Lobbying is on one side and we know that ethics is somewhere on the other side. To establish a balance, should we not require lobbies to be very clear as to their intentions and to provide for quite severe penalties for those who lobby inappropriately?
In the Maritimes, a wind farm project linked with family members of former Liberal lawmakers and ministers received subsidies whereas a private project did not. Was the problem with the lobbying or the ethics?
So we should certainly have much stronger legislation on ethics and somewhat broader legislation on lobbying, which would allow people to at least explain to the government how best to spend taxpayers' money.