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Laurie in Debate

Bill 1: Lobbyists Act

Bill 1: Lobbyists Act, Committee of the Whole debate in the 26th Legislature of Alberta, 3rd Session by Ms. Laurie Blakeman, MLA Edmonton-Centre

Alberta Hansard – November 15, 2007

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I’m pleased to be able to join in this discussion. I advocated for the idea of a lobbyist act, and a lobbyist registry is an important concept for me. I’ve talked about it a lot with my constituents. Actually, as I go around and speak at all of my different seniors’ residences, it’s one of the subjects that comes up over and over again because I really do believe in it. I think it’s important that we know who is talking to whom in the government and about what, and that needs to be transparent.

I don’t think it’s wrong for people to try and influence public policy. I’m a social activist rabble-rouser from way back. I try really hard to influence public policy, and I always have. I think that’s perfectly appropriate, that citizens try and tell their government what they need them to do and try and influence them to go in a certain direction. That’s perfectly legitimate.

What’s important is that that process is transparent, that we can see who is approaching members of the government, in particular members of the government, to influence public policy and what public policy is. Either someone is advocating to put it in place or to change it. That’s the important concept for me, that transparency; in other words, the registry and how that registry is set up, the kind of information that’s easily displayed.

I spoke in second reading, I’m sure, and we in the Official Opposition certainly accepted the principle of the bill.

Now, the bill spent the summer on the beach of the policy field committee, I’m sure getting a great tan, wearing flip-flops around and cut-offs, and enjoyed its time at the lake with all the members of the policy field committee.

Mr. Elsalhy: It wasn’t a trip.

Ms Blakeman: Oh, I’m sorry. I have been corrected. I have used totally the wrong metaphor. It was not a day at the beach. Okay. I withdraw that. I’ve been corrected by a member of the committee. Nonetheless, it was in the policy field committee over the summer. What we have before us now are the amendments that have been suggested by the policy field committee, and they are sections A through K, and we are approaching these one at a time. Specifically, we are talking right now about section A, and several people have described that, but essentially it was trying to make it very apparent that consultant lobbyists must register. It was also clarifying that the definitions of consultant lobbyist and organizational lobbyist are consistent. It also had several tests for an organizational lobbyist. That’s where they brought in that the 100 hours was the test that had to be met, and if an organization wasn’t likely to meet that test, then they didn’t have to register as an organizational lobbyist.

Then at the end they struck out some of the groups that had been included in the original version of the bill as a public office holder, and this becomes an important definition as we go along because people who are talking to these public office holders or these public office holders who are speaking to members of the government become very important in the context because some will be prohibited from speaking to each other.

I am certainly in favour of what’s being put forward in this amendment. I know the committee spent a lot of time working on it and then trying to come up with that test and those definitions, and I respect the work that they did here.

I am a little curious, however, and maybe someone can explain this to me. In the last section in what appears under section ( e) in clause ( j) of the original bill, which would be on page 5 of the original bill, for anybody following along at home or perhaps in the gallery . . . [ interjection] I know. I always think it’s much more interesting than everyone else does. One of the things that has now been deleted is the section that says:

Maybe a member of the committee can explain to me why that got cut out.

I looked through the comments from the sponsoring member, the Member for Calgary-Buffalo, but he, interestingly, doesn’t talk at all about that section of the amendment. Since we’re in Committee of the Whole here and that allows us to go through the bill clause by clause, word by word if we need to – it’s a detailed examination of this section of the bill – I’d be interested in hearing what was anticipated there.

For the purposes of debating this amendment in section A, I am supportive of it. I would like to enhance it.

Let me go back and be very clear that I am supportive of this lobbyist bill. I really want to see this bill pass and get into place. I also want to see it be the best bill it can possibly be, so I have sponsored a number of amendments, which will come forward over the next few days that we debate this bill. I want it to be the best bill it can be, and it’s an important concept to me.

