Evidence of meeting #20 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was lobbyists.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:35 a.m.
President, Government Relations Institute of Canada
Keep the 20% rule for everybody else, because that was put in place so when the local farmers or the fishermen come to talk to you about the one issue once a year that they want to address, they are not captured and don't need to go through that onerous process of registering and reporting.
11:35 a.m.
President, Public Affairs Association of Canada
We have the same sense of agreement. Our members—Stephen has done some research on this—have a slightly varying view of the 20% rule, where we have said we actually think it should be limited for all in-house lobbying.
Stephen, I don't know if you want to expand on that.
11:35 a.m.
Stephen Andrews Vice-President, Public Affairs Association of Canada
Yes. It's about just making sure that the rules are consistent and easily understood across the board among all organization, in-house, and consultant lobbyists. I think Charles's point about the exemption for the small individual who might lobby once in a blue moon.... The issue is also a question of fairness. Someone who has worked within a system here very briefly could be captured under the five-year ban in the same sense as, say, the minister of a particular portfolio, even if that particular individual had no background or involvement in that particular portfolio. There's a question of balance. In the interests of transparency, we should eliminate the 20% threshold across the board.
11:35 a.m.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
Okay. One of our witnesses yesterday talked about unpaid lobbyists versus paid lobbyists. If you're unpaid, you could wheel a lot and have personal influence for yourself as well. Is there something there we should be concerned about as well?
11:35 a.m.
Treasurer, Government Relations Institute of Canada
We support the current approach, which is to apply the act to people who are professionals communicating with the government as part of their jobs. Imagine if everyone, paid or not, either as a private citizen, academic, union member, or a seniors group had to register as a lobbyist before they could call their MP to talk about changes to the tax code, copyright, collective bargaining, or whatever. To us, that's not lobbying. That's citizenship. The objective of the act was not to keep a complete record of all MPs' interactions with all their constituents who may approach them as individuals. It was to keep a record of professionals who communicate with the government to try to effect change as part of their jobs. We think that's the right approach.
11:35 a.m.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
Okay. Going back to the conversation regarding “oral, arranged, not arranged”, you're right, there is confusion.
Since I've been involved here I've learned that if I call you then that doesn't need to be reported, even though we'll get into the conversation regarding X, Y, or Z.
I'm trying to tie this in to make a complete circle. What requirements are on the public office holder to report? I know we have to keep track of what we do, but there's nothing on us that we have to report to the commissioner so that someone can match things up. Should we look at closing that full circle and putting more onus on the public office holder to report to the commissioner so that he or she can do a check or balance?
In my mind, it's how we catch the ones who don't play by the rules. I think anyone coming before this committee and doing lobbying, as you've all said, is playing by the rules. It's the idea of catching the lobbyist who doesn't play by the rules.
11:35 a.m.
President, Government Relations Institute of Canada
For whatever rules you put in place, there will always be people who will not follow them. We can't do anything about those guys. By and large, the majority of our members follow the rules, and if you were required as members of Parliament to start reporting all of that, the administrative burden on you would be outrageous.
For us, it's pretty simple right now. I do maybe a dozen meetings in a busy week, if that. How many people do you meet with in a day?
11:35 a.m.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
We have a schedule and everything is scheduled or arranged. Is it too much trouble to fill out a cue card?
11:35 a.m.
Treasurer, Government Relations Institute of Canada
I think there are three ways to look at whether you should be reporting a meeting.
You can look at it in isolation. As a stand-alone concept, having both sides reporting the same meeting would make it easier to see if somebody didn't report it. That would be a plus.
Second, though, to come back to the circle you're trying to draw around all the recommendations on the table, if you put that recommendation alongside all of the others, such as “all oral communication should be reported; you don't have to be paid to register; it doesn't matter who initiates the communication”, you get the sense that you're looking at a major bureaucratic nightmare: MPs and lobbyists making records of and reporting every conversation they have about government with everyone they meet, anywhere, no matter what the context.
The third way to look at this is from a governance point of view. Charles is right. The commissioner's office would need to be greatly expanded. You'd be looking at an exponential increase in the number of reports coming in to that office. For every report coming in now, you'd have two. And if you put those other recommendations on the table, for every report coming in now you might have ten.
There was a well-received report last week on how to reduce red tape. I don't see how that recommendation supports this.
11:40 a.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Jean Crowder
Thanks, Mr. Andrews.
We'll now go to Mr. Albas for seven minutes. And welcome to the committee.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate that.
And thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
On the subject of Ms. Karen Shepherd, the Commissioner of Lobbying, she has also suggested that we allow the commissioner to continue an investigation of a breach of the act even after her office has referred it to the RCMP. To me, this seems like it might be a breach of the separation of powers of relevant officials.
I would like to hear from each group as to what your thoughts are on that.
11:40 a.m.
President, Government Relations Institute of Canada
If there's a breach and she refers it to the RCMP, they're the ones who are best to deal with that. They have the resources and they have the experience; OCL does not.
11:40 a.m.
President, Public Affairs Association of Canada
We would agree with that completely.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
Have you found in your work over the years that some individuals or companies who should have registered under the Lobbyist Act were not? How pervasive is the problem?
11:40 a.m.
President, Government Relations Institute of Canada
We don't know that because she doesn't tell us who she's investigating. We don't know what's going on over there. I mean, I have a situation where a lobbyist, a member of our association, came to us to say they received a letter before Christmas saying “You have been cleared of the investigation we have been doing on you for the last seven years.” That person was never contacted, never talked to. They did not know they were being investigated. It's a bit of a star chamber over there, and I don't know what's going on.
That's fair. It has to be done in private. You can't go advertising what you're doing in terms of investigations. But if you have been investigated for seven years and they have never contacted you, I find that a bit of an odd situation.
11:40 a.m.
President, Public Affairs Association of Canada
I think the challenge is that if you have rules and we as lobbyists abide by them and we tell our members to abide by them, if there's a perceived infraction, or if someone says to the commissioner, “We believe so-and-so might be in jeopardy of infringing a rule,” I think it is incumbent on that person to let the lobbyist know. They can explain themselves, as opposed to having an investigation and a number of other people and sources being told and it maybe getting to that lobbyist third- or fourth-hand. It gets to be quite stressful.
When the rules are applied to some organizations or individuals, at the end of the day the common courtesy would be to let that person know if there might be a perceived infraction of those rules. That's what we're asking.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
It does sound to me like that may raise a challenge, because if someone is new to the industry, is not following the rules, and is under investigation, and they continue to not act according to the rules, that may actually create more hassle down the line.
Now going back to some of the things that MP Scott Andrews mentioned earlier, as well as Mr. Stephen Andrews mentioned earlier on transparency, one of the fears you have is that you create a system that does not achieve the public goal of being a transparent system so that people know the system has checks and balances. But I'm also worried about Mr. Patrick's comments about creating a bureaucracy, because we all know that red tape does end up costing more.
The Commissioner of Lobbying recommended that we broaden the scope of the Lobbying Act by removing the provisions regarding “significant part of duties”. We discussed this a little bit earlier. This would allow the government to include companies and individuals who claim that lobbying is not a significant part of their duties but is still relevant.
Do we see a possible large increase in costs as a result of this recommendation? I do know that red tape, when you add it up, does cost everyone more, especially if it doesn't add value.
11:40 a.m.
Treasurer, Government Relations Institute of Canada
It wouldn't just capture all companies that have cause to call their MP once a year; it would capture anyone who contacts government in a professional capacity—charities, local health authorities, the president of the university in your hometown, labour organizations—anyone who contacted you, even if they conduct a registerable activity. If they're talking about legislation or policy, or if they're following up on a grant, once a year they would have to register. This would lead to an exponential increase in the number of registrations being made with the commissioner and in the number of monthly reports.
The red tape reduction report came out last week, and had a one-to-one rule—this is Minister Bernier's report—where if you create a new regulation or if you expand a regulation, you need to figure out which one you're going to get rid of.
All we've seen in this process is recommended increases in the regulation. We haven't seen any indication of what the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying would propose to eliminate by way of regulation in order to comply with that report's recommendations.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
Just so I get my thinking straight, if we were to follow through with this line of reasoning, then someone who is involved in a United Way campaign, who just wants to update me as to their activities, that would fall under this as well, possibly?
11:45 a.m.
Treasurer, Government Relations Institute of Canada
Possibly. You have to go to the list of registerable activities. Are they talking about legislation or policy? If they're coming in to talk about government financing of a United Way campaign, absolutely. If you're talking about the awarding of a financial benefit of any sort, then you need to register, unless—currently—you do it less than 20% of your time.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
Excellent.
Just going back to the RCMP, if we were to increase the scope of lobbying commissioner investigations, how could we ensure that the RCMP and commissioner's office do not fight against each other?