Information & Ethics Committee on Sept. 22nd, 2011

[Karen Shepherd]

It fluctuates. If you look at the one-pager I provided to the committee, it's down slightly. But it does go down during the summer months, because if they're not lobbying or their undertaking has finished, they de-register. But over time it seems to be staying roughly at about the 5,000 mark.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

You also indicated to us that you had streamlined the process of registration and taken it from 20 days to three days. That's remarkable. How did you do that?

[Karen Shepherd]

I'm actually quite proud of the team. First of all, when the Lobbying Act came into force there was a lot of education that had to be done on the new requirements, for lobbyists and even for staff. So there was a lot of time spent going back and forth on corrections and a lot more time spent on having to explain the legislation and help the lobbyists register. But in addition to that, the team did an internal review of how things were working and determined that doing electronic e-mails, for example, would be faster. Also, there were improvements put into the LRS so that when a file comes in it's automatically assigned to the responsible adviser, as opposed to having to have somebody else open it and decide who to give it to. So they've been finding different ways to improve.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Congratulations on that. That's great.

[Karen Shepherd]

Thank you.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

We also know about the designated public office holders and the five-year prohibition. You said you had received 17 requests and had granted four. What are the reasons for granting exemptions? Can you broadly tell us?

[Karen Shepherd]

Sure.

They must not be contrary to the purposes of the act. So some of the things in the act include, for example, whether they were acting a short period of time, doing administrative duties only, and also maybe a student program or something.

One of the things the act does is to specify that when I grant an exemption from the five-year prohibition, I'm required by legislation to post it on my website. So all four are posted on the website. The reasons for the four exemptions I actually granted included that one was for a short period of time and another involved administrative duties only. In one case the individual's employer was not going to gain an unfair advantage.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

You said your priority was originally to develop the automated case management system for 2011-12, but that it's being delayed. Is that still going to be done or is it off the books?

[Karen Shepherd]

What happened is that being as small as we are, with 28 individuals, we're dependent on having services provided by other providers. Currently, our IT is supported by another department. We were hoping to move forward, but the department has indicated that it can't post a particular project that we were looking for. We were hoping to go with SharePoint.

Given the current consolidation that's going on within IT right now, that's affecting whether I can even move to another department, and will do so until that is determined. So internally we are still looking at whether there is a case management system we can put in place.

That said, the directorate of investigations has done quite a bit in consolidating all of our files onto an Excel spreadsheet. It's not the ideal way that we would like to manage the files, but it has done a lot to help us manage and keep track of them.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

To help us better understand the process, could you tell us whether you assign an investigator to a complaint right away when you receive it, and then does an administrative review start? Is that correct?

[Karen Shepherd]

Yes. Actually, I have the ability under my legislation to initiate something if I see a possible contravention of the act or the code. So if I see something, then I would assign it to the directorate of investigations.

And, yes, we open up an administrative review first. That's my fact-finding stage, which allows me to determine what other consequences or compliance measures may be necessary.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Can you tell us of any specific ways you think the registration system could be simplified any more than it already is? I know you've gone from the 20 days to the three days. Do you think you're at the optimum right now?

[Karen Shepherd]

The team has done quite a bit for improvement. You always want to say there's room for improvement. So we will look at ways through the technology. We're spending time now on the search functions to see if we can do those any better.

We've actually established client service standards as well. We focused on that. The idea there is that aside from putting the registration up on the system within three days, we will acknowledge e-mails within 24 hours; that there will be a response to an inquiry within two days, unless it's more complex and we say that it will take us 14 days to respond; and that phone calls will be answered by the adviser. With somebody on the phone, we're looking at 80% of the time....

So we're working on different ways to improve.

[René Leblanc, Deputy Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying]

It's within 30 seconds.

[Karen Shepherd]

Within 30 seconds. Thank you.

Not 80% of the time, but within 30 seconds. That's an important factor.

[The Chair, NDP, Nathan Cullen]

Thank you very much, Ms. Davidson.

We'll turn to Mr. Andrews for up to seven minutes.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman

Welcome, Ms. Shepherd.

Getting back to the five-year prohibition on lobbying by former MPs, my question is in regard to the former MP Stockwell Day and his opening of a non-lobbying government relations firm. Your office was asked why it would not investigate that.

Could you please explain why you would not look into this matter of a former MP starting a government relations firm within months of leaving office? It would look to be, obviously, some form of lobbying. Obviously, Stockwell Day thought enough to ask the Ethics Commissioner whether it was ethical, so why wouldn't the Lobbying Commissioner look into this as well?

[Karen Shepherd]

Actually, I'm not sure if you're referring to a media article or what. The office has not said that we would not look into any particular issue. In fact, I take all possible allegations or contraventions quite seriously and look into them. What was probably said was that I don't comment on specific files, because I conduct them in private.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Okay, so are you looking into this particular file and this particular case?

[Karen Shepherd]

Because it is in the public domain, I will respond to that. I did open an administrative review and determined that there was no breach, and I closed the file.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

So you opened a review—

[Karen Shepherd]

Yes.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

—and you determined that it wasn't lobbying. Did you interview the former minister to get to the bottom of what exactly a non-lobbying government relations firm is?

[Karen Shepherd]

We did everything necessary to satisfy ourselves that we could close the file.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Okay. Maybe you could tell me the difference between a government relations firm, a consulting firm, and a lobbying firm.