Government Operations Committee on May 1st, 2014

[Paul Baker]

Well, we've spent a fair amount of time looking through the data, and the vast majority of the data doesn't implicate anyone. Much of the data is about a non-profit hiring a lobbyist to help them get a building permit to add an addition onto their building, or businesses that want to get building permits, or someone who has done a study and they want to influence spending by the city. It's that type of thing. There's very little that indicated any kind of corruption.

One of the main problems we wanted to answer was, Walmart had been trying to get a Walmart in Chicago. They were basically banned from Chicago, and so they found an alderman, or someone who was running to become an alderman. They thought that if they could get him to support Walmart.... They gave him a lot of campaign money. Between them and the lobbyists, and other people, he got something like $300,000 to run his aldermanic campaign, and his opponent only had about $30,000. We traced all the lobbyists that Walmart hired, every committee they appeared in front of, but we didn't have the campaign contribution data then. We now have the campaign contribution data. We'd like to combine that and try to start looking for political influence.

Walmart was successful. They got the guy elected, and they got a Walmart. Now they have several Walmarts throughout the city.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Is the fact that no embarrassing situations involving the government have been uncovered in terms of data lobbying due to the nature of the data? Should there be more data or different data so that abuses can be detected, or is the current data sufficient?

[Paul Baker]

The ethics commission of the city asked us to testify in front of them on how the lobbying data could be improved.

One of the big problems with it is that it's only released annually, so by the time you actually get the data, most of the decisions have already been made. We recommended that it be released in a much more timely fashion: daily, weekly, or at the latest, monthly. That would make big improvements.

Also, we're only told which committees they appear in front of, or which people they talk to; we're not told on what. There's not enough detail on what issue they're talking about. The lobbyists are basically allowed to describe what they're doing with almost no details.

We've also talked with the City of San Francisco about the same issue. We're even thinking about putting together basically a national software application to collect and show the data, one that has more granularity, faster reporting, and all that kind of thing.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

That's very interesting. Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you for your answers.

Mr. Aspin, you have five minutes.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you for helping us with our study.

Mr. Baker, you've made reference to the international Open Data Institute. Just recently, I think, our own Canadian Open Data Institute began. The information I have here is that it began as of October 2013, so it's virtually at its starting point.

Sir, what advice would you give our Open Data Institute in terms of best practices on a go-forward basis, given the fact that you, I think, have been at this for at least seven or eight years?

[Paul Baker]

Actually, we talked directly at a meeting in London just a few months ago, and we talked on the phone maybe two months ago.

One of the purposes of the Open Data Institute is to create this network where everyone can learn from each other. I don't know a heck of a lot about Canada, but I know more than I did before. They are just getting started. Also, at an Open Data Institute event about a year ago, there was a representative from the government whom I talked with for quite a while. I don't remember his name now, but he was in charge of thinking about open data policy. We had conversations there.

In terms of advice for ODI Canada, it has taken a long time in Chicago and in the U.S. to really get the open data movement going. It has been driven by enlightened government leaders, but also by activists, designers, developers, and political transparency people. It's a multipronged process that takes quite a while. I'm glad you're having these hearings, because these hearings.... It's very hard to have an open data movement without any open data, so you have to get some open data from states, cities, and the federal government, and then it has to be non-trivial. It has to be stuff that you can really work with.

Up there, let's say in Toronto, I'm guessing there's probably transportation data available, whereby people can create bus trackers and train trackers and that type of thing, to try to better schedule their commute to and from work. If there isn't, then.... You have to figure out what is the low-hanging fruit, what you start with, and how you work with government and private developers and designers to get things together and get things going. You need a moderately sized town to really have enough data, enough political support, and enough developers and designers to work on it.

You have to work slowly and target your efforts. Canada is a big place with a relatively small number of people. My mother was actually born in Canada and I've spent a fair amount of time there. Now you have a better-off middle class than we do, so maybe you'll have a lot of demand for the benefits that open data can bring.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Mr. Baker, there's another project of the Chicago Open Data Institute that I think you've referred to as Chicago lobbyists, and it aims to increase government transparency. I wonder if you could briefly tell us what kind of information is made available by this particular project.

[Paul Baker]

Do you mean that particular project?

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Yes.

[Paul Baker]

It basically lets you look at all the lobbyists, who receives the greatest amount of money, which companies or organizations they work for, what their goals were, generally speaking, and who they talked to within the city.

The question we always posed was this. Who did Walmart hire in order to make it easier to get a Walmart in Chicago? Who did it talk to? Who were the people it thought were important politically within the city to talk to?

Now we didn't have the political donation data in until recently, so we don't know how much money was actually spent, but we at least know.... It's not just Walmart; we want to be able to track any kind of organization, and we can track what conversations they've had, within which departments.

Often, lobbyists are hired to make presentations about a particular topic. We don't know exactly what their presentations are, but if they're suspicious, you can go back and look through the open records data and find details. We don't have that open records data integrated in there either.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Mr. Aspin.

Our hour with this morning's two witnesses is up. I want to thank them for their time and for making themselves available to us. I am sure this will help the committee members in the remainder of their study on open data practices in a Canadian context.

I will now suspend the meeting for a few minutes, after which the committee members will reconvene to discuss committee business.

Thank you both and have a good day, in Chicago and in Miami.

[The proceedings continue in camera]