Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 9th, 2012

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

We're going to Ms. Yates first and then we'll come back to Mr. Conacher.

[Prof. Stéphanie Yates]

Very briefly, I want to point out that I support what you just said. I think the symbolic aspect of the financial penalty is also important. For administrative reasons, I think that I would trust in what is done in other jurisdictions.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Perhaps I could make a brief comment.

[Duff Conacher]

Very briefly, if you don't want to come back in five years and say, we have administrative penalties now, and they're not really working, make them minimum penalties, not maximum. If there is a maximum penalty of $25,000, then you'll see the commissioner levy penalties of $500 for the next five years. Set some standards for various violations such that there will be minimum amounts paid, for sure, and require her to impose them.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

I want to add a brief comment about what you said before, Mrs. Yates, about the 20% issue.

You seem to agree with keeping a certain percentage, 20% for example, if the definition is broadened, which means that the true lobbyists, with all the work they do, would dedicate 20% of their time to it. But I have a quick question about those lobbyists who are very influential and who, perhaps with 5% of their time and with no preparation or perhaps by communicating by telephone, are really engaging in very influential lobbying. But they are not dedicating 20% of their time to it. The definition may be very broad, but yet it would mean that some very influential people are still going to fly under the radar because they are not dedicating 20% of their time to it.

[Prof. Stéphanie Yates]

All the same, it's important to mention that the act stipulates that it's either the person him or herself who reaches this 20% threshold or a group of people within the same organization. So it's cumulative. If four people each lobby for 5% of their time, the 20% threshold is reached. In that regard, the 20% proportion is clearly a rule and it can't be perfect. Perhaps it could be reduced to 15%. We should look into that. But the fact that it's cumulative makes it possible to avoid such a situation. A person who makes an important call that accounts for only 5% of his or her activities generally works within an organization where other people will also engage in lobbying activities. So the 20% threshold can be reached cumulatively and very quickly.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Your time is up, Monsieur Dusseault. Thank you.

Mr. Butt, you have five minutes.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being here today.

Under the current legislation we have a very broad definition of “designated public office holder”; it covers a whole bunch of people. In your view, is it enough? Is it too broad? Should it be more specific? Should fewer office holders be covered?

There is an argument that's made that some of us, because we're sitting on the back bench, perhaps don't have as much influence as a cabinet minister or a parliamentary secretary or people working in the Prime Minister's Office would have. Are you satisfied with the current definition of who is covered under the DPOH, or do you think it should be broader or narrower, from each of your perspectives?

[Duff Conacher]

For the purpose of transparency, I think it should be as broad as it is. And it does cover staff. That's good, because you wouldn't want to allow a politician to be indirectly lobbied by having the person lobby that person's staff and not register the contact because the registration is not required.

For the purpose of the cooling-off period, as I've suggested there should be a sliding scale. Bring some fairness into that part of the act.

It was really the only way, without going through passing a bill, that the government could deal with the issue of requiring communications to be disclosed in response to the Rahim Jaffer situation, but it was too blunt, because it then also extended the five-year cooling off period to every single MP. Again, there should be a sliding scale, based on your power and influence.

[John Chenier]

Yes, I think it should be expanded one more level in the federal public service. Right now it stops at the ADM level, and most policy analysis and development is done below that level, so most of the lobbying is directed at people below that level. You try to get to the person who's holding the pen as often as possible.

I would suggest, if I were doing it, that it should be down to the director general level and further. Unfortunately, then you start to really crowd up the registry. But certainly the director general level would be a step in the right direction.

Also, it's very unclear—to me, anyway, and I think to lobbyists as well—what needs to be reported. I think we need greater clarity about what contacts with public office holders need to be reported.

[Prof. Stéphanie Yates]

I agree with my two colleagues. From a perspective of transparency, I think the idea is not to reduce, but to keep that broad definition, at the cost of broadening certain other positions. However, it's important to take the concept of the waiting period into account. I think a five-year waiting period is extremely excessive for a political advisor of the leader of the official opposition who did not necessarily have access to privileged information. It seems essential to me to introduce that scale.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Fair enough.