My experience has been that once you pass legislation in this Assembly or in any other one, you live with it. I know that there’s a clause in here or maybe even an amending clause that says we’re going to review it in two years. Yeah. But I still find it takes an awfully long time to come back and correct, amend, or add to a piece of legislation if you don’t get it right the first time out, so I’m anxious that we do get it right the first time out in as many ways as possible. I hope there’s an excitement here in the Assembly to do good work on this bill because I am very excited about it. I know a number of my colleagues are, and I anticipate some good debate and I hope good give-and-take between the sides of the House on how we’re going to proceed on this bill

Those were essentially my comments in support of section A, amendment A if you will, but I would like to introduce a subamendment, and that subamendment is already at the table. I’ll ask for it to be distributed at this time.

The Deputy Chair: Hon. members, the subamendment that is being introduced now we shall refer to as subamendment A1. The main amendment is A1, and this is a subamendment. It will be referred to as subamendment A1.

Hon. member, you may proceed now.

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much. Again, it helps very much if you follow along on the original bill. So that’s, again, back to page 5. This gets very confusing. Under section 1(1)(j) we get into Roman numerals, and I’m suggesting that we strike subclauses (ii) and (iv). Specifically that reads “an employee of a department.” That’s subclause (ii), and subclause (iv) is “an employee, officer, director or member, as the case may be, of a prescribed Provincial entity.”

The reason that I’m suggesting this – and this has been brought forward by a number of the not-for-profits that I work with – is that there is a concern that we are limiting an already fairly limited pool of volunteers that we can pull upon to have come out and volunteer their time and expertise for the various community-based organizations.

Let’s remember that there’s a pretty wide variety of people that are covered under these organizations. I’m aware that the Government House Leader has already indicated that there is a government amendment coming – so that flags to me that it’s sure to pass – that will in fact use what’s called the Quebec exemption to exempt all of the not-for-profits and charitable and volunteer organizations with the exception of those that are either sort of management oriented, professional associations, unions, and essentially associations which are there for a profit-making reason.

So just off the top of my head and not to pick on anybody in particular, for example, the AMA would still be covered under this legislation, but arts and cultural organizations would be exempted. The unions would still be covered under this, but youth recreation groups would not. They would be exempted now. Profit-making groups – I guess it depends on the membership, but let me try. You know, Horse Racing Alberta, for example, would still be covered under the legislation because essentially they’re representing people that for the most part are making money at what they’re doing. So they would still be covered under this legislation, but social service agencies would now be exempted. That was a very, very important part of this legislation because that would have been the deal breaker for me. I had an amendment ready to go that would have done the same thing, but I’m now told the government will bring that forward. Back to talking about the nonprofits. We have a situation now where volunteerism, the pool of volunteers and the actual number of volunteer hours that we’re getting, is declining. We have a very different society now than we did in the 1950s, when just about everybody’s mom stayed home, and then they were available to volunteer on the PTA or – we had a different name for it – home and school association, you know, to do good works at the church or to volunteer with the Heart and Stroke Foundation or whatever. There was a very wide pool of mostly married women that were pulled from at that time.

That has shifted as time went on. Now it’s much more difficult to recruit volunteers, frankly. Even the big, sort of popular, fun volunteer-based organizations like the Folk Festival or the Fringe are struggling to get the number of volunteers that they need on a yearly basis to provide those festivals. And those are fun. You know, you’d think that would be easy for them to be recruiting, but almost every year you see them out there going: we need more people to help.

The point of my trying to exempt employees of departments and employees, officers, directors, or members of prescribed provincial entities is because that takes away a pool of people who are very knowledgeable about certain issues. Let me give you an example. For example, you’ve got people that are working in the mental health areas, let’s say, or in agriculture. There’s a better one. I talked about Horse Racing Alberta. So if you’ve got people that are working in the department of agriculture or they’re working for a provincial entity that is connected with that somehow, and you now say, “ Sorry; they’re not really allowed to be involved in lobbying or advocacy,” you’ve potentially cut those people out of the pool of volunteers that are available to a group like Horse Racing Alberta because, you know, they now have to start registering their hours and counting them to get to the hundred and have to list and maybe they don’t want to register.

I think we have to be very careful that we don’t put things in place that will have consequences for us that are larger than we’re willing to actually work with, and I think this is such a situation. By cutting out experienced, knowledgeable people from being able to volunteer in a sector that they know – yeah, Alberta is a big place, 3 million people now. Okay; that’s good. That still doesn’t give us a huge pool of people to pull from for a lot of fairly specialized sectors, and I think it’s important that we recognize this. This was certainly the advice that we had from the not-for-profit sector, that they felt this would reduce their pool of volunteers and that they didn’t want to lose those experienced people, so I agreed to bring forward this amendment.

