Reining in the lobbyists

Borrowing and stealing having already gone out of fashion in Ottawa, the government is now poised to move against begging. Also pleading, cajoling and the genteeler forms of inveigling -- or, as it's better known, lobbying. That's if it can survive the lobbying campaign that's about to get under way. To understand what lies ahead, cast your mind back to where we were, just three or four years ago. Members of Parliament, even ministers of the Crown, were permitted to raise unlimited amounts for their election campaigns from any source, including the industries they were regulating. Intra-party races, such as for leader, were not even restricted to that extent. Ministers routinely intervened in the affairs of their departments and supposedly arm's-length Crown corporations, whose heads were as often as not cronies of the ruling party. Grants, loans and patronage appointments went to assorted friends of the regime: relatives, former mistresses, political supporters, serial fire-victims. And it was all legal. The sponsorship scandal, with its scalding revelations, came later. Many of these practices have since been reformed, though not without a struggle. Remember the former president of the Liberal Party objecting that parties are private organizations, and as such should be immune from regulation? Remember Jean Chretien's footdragging, grimacing acceptance that he could no longer just "call who you know"? Remember Lawrence Macaulay's bewilderment, as solicitor general, that anyone should see anything wrong with his lobbying for money for his brother's community college? For that matter, remember Paul Martin's insistence that he should not be required to divest his stake in the country's largest shipping company, even as prime minister? At every stage, someone could always be found to insist that there was no problem, that this was how things had always been done and that any proposed reform, assuming it were possible, would be bound to make matters worse. Expect to hear more in that vein, as the new Conservative government tackles some of the worst abuses unearthed by the sponsorship scandal, via the Federal Accountability Act. The name is well chosen. Ministers and their deputies will be more accountable to MPs, who will in turn be more accountable to officers of Parliament like the Ethics Commissioner. Access to government information will be expanded, whistle-blowers will be protected, government polls and contracts will be awarded more transparently. The aim, the government claims, is to "end ... the influence of money" in Canadian politics. Well, not quite. While contributions from corporations and unions to political parties, already tightly restricted, will be banned outright, the same does not apply to the flow of funds in the opposite direction: Rather than end or even reduce the $26-billion in "grants and contributions" Ottawa hands out every year to corporations and other private groups, the government has simply signed them over to the Auditor-General's scrutiny. And the parties themselves will continue to receive their own public subsidy, notwithstanding the Conservatives' 2004 vow to wean them off the public teat. But it's the lobbying provisions that are guaranteed to attract the most flak, or indeed flacks, who will be lining up to explain, with all of their considerable persuasive skill, why it Can't Be Done. Indeed, the lobbyists' plight has already attracted the sympathy of the Globe and Mail, which weighed in against the proposed restrictions in a recent editorial. The five-year cooling-off period before ministerial staff and senior bureaucrats could lobby their former employers, it blanched, was "too long," while another provision requiring that records be kept of all meetings between lobbyists and public officials risked casting a "chill" over Ottawa. Things had gotten so bad, it wailed, that "many Ottawa MPs and officials were hesitant to attend" the Public Policy Forum dinner last week, "if it meant that they were seated at a corporate table." Say it ain't so! And what of the threat to democracy? Expect to hear a lot of high-minded hand-wringing about the inalienable right of Canadians to talk to their government. And of course it is their right. But for most Canadians, that right consists in picking up the phone, or writing a letter. Few indeed are those who can afford to hire someone to do it for them, let alone someone with the right connections. Of the 4,700 registered lobbyists now camped out around Parliament Hill (how did we ever get along in decades past, when there were a fraction that number?), the vast majority -- more than 85% -- are there to represent one or more of a small circle of clients: about 270 large corporations, plus another 375 organizations. This is not quite "Canadians." Nor is it an undue restriction on their right to "talk to their government" to ask that they do so in public, or at any rate to place their private meetings on the public record. Most beggars, after all, ply their trade on the street.