Evidence of meeting #39 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was investigations.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
Speaking of the B.C. lobbying act, it's been declared a gold standard and we've heard many witnesses praise it. Could you speak to that model and whether there are elements of it that the Canadian regime could learn from and potentially implement?
Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, York University, As an Individual
That model was modernized because The New York Times took it to task. I think you don't want that.
I'm not an expert on the B.C. regime. I've not had to give too many bits of advice on it, but you have had experts here, one after the other, touting it as a place where you should be looking.
I think it's important that if you put the commissioner, Nancy Bélanger, in charge of your lobbying at the federal level and she comes in and says, “Let's look at B.C.”, you owe her the respect of looking at B.C. She's the expert.
I don't have the answers for you. I don't know exactly the ins and outs of the B.C. laws.
Lori Turnbull
I would say that oftentimes, we see the provinces taking lessons from the federal jurisdiction, especially in areas like conflict of interest. Oftentimes, the provinces are looking at what the feds are doing and it takes them a while to catch up.
It's very interesting to see the lobbying commissioner's reflections on best practices at the provincial level. I just want to stress how unusual that is. To echo Professor Stedman, if she's saying that B.C. is the model to look at, I think it creates a real need to have a look at that.
I think one of the reasons she did that is some of the clarity that's in place there. For example, there's the default registration. It's clear what the obligation is. They don't have these spaces where there's a judgment call about whether this requires registration or not. It's probably for reasons like this that she's looking at it.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
Speaking of default legislation, I'd like both of your takes on this. Do you believe registration by default for in-house lobbyists is necessary?
Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, York University, As an Individual
I don't see why you wouldn't want it. I don't like the significant duties threshold. What's the point? It doesn't serve the purpose of the act.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
What do you think is the appropriate balance between avoiding unnecessary administrative requirements within the lobbying regime, which many witnesses before this committee have testified is a legitimate activity, and ensuring sufficient transparency? How do we strike that balance?
Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, York University, As an Individual
You received a brief from our friends at Gowling that said they thought if you made people register too much, it would stop them from openly discussing, getting in there and trying to influence. With respect, I think that's reflective of who their client base is. I don't think it actually serves the regime.
I think it's easy. If a doctor is using scribes to give their notes.... There are all sorts of ways the Commissioner of Lobbying can make registration quick and easy. We heard the commissioner from Quebec say, “You can call us if you don't want to go online, and we'll do it over the phone.”
This isn't rocket science. It's not hard. I think the argument that it's too much of an administrative burden is a sign to you that the person is doing a lot of lobbying, so they're probably the person you want to capture anyway.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Al Soud.
Ms. Gaudreau, you have the floor for five minutes.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thank you very much.
I'd like us all to look at a scenario for a private contract, since this is an important issue.
Not all communications are necessarily shared, and we basically believe that the awarding of a public contract should be scrutinized. I sit on the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, and we try to shed light on all contracts.
Should the Lobbying Act, which can be very useful, be applied to this type of communication?
Could you explain to me what the situation is at the moment?
Lori Turnbull
Is this about a contract? Yes. This should be subject to the lobbying rules because it is an expenditure of public money. This is about how public money is being used for a public purpose.
If there are people trying to influence the government on who should get that contract and for what.... I understand that if you have a small contract, there's a circle around contracts that are small enough that you don't need this kind of transparency, and that's fair enough, but if you're talking about a large enough contract that it's a significant chunk of change from the public's perspective, there's nothing wrong with having transparency around it.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Otherwise, in cases where the government doesn't apply principles of transparent communication that can be examined, how can it prevent companies, which are often small groups, from clearly defining the needs of public office holders?
This kind of comes back to what I was saying earlier. They're going to model their call for tenders.
Isn't that right?
Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, York University, As an Individual
Asking questions about a call for tender that's already out there and is public would not be the same as lobbying to get that contract. Reaching out to the public office holder and saying, “Give us that contract. Here are all the reasons”, is basically submitting your tender. That would be where the line needs to be drawn. I think that's where we've been starting to draw it within this committee. It might be subject to registration.
The line we always used in Ontario was “err on the side of caution”. That's how we advised anyone who wondered if they should register. Err on the side of caution. You have nothing to lose, to Professor Turnbull's point.
Here is another example of a situation where we're looking at contracts, and maybe we didn't think about it before when we put the act together, but now it's present and it's front of mind, so I think it behooves all of you to think clearly about what you want your recommendation to be with respect to contracts.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
This is my last question.
What do you think about putting assets in trust, as the Prime Minister is doing right now?
Lori Turnbull
I'm sorry. Do you mean public office holders broadly? What do I think of blind trusts? How do you mean?
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
How is it that one of the methods is for someone to put their assets in trust, precisely so they don't have to recuse themselves and can continue to develop the market?
There's a direct link to lobbying, because I was initially talking about private communications.
Lori Turnbull
I think the point of ethics regimes and things like blind trusts and ethics screens is that we can enable the participation of people who are elected to public office and want to serve. It's not to prevent participation or create obstacles to participation. It's about enabling the participation. If we need to create those kinds of regimes so that we know the public interest is being protected from any potential private interests the person has, that's completely appropriate.
We also do not live in some kind of parallel universe where, when someone becomes a public office holder, they stop becoming a private person. That isn't true. We're not living in some kind of made-up, fairy-tale, perfect world. We have to find ways of managing the person's private interests while they have these public responsibilities, and blind trusts are a way of doing that.
We don't know when someone enters into a blind trust. The person might have sold all their stocks and you had no idea. That's just the uncertainty you have.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Committee members, we're very fortunate that we have two members from the mighty OGGO on this panel today: Madame Gaudreau and Madame Block.
Ms. Block, you have five minutes. Please go ahead.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK
Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here.
As the chair has indicated, I am not a permanent member of this committee. Nonetheless, I'm very interested in the conversation we're having today.
I happen to be one of two members sitting at this table who were parliamentarians when the Federal Accountability Act was introduced and when the Lobbying Act came into force in 2008, so I welcome this opportunity. I'm saddened to hear that a statutory review hasn't happened since 2012. I think it's important to be updating these acts as much as possible. Otherwise, you end up having to do a lot of catching up.
I want to comment on something you stated, Mr. Stedman, in the fourth edition of Global Corruption: Its Regulation under International Conventions, US, UK, and Canadian Law and Practice. I believe it was published in 2022. This can be found in chapter 11, “Regulation of Lobbying”. You wrote, “Lobbying regulation is often enacted in the wake of political scandal.” I think that is often when we start to scrutinize the laws we have in place in order to close the loopholes that have perhaps been exploited and to ensure that public confidence in some of the systems and offices we have put in place is not undermined further.
You went on to say, “Public decision-making and confidence in government stand to benefit from policy that is forward-looking and proactive, rather than reactionary.” I think that speaks to the point I just made and, hence, the need for statutory reviews.
You went on to talk about the American approach. I don't know if any questions have been asked around this before. You stated that the American approach sets a much higher standard for disclosure. What would you recommend that needs to be put into our act to try to meet that high standard?
Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, York University, As an Individual
America is a tough thing to talk about now, with its ethics laws, but the point being made was the point that we've been making today: You register when you're communicating with the government, not when you're communicating more than 32 hours or more than eight hours. You register. That's the recommendation I would come out of that with.
Thank you for reading that. That's nice. You might be the first person who's ever quoted it back to me.