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
There is still work to be done, absolutely.
Bloc
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
Actually, I don't know how well all politicians know my work. I give presentations to government officials, senators, and members of Parliament, and a lot of people call me and ask me to do it. I'm always happy to be there.
I think there is still work to be done in this respect, especially in terms of understanding the details of the regime. It's all very well to talk about lobbying and the Registry of Lobbyists, but it's complicated. Sometimes people don't understand what their own obligations to the registry are.
I think there is still work to be done in this respect.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Some people understand that there is a registry, but that's it.
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
Exactly. For some, that's it.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Pat Kelly
Thank you.
Mr. Desjarlais will have two and a half minutes. After that, I might have one or two from the chair. Then we'll wrap up, if there's no one else.
Go ahead for two and a half minutes.
Edmonton Griesbach, NDP
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to my colleagues' very good questions, I believe we have a good understanding of what your role is and the lobbying registry—or at least I understand much more, being a temporary member of this committee.
I want to back up to one of the anomalies that happened and try to better understand that. Your annual report, the 2020-21 report, delivered the largest average of active lobbyists in the history of the registry of the lobbyists. I can only imagine that was a big shock, given your capacity. You were probably already operating at a fair capacity, given the existing workload. Then there was a massive spike in workload.
Were you able to learn from that experience? Can we predict that there will be a continued increase in this pattern? Have you witnessed that pattern?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
In 2021, there were 28,000 monthly communication reports. In the last year, we had 24,000. So it went down a little bit, but it was an election year. Every election year, when there's a caretaker mode, there is no real lobbying that's occurring. In light of the fact that it was 24,000, even, I think we're on a trajectory. In 2012, I think there were 11,000, and we're now at 25,000. Clearly, there is an increase.
There's also, I think, a better understanding of the regime. People are showing up and registering. We get a lot of calls asking, “Should I register?” As much as we may not be out there engaging so much right now with all Canadians, I think the word is getting around. People are calling us to make sure they don't run afoul of the law. Nobody wants to end up on the front page of the news or in a file at the RCMP.
I do think that the workload is not going to reduce.
Edmonton Griesbach, NDP
In terms of the pattern of workload, of course there are years we can predict that workload decreasing, as you mentioned, with the exception of last year. Without that exception, we can probably predict at least a near pattern or estimate that there is an overall increase.
When was the initial amount in terms of a workload? I'm sure we would have to anticipate that in terms of how much work you're doing and in terms of the size of the financial envelope you have in order to conduct that work. When was that original amount?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
It was in 2008.
From when the office was created until just recently, it was the same budget.
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
Wow. Exactly.
It requires work to evaluate and do a submission. We did one in 2019. I arrived in January 2018. It took me a bit of time to get my footing. Then we did a request for the IT. It's grand time that we asked for more.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Pat Kelly
Thanks. That got us into a little bit of overtime there.
I want to squeeze in a quick question, if I may. We could probably have a whole study on your 11 recommendations, but let's look at the first one. I guess I've long held that many regulations that are designed to protect the public wind up protecting incumbents in business. In other words, a large, well-capitalized organization can handle compliance a lot better than a smaller, newer one.
On the expansion to require the reporting of all activity and to do away with the threshold around the amount of activity that you do and whatnot, can you comment on whether or not there are really some winners and losers and whether or not compliance ends up making it more difficult for a small enterprise to make its case to policy-makers than a large incumbent organization?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
I guess it's about how much weight you put to the value of transparency. To me, it's up there. To me, the burden of going into a registry to put in who you're going to communicate with, and about what, is not that high.
Right now, because the threshold is where it's at, there is a lot of lobbying that's occurring that we don't know about. With the threshold of 30 hours a month, you can make four very important phone calls that have a great impact that Canadians don't know about. To me, transparency is more important than....
I put the threshold at eight hours in three months. It could be eight or it could be 10, or it could be whatever policy decision we make. You could still be doing those two or three phone calls, but at the end of the day, a lot of organizations and corporations possibly do 20 hours a month and they still don't need to register. That's too much lobbying that goes unreported, as far as I'm concerned.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Pat Kelly
It's perhaps not quite the same point, but yes, I get the matter of what the threshold is.
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
Yes. Exactly.
Conservative
Liberal
Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
Is it possible for me to slip in one question, following a question from Mr. Desjarlais?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Pat Kelly
All right. I did offer one more time around.
Just make it a quick one. We do have other committee business, and on a Thursday, travel is an issue.
Go ahead.
Liberal
Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
First of all, thank you for your question, Ms. Bélanger.
In response to Mr. Desjarlais, you said there wasn't a lot of lobbying during the election period.
Is there not lobbying that continues to be done with officials or non-elected people?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
In fact, there is the transition period, which corresponds to a suspension period. There may be lobbying of officials, but not of members of Parliament.
The House of Commons being the highest institution, this is a time when there is less activity.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Pat Kelly
With that, Commissioner, thank you.
We will now suspend while we go in camera.
[Proceedings continue in camera]