I am hoping that people understand what I’m trying to do, but I’m happy to answer questions or direct the answers back through one of my colleagues, and I hope I can get the support of the members of the Assembly for this subamendment, which is subamendment A1, which is amending section A of the committee amendments.

Thank you.

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Ms Blakeman: I’d be the colleague. Thank you so much. I think this section for the most part is appropriate. I have a huge problem with part of a clause, but overall this to me is I think the Rod Love clause because essentially it’s setting out that you can’t be paid to be giving advice to the government, you know; in other words, hired by the government and also be lobbying on behalf of somebody back to the same government. That’s exactly the situation that we had. So this whole section was set up to preclude that kind of behaviour, and I believe that is appropriate.

It tries to cover it off in several places, and I think my colleague and I’m sure others will explain why the committee made the choices that they made in replacing the original clause, which appears on page 10 in the act for those that are following along at home and in the gallery. In the original act section 6 appeared on page 10, and this amendment A1C is to replace it in its entirety. As I said, I don’t have a problem at all with the subamendment or even, actually, with the original. I trust that the committee did good work in asking for the replacement. When I look at what the sponsoring member of the amendment said, that it was considered extensively by the committee, the proposed exception to the prohibition against lobbying and providing paid advice to the government on the same issue at the same time, but it would exempt those that were on multistakeholder committees, which makes sense. You know, again, I’ve talked before about having a limited pool of people with specific knowledge in certain areas, and you don’t want to exempt them or take them out of your role of expert, if I may put it that way. We need that expertise in these committees, and we certainly value their input, but I think it’s important that we don’t let someone who really takes advantage of the system, and that’s what we were dealing with there.

I do have an amendment to this section C. If I could ask, I would like to move that amendment at this time.

The Deputy Chair: Hon. members, the subamendment that is being circulated will be referred to as subamendment C1.

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. This amendment is structured to remove the same phrase that appears in two different sections. That phrase is “or a person associated with that person.” Whether you’re following along at home with the act at page 10 or you have the package of amendments in front of you and you’re looking at the new proposed section C, in section (3) of the proposed section C it says, “no person shall lobby on a subject-matter if that person, or a person associated with that person, is holding a contract for providing paid advice on the same subject-matter.” I’m fine with all of that except for having “or a person associated with that person” captured into that. The same thing happens in section (4): “ no person shall enter into a contract for providing paid advice on a subject-matter if that person” – here’s that phrase again – “or a person associated with that person, lobbies on the same subject-matter as that of the contract.”

Here’s why. We’ve got to grow up. This is 2007. What is being captured here is the idea that somehow spouses are the same person. We’re failing to recognize that we have mostly two-adult working households. Where you have a family or a partnership happening, these people are usually both working, particularly where you have professionals. What this is is a really old-fashioned idea that somehow you can’t have a husband and wife involved on something because – what is it: nepotism? – something bad will happen. It’s essentially a very old-fashioned idea that they’re the same person.

To me it’s offensive that in 2007 we would still have that kind of thinking. We need to recognize that we have couples that are two independent individuals. They may share a home life, but they may be going in entirely different directions out in the professional working field. Or maybe they’re even in some of the same fields. It’s quite common, for example, to find a household with two physicians, two accountants, maybe even two people that are working for the same entrepreneurial outlet.

What is being set up with this by including those associated persons is incredibly convoluted, but here’s what could happen. Let’s say you’ve got two physicians. One of them works at this point for the AMA, but because of this extra clause in there the spouse could not go and volunteer, for example, for the Diabetes Association because it’s assuming there would be some kind of collusion happening between those two people.

That’s where it gets unacceptable to me. I think we have to allow that in this day and age you may well have a household with two physicians, one of whom would be contracted to be providing that advice and the second one who could be lobbying. They may not actively be lobbying, but remember the way this act is set up. You could have someone that’s on the board of directors for the Diabetes Association or medical clinic or pick whatever you want, and any work they do in trying to change public policy would now be prohibited. You can’t do that in this day and age.

