Evidence of meeting #5 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was lobbyist.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Registrar of Lobbyists, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists
Pierre, do you want to speak to that?
Director of Operations, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists
I would say that right now we're running on time. We passed the peak of renewals about a month ago.
Mr. Nelson mentioned that renewals tended to peak because they were all synchronized when the modified act came into force. That is slowly changing over time. They're being dispersed over time.
Also, with the new rules, people did not always register as required under the act. When people do that we have to go back and ensure completeness. That increases the time. They then have another 30 days to come back with final answers. It's not necessarily a question of the office being late. There is a learning curve here on the part of lobbyists. I'd say overall we're doing much better than last June, which is encouraging.
That being said, if you will allow me, going back to the presentation, for each category of lobbyist, the delay, the time to register, is not the same. For consultant lobbyists it's only ten days, but for a lobbyist who works for a non-profit organization, they have 60 days to register. This is how the legislator has set it, to recognize the various situations. There may sometimes be an impression that an in-house lobbyist is late registering, but it's just that the act allows for a different period for registration, depending on the category.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
I have two questions.
The theme of the material on page 11 is that the person must be paid. Mr. Nelson mentioned that you don't go after volunteers.
If a corporation that operates for profit, for example, were able to convince a volunteer to lobby in a volunteer capacity for the corporation, that person would not have to register. Is that correct?
Registrar of Lobbyists, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists
There does have to be payment, but payment doesn't have to be money. If they were convincing the person to volunteer in the expectation of maybe getting a job with the corporation....
Registrar of Lobbyists, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists
It is extremely hard to prove. This is a very difficult area to get into, and it's difficult to get to the intention of people or what might happen in the future.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
I could see it even more so in a non-profit entity where this would clearly attract people who are very zealous about the particular thing they're interested in and would be very happy to volunteer to speak to members of Parliament or senior bureaucrats, but there's no way of catching those people. Perhaps there's no reason to catch them, but there is no way to catch them because they're not being paid. I'm wondering what the theory is. Is the idea that the whole thing is the exchange of money, otherwise everything goes?
Registrar of Lobbyists, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists
For the two types of in-house lobbyists, the idea was that they were employees of the corporation. We have a situation that could be considered as similar for outside directors of associations or companies like this, because sometimes they're only compensated by their travel or meal costs. In that case they are not required to register. However, if they're paid—and we do have some instances where they are paid more than those basic travel and food types of costs—Revenue Canada considers that as income and so do we. We require those people to register as consultant lobbyists for that company.
You're absolutely right, the idea, as far as I understand it, when the act was put together--and a lot of lobbying legislation in the world is like this--was that the exchange of money or the idea of some kind of compensation was going to happen a lot more often than being able to convince somebody to lobby for you on a volunteer basis. I guess they were just looking at the general case as opposed to what was perhaps considered the exception.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
My second question, before I go to Mr. Peterson, has to do with the re-registration. I'm new to this committee. What was the rationale for requiring renewals--not re-registration--every six months when, for example, any modification to the information must be done within a month anyway? If I were to register my name, all of my information, all of my clients—and I've got ten of them and that's all I do—and my address remains the same, my name remains the same, my clients remain the same, my contacts remain the same, why do I have to re-register every six months? What's the point? If I have a positive obligation to register if there's any change, that makes sense.
Registrar of Lobbyists, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists
There is some variation among the categories about what they have to declare when they do the re-registration. Part of it was just to make sure that the data has some integrity.
Along with the renewal is the idea of telling us when you quit, if you're no longer on the assignment. If we look at the statistics and we graph them from the period 1996 to around 2004, there's a very suspicious straight line of consultant lobbyists. We terminated everyone when we started the new amendments to the act last year, and the lobbyists that were sort of here on the graph, if you will, were the same as they were here. What this delta was underneath this curve was all the lobbyists that didn't bother to de-register.
Part of the reason for keeping it at every six months that people have to check in is just to make sure that the registry is up to date and accurate, because the evidence has shown an awful lot of lobbyists that just said, well, I'm done--and this was in the hundreds--and they weren't, so they looked like they were active.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
But they already would have had a positive obligation to notify you that they were done because that's clearly a modification to the information that's on file.
Registrar of Lobbyists, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists
Exactly, and they just didn't do it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
So rather than prosecute them, you make everybody else renew every six months.
Registrar of Lobbyists, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists
Well, with respect, it's Parliament that decided this, and it is a feature of many legislative regimes.
The way I would look at it, the argument that you're making seems to make more sense for the in-house lobbyist, because when they do the renewal they do a six-month prospectus to say that for the next six months here are the lobbying assignments. Shell Canada, for example, has quite a long registration that says that over the next six months here is where we're going to be talking to government, and here is who we talked to for the last six months. What you've got every six months is sort of a forecast and a verification of where they're going to be lobbying.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
I just comment that to me, you don't want to impede free and open access to government. When you have to start forecasting six months in advance what the heck you're going to be talking about with whom, to me, that's beginning to impede free and open access to government. But that's just a new member talking.
Mr. Peterson.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
Mr. Chairman, I tend to agree with you on your point about the six months.
As you pointed out, sir, if your assignment is finished there is the obligation to notify. An educational program could certainly do that, and maybe even some fines for not showing that the assignment has been completed. I think this would be a simpler system. I think there's merit in looking further into this.
If I'm a director of a corporation and I'm paid to attend five or six board meetings a year, say, and that's all I get, but I undertake then to go and lobby Ottawa on behalf of that corporation, I'm not being paid for that lobbying, and it was in addition to what I was paid for, so I would not be a lobbyist that would have to register.
September 18th, 2006 / 4:20 p.m.
Registrar of Lobbyists, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists
I just want to make sure I get the facts of the situation. Are you an inside or an outside director?
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
I'm an outside director and I get paid say $25,000 a year to go to five board meetings.
Registrar of Lobbyists, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists
Okay, so that would be more than your regular travel and that sort of thing. We would consider that to be a consultant lobbyist if part of your duties were communicating with the government.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
No, my duties are only to go to the board meetings for the $25,000, say, but then I see an issue where I feel it's important that Ottawa hears my view, so I volunteer to go down to Ottawa.
Registrar of Lobbyists, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists
Are you talking to Ottawa about what's good for the company?
Liberal
Registrar of Lobbyists, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists
Would you be doing it if you weren't a director of the company?
Registrar of Lobbyists, Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists
I would have to say that's a grey zone. If somebody complained to us about that, we would look into the matter to see how likely it was that there was a connection--you can see why this is a dicey business--between your....
I would like to point out something that we may not get to in this presentation, with respect to the current law and what Bill C-2provides, because this has not been given very much press anywhere. One of the things that Bill C-2does is expand the investigative powers of the commissioner of lobbying so that people can be compelled to provide documents and can be subpoenaed when there is no investigation taking place under the lobbyists code of conduct.
Right now, I rely on everyone concerned to voluntarily provide information, which is not a very good way of doing things. In the case you're talking about, simply determining exactly what the facts of the matter are could take up an awful lot of time. It's a dicey business.