I would start off with the caveat that in my case, my post-government employment was in academia. Leaving government service was very easy for me. Whether it was a one-year prohibition in Ontario, I had no involvement with government.
In my mind the five-year prohibition is too strict, too severe. I think that unfortunately in Canada, we don't value public service. We don't value running and serving in elected office or working in a minister's office or in the public service the way that some other countries do. I think it is a challenge to recruit good people to run for office, to serve in a minister's office, and to work in the public service.
I think it is appropriate to maintain a permanent ban on lobbying in any case in which a public office holder had confidential information or personal involvement, but things change very quickly in government, and government, as you certainly know, is very big. So the idea that somebody who may have worked in one ministry would somehow be given an unfair advantage in lobbying another ministry, I think may be more marketing to clients than reality.
So I think the five-year ban is probably overly broad in striking an appropriate balance between the need to recruit good people to run for office and serve as public office holders and fairness to those people in what they do after leaving public office.