Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 21st, 2010

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Now, in the annual report you talk about a decrease in the number of registered lobbyists. Is that observation affected by your comments this afternoon saying that there was an error in the statistical information that has been provided? Does that affect that section or that analysis of the annual report?

[Karen Shepherd]

No, it doesn't, actually. I felt it was important to retable it, especially with the act up for review and in terms of transparency, to have the actual number of registered lobbyists properly accounted for. But in terms of the reasons why it is still down, they're still valid.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Have you done any specific analysis of that? You make some assumptions or some comments on that, but do we really know that it's the economic downturn? Could it be that people are going some other route, that people have gotten frustrated and given up, that they've decided internally to reduce the amount of time to under 20%? Do we know anything about that, really, or are these observations just off the top of our head?

[Karen Shepherd]

It's been in doing the outreach activities. So for example, as I indicated, one of the outreach activities I did was to the chamber of commerce. During that discussion it validated one of the things I'd been hearing, which is the fact that companies were deciding to rationalize in terms of how many people were actually speaking to government. It's sort of the same thing if you think about media. You usually don't have the whole office or building speaking; you limit it to one or two people. They were finding that with the monthly communication reports and wanting to stay in compliance they were limiting the number of people actually speaking.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

In the annual report you talk about 239 individuals, corporations, and organizations that were subjected to compliance verification. How were those 239 selected? How does that process work?

[Karen Shepherd]

One of the things that I instituted in the office was what we call a media monitoring. So on a daily basis we're checking just to see references of lobbying. And in further verification, one of the initial checks is to determine whether the individuals or corporations are registered. If they are registered, it's great, and as I've noted, 90% of them are. If they're not, further validation is done through other publicly determined sources to determine, upon further research, if they are mostly volunteers or if they're actually lobbying the provincial governments and not the federal government.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

The 239 was, and maybe I'm wrong about this, roughly 10% of the total number of active registrants. Is that a target number, or did it just happen to be from your media monitoring that you came up with the number 239?

[Karen Shepherd]

Yes--it's not a target.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Okay. I just wanted to ask about workload. With all the new folks, the 400 designated public office holders who have been added, does this add to your workload?

[Karen Shepherd]

In terms of the monthly communication reports, those go right up onto the system. We verify, and the system can handle the additional communication entries that are expected with the members of Parliament and senators now being included. In terms of the compliance side, I'm still expecting that we'll be able to do the same percentage of sampling. The other requirement for the act would be the requests for exemption, but given the number of public office holders, there have only been, as I said, 16 requests for exemption. At this point, I'm not seeing an issue there.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Siksay.

Mr. Albrecht, seven minutes.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here today, Commissioner.

I think there still is in a lot of our minds a fair bit of confusion. It's a very complex act and so on. And in addition to that, you comment on page 4 of your report today about the recent amendments of the designated public office holder regulations. Further down on that page, you indicate that the changes occurred on September 20 of this year, and you say the subcategory was expanded through regulation to include members of Parliament, senators, and the staff working in the office of the leader of the opposition in both the House and the Senate.

Then in the next paragraph, you go on to say that members of Parliament have always been public office holders under the Lobbying Act. Then, further, on the next page, page 6, you go on to say in the fourth paragraph down: “The Lobbying Act introduced a five-year prohibition from lobbying for designated public office holders once they leave office.”

Then you go on to say that this prohibition now applies to you. So in some ways, I'm getting a confusing method. On page 5 you said that as MPs we've always been designated public office holders, yet you talk about an expansion on September 20. You talk about how we're now subject to something we weren't before, so I'm confused. Help me.

[Karen Shepherd]

I'll do my best.

The Lobbying Act covers an individual who is paid to communicate with a public office holder on a registrable activity. A public office holder has always included all members of Parliament, government institutions, or those working in government institutions, GIC appointments, etc.

The difference is that when the Lobbying Act came into force, a subcategory was created of those public office holders to represent the high-level decision-makers. In creating that monthly report, for example, it showed not only who the lobbyist was lobbying in terms of initial registration, but who they were communicating with on a monthly basis, which is the reason, I understand, that Parliament added the designated public office holder category.

Members of Parliament were not previously included in that subcategory of designated public office holders, but on September 20, through regulation, the government included members of Parliament into the designated public office holder category.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

So a designated public office holder is different from a public office holder.

[Karen Shepherd]

It's a subcategory of the public office holder. If the universe was public office holders, that is everyone--

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

All of us. Only the designated ones--

[Karen Shepherd]

--then there was a subcategory of designated public office holders.

In addition to having an additional reporting requirement of having to file a monthly communication if they had an oral arranged meeting with that individual, the other thing that was done through the act was that anybody in that designated public office holder category was subject to a five-year prohibition on lobbying activities.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Correct. And we are also subject to that now.

[Karen Shepherd]

You are now, as of September 20.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I think the bottom line is it would seem logical that with the September change it would increase the number of registrations on the part of lobbyists to public office holders. I guess my question is, how has the September change created an increase in workload for your office?

Secondly, as a public office holder who's now under the same rules that designated public office holders were previously, do you have recommendations for me as a member of Parliament? You said in your statement that it's not really required but it's best practice. What kind of record-keeping should we do? Do you have a template, for example, that may give some commonality across the offices of members Parliament so that we're following the same format?

[Karen Shepherd]

Regarding your first question, in terms of workload, I'm not expecting to see a difference in initial registrations being filed, because that requirement for filing has been there. I do expect to see an increase in communication reports, but the system can handle that. Because those go automatically onto the system, there's no additional verification of those by the office. As to the sample reporting that we do on a monthly basis, I'm expecting that we can continue to do the same percentage of verifications.

In terms of your second question, what I found in doing the outreach activities with the 20 most lobbied government institutions was that there was a variety of methods being used to keep track of records. It depended on the departments or what seemed to be working. Some departments had created templates; others were choosing to use their calendars. Your calendar is probably one of the easiest methods of recording who you're meeting with, and then you can put in the subject matter.

When conducting verifications, during a monthly verification I'm not asking to verify anything more than the lobbyist is asked to report on. For example, if they were coming to speak to you and the subject matter is health, there would be more details in the initial registration.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

It wouldn't be up to me, as a member of Parliament, to keep a record of what the actual conversation was; it's only a matter of who was there and what the general subject matter was.

[Karen Shepherd]

All I would be coming to you to verify is what is in the monthly communication.

Now, the difference could be if I were conducting an administrative review or an investigation. In that case, I would probably be asking for more details. But in terms of verifying the monthly communication, I don't ask for anything more than what the lobbyist is asked to report on.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Okay.

Do I still have some time?