Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee on this review.
After writing about lobbying and lobby legislation in Canada and elsewhere for more than 20 years, I've come to the conclusion that reviewing lobby legislation is a bit like taking a long trip with a carload of children. Sooner or later—hopefully later—the inevitable cry of “Are we there yet?” drifts up from the back of the car.
This review of lobby legislation marks the sixth or seventh time—I forget which—that the question “Are we there yet?” has been posed since the legislation with respect to lobbying was passed into law in 1998.
Each review has come to the same conclusion: “No, we are not there yet.”
Part of the reason for that answer is that it has never been clear where the legislation was supposed to take us. We didn't know where we were supposed to go, or what the purpose of lobby legislation was.
Perhaps the ultimate destination was clear to some, but even then, the way to get there remained a mystery, perhaps because the road to get there hadn't been built yet. Maybe it still doesn't exist. It's like the New England saying “You can't get to there from here”.
What have been the course corrections so far? We're requiring more precise, accurate, timely, and current information from lobbyists in each iteration, we've sharpened the definition of lobbying, and we've lengthened the time to charge those in violation of the act from six months to two years to ten years.
The purpose of these revisions has been to ensure compliance by changing the definition and lengthening the time to prosecute violations, and to increase transparency. As a result, we do know much more than we knew back in 1998 about who is attempting to influence government.
Yet with all this time and effort, the registry still cannot give a definitive answer as to who is lobbying for whom and for what ends. Perhaps it may never succeed in this regard. Often attempts to strengthen one aspect of lobby legislation entice lobbyists to make use of hitherto unused or unknown avoidance tactics.
For example, in the U.S., the last major overhaul of lobby legislation by the previous Congress, spurred on by the Abramoff scandal, led to the disappearance of 3,000 people from the registry of lobbyists, but not, I might add, from the D.C. community of lobbyists. Part of that disappearance from the roster was also due to the Obama administration's effort to ban lobbyists from sitting on advisory boards and panels.
In Canada it would appear that strengthening post-employment guidelines may have led to more use of the 20% rule to avoid registering as lobbyists, and avoiding the post-employment ban in the process.
Let me say for the record that I concur with the suggestions or recommendations put forward to this committee by the Commissioner of Lobbying, Ms. Shepherd, on December 13.
I think the 20% rule should be suspended, but I also think it would be necessary, as Ms. Shepherd suggested, to craft some regulations to prevent a deluge of new registrations. You would not want the removal of the 20% rule to force all those many constituents and others who troop up to your offices day in and day out in the increasing number of lobby days to register as lobbyists. On the other hand, it is important to ensure that while the registry should be free of these foot soldiers, it captures the activities of all those involved in organizing these and other grassroots events.
With respect to the enforcement of rule 8 of the code of conflict, which is perhaps the most controversial measure, I think it critically important that this review provide the commissioner a clear and firm mandate in carrying out this difficult task.
I've been a student of public policy making since the 1970s, and I have worked on and off in various government policy units until 1986. When we began publishing The Lobby Monitor in 1989, I was aware that having a lobbyist who was known to be in regular contact with the prime minister or the minister working on behalf of a client involved in a file would have a major impact on how those inside government would handle your file.
There is no doubt in my mind that the lobbyists' known connections to political parties matter. They matter to the client, and they are often used as a major marketing tool. They matter to the public officials involved in the file. If they are not astute enough to recognize that, they shouldn't be where they are. They certainly matter to the public in terms of their perspective of how government works.
We will never be able to sever the connection between the world of government relations and politicians, but it is essential that we moderate it.
In my view, the unhealthy situation that existed between 1986 and 2009 was untenable. While it is true that balance may be reached in the internal decision-making process by equalizing opposing lobby forces, that does nothing for the public perception that hiring friends of the party is the way business is done.
In other words, you would often have the situation whereby people would say, “They have their lobbyists and we have ours, and it equalizes out”. Well, that might equalize out on the inside, but from the outside there's still the perception that everyone is hiring friends of the government or friends of politicians to get things done, and that is not a healthy perception.
Lobbying legislation is only one of four pieces of the whole that governs the conduct of government. The others are the conflict of interest code that guides the conduct of public servants, the Office of Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner in the Commons, and the Office of the Senate Ethics Officer. All of these are essential to the health of our political institutions. Proper enforcement of rule 8 is, in my view, necessary for the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying to fulfill its part in the overall ethics mandate.
Thank you. I'd be happy to answer any questions later.