Information & Ethics Committee on May 14th, 2021

[Nancy Bélanger]

I'm currently preparing our annual report. Over the course of the year, the lobbyists we've contacted have said that all parliamentarians have been very accessible.

Lobbyists had to change the way they worked, and they held a number of meetings with the Zoom platform. These meetings had to be recorded in the Registry of Lobbyists, because they were arranged in advance and oral presentations were made. The explanation I was given was that because members don't spend as much time travelling, they have become more accessible thanks to the tools in place for parliamentarians.

In addition, several groups had to talk to all of you about programs that need to be in place during the pandemic. People wanted to know what the priorities were and what was being done to ensure that Canadians survive the year, which has been very difficult for everyone.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Have you made a list of the departments or agencies that are most popular in terms of lobbying requests?

[Nancy Bélanger]

Yes, we have.

The House of Commons is number one. That means that members of Parliament are approached by lobbyists most often most. The Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development is number two, and the Department of Finance is number three.

I should note that the information is available in the Registry of Lobbyists. The list will also be included in our annual report, which we expect to release in the next month.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Do you have any recommendations for parliamentarians? Is there anything we should pay particular attention to?

[Nancy Bélanger]

Of course, I would really like you to read the 11 recommendations I made and for us to have a chance to work on them someday.

I would also recommend that you take good notes when you meet with lobbyists and inform them of the rules that need to be followed, since they may not be registered and they may not know them. Tell them to call us. If they don't comply with the Act, they are committing a criminal offence. No one wants to be investigated by the RCMP. Tell them to contact us if they are not registered.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Is the individual contacting us required to tell us that they are in the registry? Sometimes people who come to us are members of an association, and we can expect them to talk to us for five to 10 minutes a year. Afterwards, we find out that they were in the Registry of Lobbyists, but we didn't know it.

Are they required to tell us before they speak to us?

[Nancy Bélanger]

According to the Lobbyists' Code of Conduct, they are required to tell you who they represent, on whose behalf they are meeting with you. If they are consultants, they are required to tell you who their client is.

If you're going to meet with members of an association, I recommend that you make sure that your team provides you with the necessary information about them, whether they are in the registry.

I also recommend that members of associations make sure they are registered if they are not.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Thank you very much.

I have no further questions.

[Nancy Bélanger]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Mr. Gourde.

I'm going to turn to Mr. Sorbara now, for the next five minutes.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome, Commissioner Bélanger.

I took a look through the 2021-22 departmental plan. I had a chance to read it over in the last little bit. Perhaps I will go from that angle, because I think my colleagues have asked other questions and I don't want to repeat.

On literally page 1 in the key highlights—and I'd like you to expand, if you could—it states,

enhancing the Registry of Lobbyists to make it easier to use—from entering data to finding information

compliance work that fosters [transparency] and engage more Canadians

Can you expand on what that actually means or what the intent is, please?

[Nancy Bélanger]

Certainly. The registry is an automated system that, in the last year, wasn't really accessible through a mobile, so now we've done that.

When our registrants go into the system, they have to enter the data all the time. One of the things we're looking for is maybe having a system in which they could use the data they've entered before rather than having to re-enter information.

We are looking at possibly doing drop-down boxes of the names of designated public office holders. Right now, when they start typing a name, a name will pop up and they'll pick it, but then if someone misspells or something, there could be an error in the system in how a name is displayed.

We're looking at ways for individuals to be able to issue reports a little bit more easily. A lot of journalists use our registry, so we're trying to look for ways to enhance how they can report on the registry.

There are a lot of little things we can do to make it even more user-friendly, and that's what we're looking at.

If you want to me address enhancing awareness—

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Please.

[Nancy Bélanger]

—in the last year, we have updated our registry. We're always looking for ways to improve our tools and the documents that we provide. We have just set up a little survey to ask people how they find our material, whether it's useful, and what else we can do.

We never say no to any invitation. I'm doing one at six o'clock in the morning at some point next week, I think. We never say no. We have done an average of one per week.

