Evidence of meeting #57 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 businesses.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
When you're contracting out services to government officials, do you have any internal protocols to declare your own potential conflicts of interest?
10:10 a.m.
Communications Professional, As an Individual
No, we don't have an obligation in that regard, so we don't have a screen in that regard.
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
For instance, if you had clients on your list who would be eligible for some funding from Ms. Ng, you wouldn't have to screen for that for her or let the minister know that it might be a potential cause for concern?
10:10 a.m.
Communications Professional, As an Individual
I'm not sure I understand the question.
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
For instance, do you have clients who have received funding from the ministry that Ms. Ng is responsible for?
10:10 a.m.
Communications Professional, As an Individual
I do not—not that I'm aware of.
10:10 a.m.
Communications Professional, As an Individual
I do not, that I'm aware of, no.
10:10 a.m.
NDP
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Okay.
In your interview with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, you stated that the 2019 contract was your agency's “smallest engagement that year in terms of contract value” and that you typically do not take such a small-scale engagement. Did you make an exception due to your friendship with Ms. Ng?
10:10 a.m.
Communications Professional, As an Individual
I think I did, because I think that when her office asked us to do that work, since I have provided her with communications advice through the years, I considered it to be something that our agency could take on, despite the fact that it was a very small project.
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
You mentioned you had quite a lot of staff hours set aside for this in a time when you had a massive demand, so you took it on because it was your friend and you thought that you could help her out. You were communicating with the chief of staff, I presume.
10:10 a.m.
Communications Professional, As an Individual
I was communicating with a number of individuals in her office.
10:10 a.m.
Communications Professional, As an Individual
The first person I spoke to about this was Minister Ng. The first person who reached out from her office was, I believe, her communications director, Eleanor, whose last name I can't recall at this moment.
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
What was the nature of your initial conversation with Ms. Ng? Maybe you were getting together for drinks and she said, “Hey, I'm squeezed” and you said, “Well, we might have a service for that”, or did she say, “Amanda, I need your help.”?
10:10 a.m.
Communications Professional, As an Individual
Nobody was getting together for drinks. There was a global pandemic, so the conversation was over the phone. She shared with me that she had been tapped as one of a few ministers who were going to take on a major communications role, given her responsibility for small business.
Initially we talked about some of the media interviews that she might do. It was at that time that her office connected with my office. When we realized that the scope of the work was going to be bigger than just advice, initially my partner and I did not want to take on the work. We felt as though we were too busy to do it—
10:10 a.m.
Communications Professional, As an Individual
—but ultimately we did it because we thought it was the right thing to do because we were a small business as well. As a small business, we felt strongly that small businesses should be able to access information that was critically important at the time on things like the emergency wage subsidy.
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
It was also something that you offered that a hundred staffers couldn't. I looked at some of the scope of work and I'm sure it is high quality—
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
—but literally this is answering questions on Twitter with some talking points that seem to be fairly germane to the everyday average type of communications that senior staffers would prepare for a ministry. Again, there were 100 communications people within the ministry.
What do you feel you offered that was above and beyond what the competencies of her team of 100 people and four staffers could offer?
10:10 a.m.
Communications Professional, As an Individual
I think that I listed all of them and I'm sure you don't want me to use my time to list them again. However, to my knowledge, the ministry staff in the minister's office—and I was once a political staffer, a ministry staffer, and I worked directly with a communications department—they were not creating shareable graphics in English and French for business podcasts. They were not setting up Instagram Lives. They were not arranging six live opportunities with the Bay Street Bull or Katie Zeppieri and Together We Rise.