Mr. Speaker, I would first like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord.
As Bloc Québécois critic for ethics and access to information, I am pleased to speak today to this official opposition motion stating that there is a major loophole in the Lobbying Act currently in force in Canada, .
The motion states that parliamentary secretaries are simply not included in the list of “designated public office holders” who are subject to this Lobbying Act, unlike the ministers whom they assist.
A lobbyist must be registered in order to speak with a minister or a member of their staff, but not with a parliamentary secretary, who is in fact a member for the party in power appointed by the Prime Minister and responsible for helping a minister in the performance of their parliamentary functions and for liaising between ministers and other parliamentarians.
Do I need to tell you that parliamentary secretaries wield obvious power and undeniable influence in the offices of the ministers they assist? The individuals who consult them or seek their help are not subject to the present Lobbying Act? How can a loophole like this have gone unnoticed before today?
For the benefit of members of the public who are following this debate, I think we need to remind them of a few points of information concerning this legislation.
Until July 2008, lobbying at the federal level was governed by the Lobbyist Registration Act, which provided for a registration system designed to protect the public’s right to know who was trying to influence government policy. It is a fundamental piece of legislation, if ever there was one, for any self-respecting democratic society. And yet the famous Federal Accountability Act instituted by this Conservative government, which was supposed to guarantee perfect transparency on the part of this Conservative government, made major amendments to the Lobbying Act in December 2006, amending its title and replacing the simple director of lobbying position with the position of Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada, a senior independent official in the Canadian administrative structure.
Our Lobbying Act was apparently not improved sufficiently, from what we can see. The new Lobbying Act has been in force since July 2, 2008.
I would point out that Canada's Commissioner of Lobbying is responsible for publicizing and enforcing the rights and obligations set out in the Lobbying Act. In fact, that act quite simply requires that lobbyists register and report certain information each month to the commissioner, which information is then recorded in a public record that everyone can consult on the Internet.
The registry discloses information about lobbyists and their lobbying activities. The law requires lobbyists to produce returns if there has been oral arranged communication by mail, email or telephone with designated public office holders such as ministers or ministers of state, their political staff, assistant deputy ministers and associate deputy ministers. The commissioner also has the power to verify information provided by lobbyists.
However, there is a major loophole in the law because it does not consider the parliamentary secretaries attached to various government ministers to be designated public office holders. This loophole appears to have enabled certain well-informed individuals to get around the law and gain privileged access to some departments.
How did we discover that such a loophole exists in a law that is supposed to ensure transparency with respect to lobbying activities on Parliament Hill, with ministers' offices and with various elements of Canada's government?
I hardly need to remind anyone that on April 9, the media broke the story that the Minister of Status of Women resigned or had been directed to resign—which is how these things work—and had been expelled not only from the Prime Minister's cabinet, but also from the Conservative Party of Canada. The Prime Minister never revealed any information whatsoever about why she was expelled.
The Prime Minister abruptly fired the member for Simcoe—Grey from her cabinet position because of what he described as “serious allegations”, which he passed on to RCMP investigators.
Apparently, the RCMP was called in because of questionable meetings involving the former minister's husband and the inappropriate use of House of Commons resources.
Mr. Jaffer contacted a number of ministers' offices using his wife's ministerial email address. Documents show that Mr. Jaffer also openly contacted people he knew in at least six different departments to discuss business proposals. During his testimony before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, Mr. Jaffer, who is not a registered lobbyist, denied undertaking any illegal lobbying activity.
But at the end of April, following their former colleague's testimony, Conservative ministers, one after the other, contradicted him openly and mercilessly.
We now know that Mr. Jaffer and his associate increased their contacts with government members in recent months.
These documents provided evidence of contacts with the offices of ministers and officials from various federal departments and agencies, including the offices of the Minister of Public Works, the Minister of State for Seniors and the Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification. Mr. Jaffer even lobbied departments and their ministers, particularly the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities and his parliamentary secretary, the Minister of State for Science and Technology, the Minister of the Environment, the Minister of Industry and of course, the former minister for the status of women. This is a great deal of lobbying for someone who is not a registered lobbyist.
Rahim Jaffer also communicated with these ministers' parliamentary secretaries, because he knew that parliamentary secretaries are not subject to the Lobbying Act. This also needs to be investigated.
One thing is certain: this whole mess surrounding the unregistered lobbying activities of Rahim Jaffer, a former Conservative member and former chair of the Conservative caucus, has given us the opportunity to speak to this Liberal motion. It also gives me a chance to remind the House that neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have the political will to change anything when it comes to ethics.
The Liberal Party refuses to completely turn its back on the sponsorship legacy and the Conservative Party is sinking deeper and deeper into favouritism and secrecy. The Bloc Québécois can make such observations because it does not award any contracts, hand out any grants or make any appointments within the government. The Bloc Québécois has the leeway and credibility needed to keep an eye on how public money is spent and to denounce favouritism.
The Liberals and Conservatives have promised again and again to clean up politics in Ottawa, but they have not kept their promise. The Bloc Québécois has always maintained that the problem in Ottawa is not the lack of rules, but rather the lack of political will to follow the rules.
If we look at what the Liberals and Conservatives actually do, it is impossible to think there will be any real change in the political culture in Ottawa. The evidence is all around us. Just look at the entourage of the Leader of the Opposition, which still includes people tainted by ethical issues, such as the president of the Liberal Party of Canada, Alfred Apps, who took advantage of a loophole in the Elections Act to encourage Liberal supporters to contribute twice as much money to the Liberal Party as allowed.
Another example is the Quebec Liberal caucus. Ten of the 14 Liberals from Quebec were members and in some cases even ministers under Jean Chrétien, but not one of them managed to prevent the sponsorship scandal.
The Conservatives, for their part, can hardly cast any aspersions because their record also demonstrates a complete lack of political will and lack of respect for the existing rules, even though they claimed they would end the political culture of secrecy and lack of transparency. But it still continues to rule the roost in Ottawa.
The crooked sponsorship program lasted more than six years because of the culture of secrecy. Adequate access to information and an effective method of protecting whistleblowers are absolutely essential if we are to have a reasonably transparent system.
By breaking its electoral promises to reform the Access to Information Act and to protect whistleblowers, the Conservative government has perpetuated the culture of secrecy inherited from the Liberals. The Liberals and Conservatives are only interested in power. They have no interest in ending the culture of secrecy in Ottawa.
The Conservatives promised to implement the Information Commissioner’s recommendations to reform the Access to Information Act but have never tabled a bill to do so.
The Minister of Justice just informed the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics that he would not implement most of its recommendations to improve the Access to Information Act, closing the door again.
The Bloc’s demands regarding access to information are well-known. In June 2008 it tabled a bill that was similar to the one proposed by the Information Commissioner in 2005.
Governments of various hues have been consulting for 20 years now. It is time to act.
We will support the Liberal motion, but small changes like this will not do anything to change an entire culture. Action is needed to end the culture of secrecy and lack of transparency that still holds sway in Ottawa.
