume these things are in process, if you have to put down every detail of a discussion and report it, as required?

How much will that hinder your job, Mr. Duguay?

[Leo Duguay]

It's not what it's going to do to me and to the people I represent. We're quite prepared to provide whatever information you ask for. We have done that since the beginning, and we do it now.

The question really isn't about us. It's about the people we represent and the clients that Mr. Weber's group represents. As you started out saying, there's a myth out there about the pejorative lobbyist, but the people I represent aren't pejorative at all. You know a lot about them already, and we're prepared to give you whatever you ask.

The myth is that because I know somebody or because I talk to somebody, we must be doing something bad. In fact, in most of what we do, we go to the government—sometimes to you—and point out that the advice you're getting from the bureaucracy has these holes in it. I think the balancing of the advice you get from the bureaucracy, which is closed and has its own responsibilities, and the advice you get from us, and particularly from our clients, is necessary.

We can already report that the mere thought and talk of these kinds of regulations has made a lot of senior civil servants leery of talking to anybody. In our view, it is not in the public interest in the long run that legitimate conversations between citizens, which is really who we are, and the government be curtailed.

[George Weber]

Mr. Chair, may I add a little to that from a different perspective? I'd like to follow up on that.

I don't know whether all the members of the committee are aware of what we're already reporting every six months, and I believe there will be barriers. Every six months, we briefly describe the organization's business activities and lay out the subject matters and areas of concern. We lay out the particulars: prospective names, government institutions, and the funding we're getting—that's all in there now. In this new bill, that's being asked for monthly with much more detail. I don't understand why more detail is necessary beyond this.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Just briefly on another topic, and I think it might be--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

May I interject?

Some of you have given us documentation, and some of it is in just one official language. We will distribute all of your material to the committee when it has all been translated.

Mr. Murphy, go ahead, please.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Nelson, you gave us the overall scope of the number of lobbyists, in-house and consultative. There are amendments here pointing towards eliminating percentage pay for successful lobbying. How extant is that? Maybe you can't tell me, but what amount of remuneration is not on an hourly basis?

[Michael Nelson]

On the form that currently has to be filled in when you register, there's a tick-off box that says, “I'm receiving a contingency payment”. We could do a search on the registry. It would take a little bit of time to find out exactly how many, but from what comes across my desk, I would say it is not a large number. Right now there's just an indication of whether or not there is a contingency fee payment.

Contingency fees are not banned currently. There are, with respect to certain types of government contracts we're aware of, regulations in the government that prevent companies from entering into contracts with lobbyists who are receiving contingency fees, transfer payments and that sort of thing. Right now they're not banned.

I could certainly get back to you with the statistics on that, if you'd like. I could do that.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Madame Guay, go ahead, please.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the witnesses who are here with us today. We have had to limit the time for each group to 40 minutes, and I regret that we could not provide more time for you.

I am aware that you have submitted briefs. Do they contain any proposed amendments? It would be important for us to know that.

[Leo Duguay]

I proposed in my oral presentation that the future commissioner be given responsibility for establishing regulations.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Duguay, you are a former member of Parliament. You therefore understand our role here. Under this legislation, people would bring their complaints to their member of Parliament. The MP would weigh the merits of the complaint and decide whether or not to submit it to the commissioner. What do you think of that approach? I personally think that it politicizes the complaint resolution process.

In the case of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, people make their complaints directly to the commissioner. As a member of Parliament, I am very uncomfortable with the idea of receiving these complaints. I would like to hear your opinion on this.