Information & Ethics Committee on May 12th, 2023

[Nancy Bélanger]

For the seven requests I made in the budget, it's $400,000. It's half of what I asked for. The four positions I am looking to fill are in my public affairs policy shop, in order to have a backup in policy; a backup in communications; an editor-writer type of person; and a position in the corporate area. Right now, I have an executive director who's in charge of corporate, and I have no one helping him with access to information and HR. This person would be in that role.

Those are the positions right now that we would be looking for.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Just so I can make sure there's nothing lost in the nuances of a word, when you say “backup”, do you mean there's enough work for two workers? If there's enough work for two workers, I wouldn't necessarily consider them backup. When I hear “backup”, I think “redundant”. Would there be an expansion of the roles?

I heard in your presentation, Ms. Bélanger, that you really support your workers and you know they're working hard. Could you clarify that “backup” might not be appropriate?

[Nancy Bélanger]

Yes, I hear you. I do not want to talk about redundancy. Maybe it's not backup. It's backup in the sense that when someone is away, the work stops. That's the type of backup I'm talking about. Is there enough work for two? Yes, there's enough work for three or four, but we make choices.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

If you had the four other positions, what would they be?

[Nancy Bélanger]

It would be a second position in communications and a second position in policy.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm sorry. I meant that you requested seven, but you only got four.

[Nancy Bélanger]

Yes. The four of those—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

What would the other three be?

[Nancy Bélanger]

The other three would have been one person in finance and the other two in investigations and compliance work.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

How much would those two additional compliance support workers have provided in terms of the flexibility of your operational plan?

[Nancy Bélanger]

Well, right now we have 37 ongoing files, which we're splitting among three people. If I would be able to add two more workers, obviously we'd be able to spread the wealth a little bit better.

The problem right with my compliance work, and the reason I chose not to fill those positions, is that we have a number of vacancies. I figured I might as well fill up those vacancies first and see how that goes, and then in the future we may ask for more.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

The departmental plan states that due to your office's “limited budget”, you don't have “the flexibility to devote a fixed percentage of program funds to...innovation in program design and delivery.”

What is the impact of this limitation on your organization?

[Nancy Bélanger]

It's probably that I feel we're often very reactive instead of being able to be proactive.

I have an education mandate. We are asked to do a lot of presentations. I want to be out there and reaching out to organizations, but I only have one person doing it all. I think that's the impact. I have staff who are innovative and have great ideas, and then we ask who is going to do it.

That, to me, is the—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Is there a logic that if you had more outreach and more education, you might have fewer complaints and investigations? Is that a safe—?

[Nancy Bélanger]

Possibly. I'm hoping that there would be more individuals ensuring that they register when they should be, but they don't know that. Yes, maybe it would have an impact on compliance.

However, when you think that at any give time there are 7,000 lobbyists and I have 37 compliance files, you can see that in general people are abiding by the rules.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Green and Ms. Bélanger.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

That concludes the first round.

We should have time for five minutes, five minutes, two and a half and two and a half. We're going to need some time at the end to deal with matters.

We are going to start with Mr. Kurek. Go ahead, Mr. Kurek, for five minutes.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses. I appreciate your coming before the committee.

This is to the folks from the conflict of interest office.

Mr. Barrett highlighted some of these things, but when it comes to the commissioner being the one who pulls the trigger on launching an investigation—and then the other various aspects of what that looks like—over the course of the last number of months, have there been files put on the commissioner's desk that need to be looked into more closely or that may warrant an investigation?

As with all MPs, I've worked with folks from your office and have been very pleased and have appreciated the services that you provide. However, have there been files placed on the desk of the future commissioner that need to be looked into?

[Melanie Rushworth]

As a general rule, the office doesn't talk about investigations while they are under way or before they are launched. We wait until there is a report published at the end of an investigation process.

I will say that the office absolutely continues to pay attention to the work that is being undertaken and to media queries at different places where we look for information that could be of interest to a future commissioner, but the work absolutely continues for us in making sure that people remain in compliance with the act and the code.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Thank you, and I appreciate that, but there seems to be a wall that's been built from the ability of being able to actually see the important work that the commissioner's role is able to do, so I think it highlights the importance of ensuring for the fact that Canadians need to be able to trust their institutions.

Ms. Bélanger, I appreciate your coming back. I know you've been here a number of times.

You referenced a little bit about the foreign agents registry. If you're lobbying in Canada on behalf of a grocery store or a food bank, I know that folks can go online and search through the lobbyist registry. There are interactions with public office holders and ministers and the whole deal. There's a ton of information there.

Certainly I've heard from many of my constituents about the idea of a foreign agents registry. If you're in Canada and working on behalf of a foreign state, in particular a foreign state that's hostile to Canada's interests, it seems to be common sense that there would be a mechanism in place.

I know you were asked a couple of questions about that before, but I'm wondering if you could expand on your thoughts in that regard.

[Nancy Bélanger]

Yes, absolutely.

I'm a great believer in transparency. If the registry helps with any type of transparency with respect to foreign agents coming into Canada to do whatever they want to do....

Currently, though, on the registry for lobbying, in the scenario you just provided, they would be required to register on the registry of lobbyists if they're communicating on behalf of a foreign agency. We currently have on our registry some consultants who are representing foreign countries, so there will be an overlap.

However, as I was saying, I think the registry for foreign influence will have to.... What's the purpose? The success of that registry will depend on how it's designed and what it aims to cover. Is it just communications with all of you? Is it communications with Canadians? What are the requirements? There will have to be no thresholds. The requirements will need to be very clear, because there will be a lot of organizations, corporations and individuals who will go under the radar if there is a threshold. There should be, as well, enforcement mechanisms and strict sanctions—

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

If I could, only because my time is quickly disappearing—

[Nancy Bélanger]

Yes, absolutely

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

There are examples in other states, including some of our allies, of models we could look at. The lobbyist registry is different, but there are similarities.

I'm wondering if you could comment. In your work, is there somewhere we could look to say, “Hey, that's a best practice that we could model after”?