Are people going to try and take advantage of this? Yup. That happens. We know that no matter what system we set up, 3 per cent of the people are scallywags, and they are going to figure out a sneaky way . . . [interjections] Well, there are all kinds of other words I could use. I thought scallywags would be the most appropriate today. So, yeah, there are 3 per cent of the people that are going to cheat and do bad things. You know what? Welfare system: we set up all those guidelines, and 3 per cent of the people consistently cheat the system. Okay. So we’ve got 3 per cent that are going to do it to us one way or another no matter how secure our system is. Why on earth would we stop the other 97 per cent? Why would we penalize the other 97 per cent? Why would we treat the other 97 per cent as though . . .

An Hon. Member: Guilty by association.

Ms Blakeman: Yeah. That they’re guilty by association. I’m going to remind you again how small that pool of volunteers can be, particularly in sectors where we need some level of expertise. One, I think we need to grow up and recognize who’s actually inhabited, who our citizens in Alberta are, and what they do. Most households have two working adults in them. We want them to volunteer, so why on earth would we set it up so that either one of them has to quit their job if either one is volunteering in an associated sector or the person can’t go out and volunteer? Why on earth would we pass legislation that does that when there are other ways for us to get at the law-breaking or the nepotism or doing something wrong that is somehow going to harm the system? There are other ways to pick that stuff up. But to me it is offensive that we would not recognize that we have independent people in this day and age.

Two, I think it’s frightening that we would try and narrow that pool of volunteers in that way because that’s really what would end up happening with this.

I’m thinking “spouse” when I read “or a person associated.” I think in the definition it means someone that’s pretty close in the same family, so it could mean an adult child; it could mean a parent. But, frankly, how many of you here are in absolute control of your parents? Right? Exactly. You know, my father – love him to death – do he and I agree on everything? Oh, boy, you can imagine those fights, right?

An Hon. Member: I like your father already.

Ms Blakeman: There you go. Mostly I win, I will point out. But that’s the thing. That would be captured here.

An Hon. Member: You just talk him out.

Ms Blakeman: That’s right. I just talk him out. No. He’s a pretty good talker, too.

But that would be captured here, so we could have a situation that having an adult child who worked in a certain field would preclude their parent, who would be closely enough associated to be picked up by this definition, from either volunteering or working in the same field. I mean, come on, you guys. This is 2007. We’ve got to get by this one.

That’s why I brought this in. I know I’ve been pushing some buttons here, and I know I’ve been challenging some people, but I think this is a good idea, and I hope I can get the support of this House. I think that by passing this, we will allow things to go on that happen already and should happen already. If we need to put other things in place, I’m sure the government, with its great fondness for regulations, can manage to capture any huge problem in regs if we do have a lot of problems with couples, for example, that do bad things in association somehow around lobbying.

But I do not think it is right in this day and age to be capturing those associated persons and counting them, which is what we’re doing. We’re including them in the way we figure this out. Just look at these phrases if I take out the phrase I don’t like. You would end up with clause ( 3) reading: no person shall lobby on a subject matter if that person is holding a contract or providing paid advice on the same subject matter. That’s what we want. That’s what we wrote. That’s the intention behind what we were trying to do here. Let’s look at clause ( 4): no person shall enter into a contract for providing paid advice on a subject matter if that person lobbies on the same subject matter as that of the contract. Well, that’s what we’re trying to do here. That is the Rod Love effect. That’s exactly what we’re trying to stop.

But as soon as you put in those two extra phrases, you’ve added in a whole other person and basically stopped somebody else from either working or from volunteering. Why on earth would we do that? That does not honour the intent of what we were trying to do with this particular clause. It penalizes a whole other sector of people, whether they’re your parent or adult children or a spouse. We didn’t mean to capture them, and I don’t think we should capture them, and if there is something that is going to go wrong and people are going to misbehave, there are other ways to deal with that 3 per cent that are miscreants, scallywags, evildoers than to pick off 100 per cent of the people the way we’re doing now.

That’s why I’ve brought this recommendation forward. I hope I can get the support of the House on it, and I welcome any and all further debate on this subamendment C1. Thank you.

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The Deputy Chair: Any others?

Hon. members, we are going to vote on subamendment C1 as moved by the hon. Member for Edmonton-Centre.

[Motion on subamendment C1 carried