We've talked a little bit about the difference between a formal, pre-arranged meeting—somebody books a meeting, they come to my office, they tell me what their view of the world is, they register that meeting, they go away—versus me casually bumping into someone somewhere: I happen to be at the same restaurant they're at, they come over to the table for two seconds and mention something to me as a DPOH.

How do you see those casual contacts? We bump into 50 or 60 people a day. I can't keep track of what everybody has said to me on every single day on all kinds of different issues in a casual sense versus a structured meeting, whether physically sitting down with me and we're going through something....

How do you propose that type of contact or communication being registered? How is the lobbyist—and if the decision is that MPs have to keep track of those as well so that there are some checks and balances, which I think some of the witnesses have said might be an option for us to look at, how are we going to keep track of all of that?

[Duff Conacher]

The lobbyist will disclose it. That's what the Internet is for. The government has just trumpeted the fact that 250,000 data sets from StatsCan have been put up online and now are searchable in broad data form so that people can manipulate them and put them into applications for mobile phones.

It's easy. If they're required to disclose all communications, these people will disclose all communications.

If you leave a loophole, the loophole will be exploited. There's a loophole left in the U.S. where you're not allowed to buy a politician a sit-down dinner. Now they go and stand at the bar and eat snack food. That's not considered dinner food.

You can't leave those loopholes open. They will be exploited.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Thank you.

Ms. Yates and Mr. Chenier, I'll allow you a brief comment, because we're over time.

[Prof. Stéphanie Yates]

The question is quite relevant. I would tend to eliminate the distinction between arranged communications and communications that have not been arranged. All communications should be registered in the registry.

I know that the fact that public office holders also have to report communications they have been party to has also been much discussed by this committee. I wouldn't try to go that route, quite simply because of the bureaucratic burden it would lead to. You are all very busy people. If you had to report all those communications, I think it would be very burdensome and would not necessarily be the best way to invest taxpayers' money.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Thank you, Ms. Yates.

Mr. Chenier.

[John Chenier]

I guess I would say you should know when you're being lobbied or not, whether it's casual or not. You're going to say that a short encounter on the street is not a lobby, but if someone sort of pins you down and for 10 or 15 minutes explains their position, whether they ran into you in a restaurant or whether they're in your office, you would know that they're lobbying.

[The Chair, NDP, Jean Crowder]

Thank you, Mr. Chenier.

Mr. Andrews, for five minutes.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

I'm going to come back to that debate in a second, but I want to finish my conversation with Mr. Conacher that we started earlier.

You said you support the recommendations the commissioner has made. They're solid recommendations. The ones over and above the commissioner...you talked about the volunteer lobbying. Is that the only one?

When you talk about volunteer lobbying, and one friend calls another friend to offer advice, do you have any evidence that this is actually going on?

[Duff Conacher]

The problem with this issue is that what's going on is secret, so everyone says it doesn't exist. There have been rumours in the past, for example, of corporations using retired executives who were no longer employees of the corporation to do their lobbying, so it didn't have to be registered. They were being paid a pension, but they weren't being paid as an employee, and therefore did not have to register those calls, even though they might have spent more than 20% of their retired time doing it.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

If one friend calls another friend, how are you going to catch that?

[Duff Conacher]

You make it illegal. That's the best you can do. You will never end either secret donations or secret lobbying, no matter what regime you ever put in. You will always have Swiss bank accounts and bank accounts in other countries with secret money in them, and you will always have secret lobbying. But make it illegal. Require all the communications to be disclosed.

The commissioner is not requiring all communications to be disclosed. That's one of the flaws with her recommendations. There's just absolutely no reason for it. A person contacts you about your decisions...and I agree with what Mr. Chenier said. At whatever level you're in, in the public service or opposition party or government, if they're contacting you about your decisions and communicating with you in any way about your decisions, require them, paid or unpaid...if it's about the enforcement or the administration or the changing of a law, whether it's 20% of the time or 100% time, require them to disclose it. That's what the Internet is for. It will be searchable and people will be able to track who—

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

As a lawmaker, I find it difficult to make a law that you can't enforce.

[Duff Conacher]

You can't legislate morality. Every law is violated by someone. If you use that argument, by analogy you would never pass any laws and would cancel all the laws that we have.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Most laws that you make are enforceable, and you can get to the bottom of something.