The point is that you wouldn't want to do one without doing the other. I understand.
My own impression is that the public has a real misperception about what government relations people and lobbyists actually do. In some ways I think lobbyists are given far too much credit for how legislation and government policies are actually adopted. In other ways I don't think you're given enough credit for raising the awareness of public office holders or MPs about things that might be going on in the Canadian economy or things such as unintended consequences of legislation, which does happen. I think these things are invaluable. I will say that your profession is certainly misunderstood.
I think there was a consequence, and this is something I've witnessed over time, of the rules the way they are, but I don't know that there's a perfect way of doing it and I don't want to suggest to you that there are any changes one way or the other coming in this regard.
In any case, as we were working to become more transparent and to make sure that government was accountable to Canadians, these rules were adopted; an unintended consequence was that staffers--in our case, Conservative staffers--who were in place prior to the Federal Accountability Act were suddenly in huge demand. Everybody wanted to hire them. Some of them do very well, because they weren't covered under the act and they have no more connection in this current government than people who perhaps were working in government relations in previous governments prior to our taking power. After the last election, everybody was racing around looking for anybody who had any kind of ties into the NDP, because they were suddenly the official opposition. Government relations people were out buying orange ties and trying to see if they could get a table at Brixton's. There was all kinds of weird stuff going on.
