It was a Conservative Prime Minister.
Two years later when that same prime minister had not produced the rules, we prodded him and finally got a commitment from the government to establish a parliamentary committee. That was the Cooper committee.
I sat on that committee. I will claim some responsibility for some of the recommendations in its report. It was chaired by the member for Peace River. We arrived at a unanimous report. The then New Democratic Party member for Nickel Belt, several Conservative MPs and I under the chairmanship of the member for Peace River produced a report.
From that report the government produced a bill. That bill is the law in the country. It was referred to a parliamentary committee, the Cooper committee. We dealt with it, made some improvements to it and now it is the law of the land.
One of the clauses that came from the committee was the sunset clause of sorts on which there would be a review. The review was to improve on the bill. Pursuant to that we did the study under the able chairmanship of the member for Fundy-Royal. We now have before us a bill to amend the present act. That is how it all came about.
When five years of having the first law were completed or close to it the government, again at the request of the opposition, appointed a committee under the leadership of the member for Selkirk-Interlake, Felix Holtmann, who is in Ottawa; I saw him 10 or 15 minutes ago. He chaired the committee that produced a report I have before me today.
The Holtmann committee report was entitled "A Blueprint for Transparency: Review of the Lobbyists Registration Act". The Liberal Party used that report as the basis for its own red book.