Information & Ethics committee  Can I make a tweak to that?

Information & Ethics committee  If I could make a suggestion, if you only provide me your comments by March 31, I need to gazette, and then it will not be enforced until sometime in the summer, which is not ideal.

Information & Ethics committee  Okay. I need to publish.

Information & Ethics committee  If I want this code to be enforced on April 1, it needs to have been gazetted before that, and then I need to consider your suggestions, and I really do want to consider your suggestions. Depending on the extent of the suggestions, I may end up having to say it won't be April 1, because you may have many suggestions that I need to consider.

Information & Ethics committee  The first one definitely would be to close the gap on the “significant part of the duties” threshold. For an organization and a corporation, there's a threshold to be met in order to decide whether they should register. We need to eliminate that. That's the first thing that needs to go.

Information & Ethics committee  The first thing I will say is that I have very much appreciated this conversation. I was hoping that you would invite me, because I'm very much about public discussions and transparency. I appreciate that you have taken the time. I have seen that you have a busy schedule, and I'm therefore really happy to have been able to have this conversation with you.

Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely.

Information & Ethics committee  I hear you. It is a serious issue, and I have known from the moment I was appointed that this was a serious issue, based on the guidance document.

Information & Ethics committee  It makes you feel uncomfortable. I can tell you that if someone calls my office and says, “This is the role I played” and I'm not sure where they fit, I will call you. I am not shy. I will call you and say, “What did they do for you, and do you think it's the right thing?” I much prefer preventing to having their name on the registry as lobbying you and then having on the first page of the news that they've lobbied you when they helped you and they acted in an important role for you.

Information & Ethics committee  There are several parts to your question.

Information & Ethics committee  Let me start with the first one. No, I do not have enough resources. I have enough for 33 employees, and we usually have 28. We have an important mandate, we work hard and we are all tired. I made a request for additional funding in order to add seven employees, primarily to fulfill my mandate to raise awareness in order to prevent problems rather than correct them.

Information & Ethics committee  Certainly I do, if you tell me the Lobbying Act will be changed in the next few weeks, but that is not going to happen, and I need to find a way to regulate what's going on now. Currently there is already a rule in place, and it has been there since 2015. I'm now trying to l'encadrer in a way that meets charter obligations.

Information & Ethics committee  There will be no prohibition for that person. Of course not. We've created a list of those who we thought would be doing more important and high-profile work for you and another list of people who interact with you on a daily basis. For everyone else, there is no prohibition. If people are cleaning up the signs, they will be able to lobby you the next day.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you. I can only comment from the perspective of the Lobbying Act. One of the greatest aspects of the Lobbying Act is the registry. There is a lot on that registry. It is transparent, but not everybody needs to go on that registry; therefore, there is definitely a gap. It is a concern of mine that there is a lot of communication happening that's not covered by the Lobbying Act, so it needs to be fixed.

Information & Ethics committee  Based on the questions we received over the years looking at the different roles that people play during campaigns and.... Of course, we only give a list of examples, because I'm not the expert, and people have different titles. We came to the conclusion, again with the charter backdrop, that with respect to people who are knocking on doors, they should be allowed to knock on doors.