Evidence of meeting #23 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was work.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
No, I would not. I have to conduct all my investigations in private. A breach of a gift issue under the lobbying regime is a code of conduct issue. It's not an RCMP matter, in that particular case.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
I understand that. If a lobbyist gave a gift that shouldn't have been given, you would only notify Parliament in one of your reports, then. That would be the trigger that the—
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
No, and I understand what you're getting at.
If I am of the view that the gift could be investigated under other legislation, I could suspend and refer the matter to the RCMP. I do have an obligation to suspend anything I'm doing that I believe another authority should look into. That could happen. It has never happened, but that could happen, as well.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Of course, a public office holder accepting a gift from someone is a violation of the Criminal Code, paragraph 121(1)(c). That would definitely be for the RCMP, but isn't there still the obligation for the Ethics Commissioner to look at the public office holder who accepted that gift? Wouldn't you want to notify the Ethics Commissioner that somebody had done so?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
I'm not the one who's regulating public office holders. I regulate lobbyists. Under the—
Conservative
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
There are two sides.
Conservative
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
Absolutely.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Then there should be communication between your office and the office of the Ethics Commissioner, should there not?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
Well, I can tell you that all of us agents of Parliament have an obligation to conduct our investigations in private. Should there be a will that we do share, I even think that sometimes investigations might be more effective if we could do interviews at the same time or whatever, if in fact they're the same.
Let's not forget that lobbyists also lobby senators and public servants. I'm not the mirror image of my colleague Monsieur Dion. I have investigations where a lobbyist might have given a gift to a public servant or to a senator. It's not always a perfect match, in that lobbyists don't just lobby members of Parliament or people who are under the jurisdiction of Monsieur Dion.
For me, it's under a code. If I do think it's something under section 121 or any other, such that I see there's been theft or fraud, I would suspend and send the matter to the RCMP under that banner.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Pat Kelly
Thank you. We're significantly over time, but it was important to at least try to get an answer in the time we have. You may get another chance. We'll see.
Next it's Mr. Bains.
Go ahead, Mr. Bains, for up to five minutes.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the commissioner for joining us today.
Several years ago, your office conducted an investigation into sponsored travel. What level of compliance did you find?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
I found an almost perfect level of compliance. The current rule under the code of conduct allows lobbyists to give gifts in cases where the public office holder is allowed to accept them. By the way, in the next version, that will not be the case.
In light of that, because lobbyists were permitted to give the gifts of sponsored travel, what I ended up verifying as well was whether or not, while the lobbyists were travelling, they did lobby. When they did lobby, was it communicated on the registry? I found that it was.
Liberal
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
Well, that particular report was under the code of conduct. The gap that I found was the fact that I had to consider whether or not the person who was accepting was allowed to accept. That requires me to put myself in the shoes of one of my colleagues. That was an issue with the code of conduct.
With respect to the extent of the investigation, we were able to complete it.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Thank you.
You introduced two new departmental results indicators in 2020 and 2021 that still do not have targets for them determined two years later, according to your departmental plan. Why do you think it's taking so long?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
It's because when we issued those, we needed a full year. They will be there. Those results will be in our departmental results report, which will be issued in September or October. We needed a full year to be able to evaluate them. Then we will be reporting on them. It really took a full year. That's just because of the way the reports are tabled and prepared.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
According to the departmental plan, you anticipate an increase in staff. I think you mentioned something about that earlier. Will you be using the new staff to conduct the experiment to help innovate and find new ways to improve program delivery? Can you talk a little about that?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
The new staff will all be in the IT field and working on the registry and further developing it. Of course, we're going to continue to look for ways to make it simpler. Just last year, we were able to have the reporting done via a mobile device. Before that, someone had to be on their computer.
We are going to continue to invest in finding ways.... We've actually just issued a survey to users of the registry to see how we can make the data more accessible. We are always looking for ways to innovate. Part of the staff we are going to get will help with that, absolutely.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Pat Kelly
You have about a minute and a half left, Mr. Bains, if you have any other questions.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Okay.
You just mentioned the survey. Have those results come in?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
It was still open until.... No, I don't have the results yet. We just launched it maybe a month ago, so I don't have them yet.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Are there other experiments that you're working on, besides the survey itself?