Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to share the views of Lobbyisme Québec on the oversight of lobbying activities, and more specifically on the ethical rules that apply to the practice of lobbying. I humbly hope that by sharing our expertise and our research into lobbying best practices I will be able to contribute to your study.
In Quebec, the Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Act was enacted by the National Assembly in 2002. It applies to lobbying of parliamentary, government and municipal public office holders; this makes it a unique scheme with the broadest scope in Canada. The first commissioner then adopted the Code of Conduct for Lobbyists, in 2004. The code derives from the civil law and provides the general rules of ethics and conduct with which lobbyists must comply in their practice.
My presentation today is part of the well established culture of collaboration among Canadian officials responsible for regulating lobbying. That is also the spirit in which Lobbyisme Québec participated in the consultation conducted by the federal commissioner concerning the code of conduct she is proposing.
Lobbyisme Québec is very active, and has been very active in recent years, in researching and implementing best practices in lobbying oversight. In 2019, Lobbyisme Québec tabled a report in the National Assembly that proposed a reform of the Quebec legislation based on principles inspired by national and international best practices. In fact, the report attracted interest from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which in turn published a complete study of the Quebec lobbying oversight scheme in March 2022 and made recommendations for incorporating international best practices into that scheme.
On the subject of the rules of ethics and conduct in Canada and Quebec and elsewhere in the world, the legislation that provides for oversight of lobbying generally recognizes the legitimacy of lobbying when it is conducted transparently and in a sound and ethical manner. Those schemes are sometimes supplemented by ethics and conduct guidelines, as is the case in Quebec and in the federal government.
In our view, transparency and ethics are responsibilities that are shared between the persons who perform or benefit from lobbying activities and public institutions or office holders. It is therefore important to strike the right balance in apportioning those responsibilities. From that perspective, the laws and codes that govern lobbying should not, in our opinion, be used to make up for flaws in other transparency, ethics or integrity schemes, including those that apply to public office holders.
In addition, we believe that the laws that govern lobbying activities have for too long focused on the individuals who perform those activities rather than on the companies, consulting firms or clients by or for whom those activities are performed. We think that the apportionment of responsibilities is still incomplete.
Even though the federal and Quebec schemes are intended to ensure transparency in a large proportion of influence communications and have a number of factors in common, they unfortunately also share flaws that limit the scope of that transparency. The most notable example is the concept of "significant part", by virtue of which a firm's lobbying activities need not be disclosed until the point when the time spent on the conduct of those activities makes up a significant part of the job or function of the individual who performs them.
The federal and Quebec schemes also differ on certain points, in particular as regards the two cases reported by the federal commissioner and raised by her when she appeared before the committee: political participation and hospitality. The treatment of those matters differs significantly between our two jurisdictions.
However, we understand very well the federal commissioner's concerns, in that, absent a statutory revision, and considering her own situation, she chose to propose amendments to her code of conduct. The purpose of those amendments is to enable her to clarify the objectives of transparency and ethics enshrined in her act and put those objectives into practice better.
Thank you for your attention and I am entirely at your disposal to answer your questions to the best of my abilities.