Information & Ethics committee  Legislatively, politically, it's hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. I think within the act, Parliament has given the commissioner the power to designate anyone a designated public office holder. You'd have to remove that and then run through a Governor-in-Council proces

Information & Ethics committee  On the complaints, I think you're right. This is essentially a complaints-based investigation process, which is very similar to any other tribunal or officer of Parliament you can think of. Media stories sometimes bring cases to the attention of the commissioner, and I think she

Information & Ethics committee  Right now, under the rules, the former ministers you're using in your hypothetical example could not go and work for a trade association, could not go and work for a consulting firm, but could go and work for a corporation as long as they estimated that 19% of their time is all t

Information & Ethics committee  The difference is that when you are subject to accusations in the media you're aware of them and able to respond. We've had an individual, a member of our association, just get a letter saying “We've just closed an investigation on you that we've been conducting for seven years”.

Information & Ethics committee  That's why we're recommending that you need to synchronize the process and harmonize the language in the act so the two commissioners.... Commissioners can only administer the language they're given in the act. The standard in the Lobbying Act is “a real or apparent conflict of i

Information & Ethics committee  We're not talking about simpler rules or looser rules; we're talking about clearer rules and consistent rules, so that you have two officers of Parliament examining the same set of facts through the same lens and you don't have situations similar to the ones in which someone was

Information & Ethics committee  If an executive director who's being paid is coming to see you in a professional capacity, it should be reported.

Information & Ethics committee  First, I would just like to endorse Mr. Jordan's comments from Tuesday that as a lobbyist, having your name placed in front of Parliament as someone who has violated the rules has a financial consequence. It affects your career prospects. Coming back to the specific question of

Information & Ethics committee  Possibly. You have to go to the list of registerable activities. Are they talking about legislation or policy? If they're coming in to talk about government financing of a United Way campaign, absolutely. If you're talking about the awarding of a financial benefit of any sort, th

Information & Ethics committee  I think we've already seen cases where the lobby commissioner and the ethics commissioner come to different conclusions based on the same set of facts. We want to avoid triplicating that process, where you have the same set of facts under investigation by three separate bodies.

Information & Ethics committee  It wouldn't just capture all companies that have cause to call their MP once a year; it would capture anyone who contacts government in a professional capacity—charities, local health authorities, the president of the university in your hometown, labour organizations—anyone who c

Information & Ethics committee  We support the current approach, which is to apply the act to people who are professionals communicating with the government as part of their jobs. Imagine if everyone, paid or not, either as a private citizen, academic, union member, or a seniors group had to register as a lobby

Information & Ethics committee  I think there are three ways to look at whether you should be reporting a meeting. You can look at it in isolation. As a stand-alone concept, having both sides reporting the same meeting would make it easier to see if somebody didn't report it. That would be a plus. Second, tho

Information & Ethics committee  It could be left to the commissioner's discretion, depending on the circumstance.

Information & Ethics committee  Not very. Most lobbyists follow the rules closely enough that there's only a handful of cases the commissioner has had to investigate in the first place. There was a case on the rules governing political activities of lobbyists. The commissioner's interpretation came into effect