Because we're so small, we're trying to find ways to be more proactive, but it is so difficult, because we're much more transactional and reactionary than being able to be proactively out there. One of the priorities this year will be to come up with a communication plan so that we can possibly reach out to even more Canadians so they know the Lobbying Act and what we do, and they can use the tool of the registry to see who's talking to their members of Parliament.

There's always work to be done, but we have to take it one step at a time because we're still small. We do what we can.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

I want to thank you for what you do. I can understand the 24 planned FTEs for the next three years, from 2021 to 2022 to 2023 to 2024.

I'm glad to hear of the increased digitization, at least for the information you would collect on that basis. This is my second term as a member of Parliament. Even in my first session—I sat on the finance committee—I think I was the third most visited MP at the time. I really enjoy meeting with stakeholders because I get to learn, right? You learn. You learn about issues. Whether they are mortgage brokers, chicken farmers or a business association, you do get to learn, and you understand the issues that different parts of the economy are facing, different sectors and everything. I've always thought of that aspect of being a member of Parliament, especially as a policy wonk or someone who likes to learn policy, as being very important, but there's a flip side to that, which is that these individuals, because of our roles, need to register.

I do find the balance to be a good one, if I can say that. My interactions, if I can personalize it, with the office have always been great—and I'm going to keep it that way, of course—and productive, but at the same time, all of us have a duty of responsibility to maintain as office-holders.

In terms of teleworking, because you comment on it in the departmental plan, how has it changed your work? Has it made it more productive? Are you finding your employees overworked or stressed? We've been hearing, especially for professionals, that emails keep going at all times of the day.

[Nancy Bélanger]

With a team of 28 employees, you get to know your employees very well. They are so dedicated and so professional. Everyone needs to step it up. There is no depth; everybody wears a multitude of hats, but no one wears the same hat, so it's demanding on them. In order for them to be productive and meet the demand the way we had to this year, because on all fronts our numbers went up, they had to work extremely, extremely hard.

It has been tough to work from home, mainly because I think that these Zoom things, with the power outages and all that, become inefficient after a while, and people miss.... I feel that sometimes people don't bother calling an employee to possibly chat about something instead of—

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Commissioner, my time is up, but I'm in total agreement with your final thoughts there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Mr. Sorbara.

We're going to turn to Madame Gaudreau for the next two and a half minutes.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Bélanger, of course we won't have time to talk about all the recommendations in a few minutes. However, I did analyze the Quebec recommendations on lobbying. I'd like to know what you think of the recommendations and if they inspired you in formulating your own.

[Nancy Bélanger]

Thank you for the question.

The recommendations did inspire me, in part. I have a very good working relationship with Mr. Routhier, Quebec's Commissioner of Lobbying. We keep in touch. I believe I have inspired him and he has inspired me.

Our lobbyist registration regimes are not quite the same. So we need to look at how we can each improve our own.

I looked at all the registration regimes across the country as a basis for my recommendations.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

As you have seen, I'm concerned with ensuring vigilance and neutrality.

In the 11 recommendations, is there anything that doesn't directly call for action, but invites further exploration to avoid any form of interpretation or subjectivity?

[Nancy Bélanger]

The Lobbying Act is intended to regulate lobbyist activities. One of the recommendations proposes that any activity or communication that meets the criterion defining what a communication is under the Act, for example, should be automatically recorded.

Currently, there is the issue of interpreting what constitutes a significant part of someone's duties. A subjective analysis takes place to determine whether the activity is indeed a significant part of someone's duties. I believe that should be abolished and replaced with automatic recording.

So that is a bit of a higher standard.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I heard you say that you wish we could work together on the 11 possible recommendations. That resonates with me, because our role on a parliamentary committee can involve working on something for a long time. I won't go into what we went through with WE Charity. We said it was better to be proactive. Now is the time to act. So it would truly be an honour to continue working with you in the near future.

[Nancy Bélanger]

It would be an honour for me as well.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

It would be a pleasure.