moved:
That Bill C-43, in clause 2, be amended by deleting lines 8 to 20, on page 2.
Mr. Speaker, it is distinct pleasure to address the questions before us today on the Lobbyists Registration Act.
One of the pledges of the Liberal government was to rebuild trust in government which has been eroded to a considerable extent over the last number of years under previous governments. I use the plural extending to more than two.
The amendment is very specific. The government labelled the report on this bill "rebuilding trust". Therefore our party has tried to come up with amendments-this will be true for the one before us now and for the others we are proposing-that work toward that goal.
In a way we are trying to help the government to achieve the goals it stated but for some reason has now become unwilling to follow through on.
We are moving an amendment to increase the openness, the accountability and the disclosure required under the Lobbyists Registration Act so citizens can see more clearly what is happening. In a very general sense hopefully the more they know the more we will move toward a true democracy since it seems we have lost the sense of true representative democracy.
MPs are elected and sent to the House to represent their constituents but sometimes are not allowed to vote according to the wishes of those they represent; the decisions being made in smaller rooms elsewhere and the results being orchestrated from here. Obviously if people want to have their input into how government works they will find out where the decisions are made and then proceed to use that particular approach.
How did lobbyists gain such a large force? The people have discovered that it is a way they can get to the root of where the decisions are made in government. It is not through the members of Parliament. They have essentially lost their representative function.
The way one influences government policy is by getting to the decision makers. The decision makers are the top bureaucrats, the deputy ministers, the ministers and the Prime Minister. Backbench MPs on the government side ultimately feel that pressure. I have spoken to some who have expressed some consternation about the fact that they are not free to express their views in the House because of the element of party discipline.
The amendment we are moving would require more openness and disclosure. Therefore when people become aware of how government is being influenced, hopefully the more they know the more they will dislike it and we will then be able to achieve a shift toward true representative government via members of Parliament.
I found the work in the committee on Bill C-43 for the most part very interesting. It was a good committee. Our chairman was very capable and very personable. Sometimes he tried to push things through too fast. We had a committee that worked together and pulled him back. For the most part things went very smoothly until we came the end. Suddenly there was a dramatic shift on the part of government members. They stopped listening to reason and suddenly it was orchestrated from the back rooms.
When the motion simply says to delete some lines and introduce new ones, it is not really clear to the average person or even to some members exactly what this motion proposes.
Presently the bill exempts from registration requirements any meetings initiated by public office holders. In other words, the Lobbyists Registration Act says if you lobby government, you are supposed to register. That is an acknowledgement that there is a lobby group, organization, a business, a firm or a corporation trying to influence government.
We found out that quite often the government makes an initiative to talk to lobbyists because it wants to find out something about a particular business sector or it has some other reason. It initiates the call.
If it is a straight transfer of information, information gathering and if all of our amendments are accepted, that would not be included in a registration requirement. Where the lobbyist is trying to influence the government, however the first contact is initiated it ought to be disclosed. Bill C-43 as proposed by the government does not include that.
We are saying there should not be an exemption from registration if a department official or the minister or anyone else in government initiates the communications. In other words, if there is communication taking place, the purpose of it is ultimately in order to influence government, however it was implemented.
We need to be careful because if we do not permit this amendment, we will provide a very easy loophole. If we are rebuilding trust, the last thing we want is to provide a number of escape routes from accountability. The present bill has that escape route because it says that if a government official initiates the meeting, then registration is not required. Therefore what happens in that meeting may be greatly directed toward
influencing government. A government official has asked for it but immediately the lobbyist is influencing government.
It would not be correct to provide a means whereby the person doing the lobbying is now exempted from registration just because he did not take the first motion.
I will quote a local columnist: "Any lobbyist who cannot finagle an invitation from a public office holder is not worth his retainer". That is true. If a lobbyist wants to influence government but wants to do it in such a way that is not disclosed all he has to do is, in the words of this columnist, finagle an invitation.
That is very easy to do if one has a good lobbyist network. That is what these guys are about. This is their business. Therefore members can see where the lobbyist would meet casually with the government official and say: "Invite me down, I would like to talk to you about some things". There is a delay of a couple of days. Then he gets an invitation and now he is not required to register.
There is some question as to whether this would inhibit government officials from genuinely seeking information. I need to have the members, when they are considering supporting us in this amendment, to remember that we are also proposing another amendment that really is necessary to understand in order to approve this one. We want to also change the definition of lobbying. Lobbying is not well defined in the present act. We would like to change it so that the element of influencing or attempting to influence government is an integral part of definition of lobbyist.
That way if there is a genuine request simply for information there would be no requirement at all to register in any case. That is not a lobbying function. That would be a very normal routine of talking to some sector of industry for absent association in order to find information.
This new definition, if we say it must include influencing or attempting to influence, would totally look after that. Therefore in supporting the amendment we are proposing the government would do well. It would be fulfilling its own red book promise of increasing transparency, increasing accountability, increasing the openness with which government operates so hopefully the result could be achieved. We want to make sure all aspects of government operations whether procurement or influencing of government policy be done in the open so people know what is happening. Hopefully they can renew their trust in the officials, in the MPs and in the cabinet ministers elected by them.