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.
Conservative
Ryan Williams Conservative Bay of Quinte, ON
That's the main question. Is there any way to know the extent of foreign lobbying and foreign influence activities in Canada, if they haven't registered? Are we able to understand that extent right now?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
Right now, I certainly don't have the capacity to understand that, no.
Conservative
Ryan Williams Conservative Bay of Quinte, ON
In terms of any concerns, obviously looking at the acts of other nations.... Do we have concerns in Canada right now that this is something we have to look at sooner rather than later?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
I can have my personal opinion, but as Commissioner of Lobbying I probably don't have a position on that.
Conservative
Liberal
Ya'ara Saks Liberal York Centre, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you so much, Commissioner Bélanger, for joining us today.
I first want to commend you, as a mental health advocate myself, because the way you prioritized your team in that space is really exemplary and something we should all be proud of in terms of public service, especially during the pandemic. I would just add that anecdotal piece here.
I'm going to ask a few questions about the workplace. We'll start with this, and I'm sure this is something my colleagues in the Bloc would also ask: How does the workplace embrace both official languages, both internally and perhaps with your work outside?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
All of our employees—or most of our employees—are CCC, so everybody can choose the language of their choice when they work in our office. All of our presentations are always bilingual. I have a champion of official languages who used to work at the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages. I'm a francophone. I'm a great believer in official languages, and we do make sure that everything we do is bilingual.
Liberal
Ya'ara Saks Liberal York Centre, ON
Then you're able to fully support all organizations and individuals who come through the registry in both official languages, both in digital communication and orally.
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
Yes. Even our URL is in French.
Liberal
Ya'ara Saks Liberal York Centre, ON
That's excellent.
I like to hear that.
Moving on, in terms of workplace, management and resourcing, you mentioned earlier the need for more IT. We're in this kind of critical moment of IT staffers, more specifically data management. You mentioned you're on Twitter now and you're out there more, but you're also monitoring more. We live in this age where there's so much information and people are posting their meetings online and who they're with. Can you talk to me a little bit about that in the context of asking for more IT in your teams and how you're managing all that data in relation to tracking lobbying?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
Well, I just received money for IT and we're having a really hard time finding people. I'll just put that on the record. We just hired three, and we received the money as of last November. That is a challenging thing.
One of the persons we specifically asked for money for is in information management. She just started last month and she is there to do exactly that: train us, help us to manage all of the information that we do have in all of the systems we use. We have a registry, but we also have an investigations program, GCdocs. She's an expert in GCdocs. We are all looking forward to having her train all of our employees to make sure we keep it manageable. I used to be the deputy commissioner of access to information, so I'm very much aware of the need to make sure we keep that manageable. We're working on that too.
Liberal
Ya'ara Saks Liberal York Centre, ON
Okay. Thank you for that.
I'll touch on what my colleague before me asked about. Again, this is coming back to information and how we manage it, especially in the digital spaces that we're working in. We consume our news and our updates.... You mentioned earlier that you track media to know who's doing what and where, and that also relates to foreign lobbyists and foreign information.
Do you have strategies in place? Again, I'm asking this in terms of resourcing. The net is huge. The database is huge and in multiple languages and so on. What is the forward-thinking approach in making sure that you're well resourced to filter through all this information so that it's aligning with the registry and so you can continue to report well?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
Well, I don't know that I have a huge strategy. Right now, I rely on the people I have in the office to simply do the basics.
When we say that we look at the media, we look at the media. We start with that. We have some keywords. I might have 10 or 15 articles a day, so it's not that big. Then we go from there. We try to keep an eye out for what's going on.
As I said, we are going to be working on information management. We just hired her. We had no one. We have some cleaning up of boxes to do. We're there.
Liberal
Ya'ara Saks Liberal York Centre, ON
It's a yes-or-no answer: Would you hope to see a transition from reactive to proactive in that space?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
Absolutely, yes.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Pat Kelly
Thank you.
Mr. Villemure, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Madam Commissioner, I think that after my term as a member of Parliament, I will want to go to work for you, because there seems to be a good working climate there.
According to what you said earlier, lobbying is a way of exerting influence, it is a good thing and it must exist. I agree with you on that. However, we can see that you are setting a huge number of rules to provide a good framework for this activity.
After all this time, is lobbying well known and well understood?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
I would say that lobbying is not well understood.
I make a lot of presentations and, as soon as I say the word "lobby,” people roll their eyes. I find that unfortunate and I work hard to make people understand that it is a legitimate activity. It's the only way you can get the information you need to do your job.
So I would say that it's not always well understood. I think there is indeed an American influence that interferes with our work, but I'm working hard on that. The lobbyists who are registered in Canada know the rules. They are registered and there are not many violations of the Lobbyists' Code of Conduct.
I hope that, at some point, this perception can be improved.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Having talked about ethics for 20 years, I can tell you that there is still work to be done.