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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 21, 2007

The Chair: Are there any amendments, comments, or questions to be offered with respect to this bill? The hon. Member for Edmonton-Centre.

Ms Blakeman: Yes, indeed, Mr. Chairman. I do have an amendment, and I have sent it to the table already. It’s held by the table under the heading of L1.

The Chair: We will just allow the pages a moment to distribute it, and we will refer to this amendment as amendment A3.

Okay, hon. member, you may proceed.

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, as the House is aware, I have worked closely with the not-for-profit sector in trying to make sure their voice is heard in this Assembly on the debate around the Lobbyists Act. This is one of the things that they would really like to see happen.

I know it’s a bit unusual because what the amendment is asking is under the Regulations section, which is section 20, appearing on page 19 of the original bill. They’re asking that a subsection be added in that says, “Any exercise of the above regulatory powers must involve consultation with the voluntary sector to address adverse impacts of any regulation.” What they’re really seeking here – and I, obviously, agree with them because I’ve brought forward the amendment – is to try and enshrine a consultation process with the members of the not-for-profit sector when regulations are being made or changed for this Lobbyists Act.

Now, for those of you that have been following along with this debate, you’ll know that a fairly large group that was classified under the not-for-profit sector has been excluded now from the effects of the Lobbyists Act. One might say: well, why, then, are you still trying to make sure that this group is being consulted under regulatory changes? The reason is because there’s still a number of not-for-profit organizations that are captured under the Lobbyists Act, and regulations that will fine-tune the act will likely affect that sector.

Let me give you an example. One of the qualifiers, criteria, or tests in the act is around whether you’re paid or not paid. But there is a clause in there that talks about being paid in other ways, and in the voluntary sector, charitable sector, no, we don’t pay our volunteers – and we certainly rely on volunteers – but we do try and recognize them in other ways. Some organizations for their annual general meeting pay for all their members and their spouses to go to a retreat, which may well be in quite a nice place and might be regarded by some people as a darn nice treat. What’s that worth? Should that be counted as part of a payment, perhaps?

If the government starts to make regulations through this Lobbyists Act that will reflect upon that NGO sector, sooner or later that is also going to travel into the part of the NGO sector that has now been exempted out of this bill. I think it’s important that the NGO sector is included with some sort of consultation because what happens here is really going to affect them in a very immediate and visceral way. So the amendment is asking that that consultation be enshrined.

I’m noticing that the Member for Calgary-Lougheed is involved in a very energetic conversation, and I’m wondering if, perhaps, he and his colleague might like to step outside with it. I’m sure he wants to keep going with it, but maybe he could take himself outside. I’d appreciate that.

I’ve done the example of the trip, for example, for the individual and a spouse, but at what point do you include gifts? Is there a value? For example, often at a volunteer appreciation night volunteers will be given a token. They’ll be given a coffee mug, let’s say, so everybody gets a coffee mug. All right. Do we count that as payment? I’ll put that in quotes. All right. The government may decide that a $ 5 coffee mug is indeed deemed to be payment. Okay. Fine. But what about the volunteers who didn’t come to the appreciation night and didn’t get their coffee mug? What happens to them? Are they now a different kind of volunteer? Are they an uncompensated volunteer versus a compensated volunteer? Do we now treat them differently in what they’re doing?

I think it’s important that we recognize that there are still a lot of details to be worked out in this act, and I think it’s important that the NGO sector is included in what happens, that they’re consulted. There’s no expectation here that they would have a veto power, that they would somehow dictate what was happening, but they really want to know what is going on, and they want to be consulted in how these regulations come forward.

That is the essence of this particular amendment. I hope I have explained it satisfactorily, but I would like to get all of my col-leagues in the Legislative Assembly to support it. I realize it’s a bit unusual. I’m the one that’s usually standing up here shaking my finger at the government, saying, “Thou shall not make regulations behind closed doors,” and now I appear to be saying, “You can make regulations behind closed doors if you consult the group that is going to be affected by it.” I suppose it could be read that way.

I still am no keener on having regulations developed as part of legislation than I was before, but I am speaking on behalf of a group that is very concerned about how this will affect them, and they want to make sure that they will be consulted. Without it being in the legislation, that consultation – you know, this minister, I’m sure, would say: absolutely. He would do that, but ministers turn over every two years. We have no guarantee that the next one or the next one or three or four down the road would honour that same commit-ment that the first one might have. This is trying to make sure that we have an ongoing requirement that that sector is consulted and consulted in a thorough way.

Having said that, I’m not sure if I have a few members who want to speak in support of it – I hope so – but I do urge all members to support this amendment. Thank you.

…

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I have a second amendment, that I have already sent to the table in a package labelled L2. If you would be so kind as to ask the pages to distribute that at this time.

The Chair: We will refer to this as amendment A4, and we will just allow a moment to have them distributed.

I believe you can proceed, hon. member.

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. This amendment A4 is striking two sections in each of two schedules. In schedule 1, which is page 21, under section 1( 3)( c) it’s striking the section that says, “ Any individual who formerly occupied a pre-scribed position with a prescribed Provincial entity.” That’s actually repeated under schedule 2 and appears on page 25, and exactly the same clause is struck again. What these are are definitions, essentially. Earlier in schedule 1 it says, “For the purpose of section 2( 1) of this Schedule, ‘ former public office holder’ means,” and then it gives a long list.

I’ve already talked about how the face of volunteerism is changing in our province. We’ve long ago left behind the 1950s, when all of the nice housewives were available during the day to go out and volunteer for all kinds of good works. We are now dealing, for the most part, with families where two parents are working, where children are very involved in a number of activities – parents actually have to volunteer for those activities – so the availability of people’s time and dedication and resources as well, if we’re talking about donating money, is really quite precious. The concern that was voiced to me was that if we describe people that used to hold a position with a provincial entity as being named under one of the groups of people with whom lobbyists couldn’t associate, we’ve essentially said that someone that used to work for the Alberta Mental Health Board, for example, couldn’t volunteer.

That, I think, could be problematic for us. We don’t have a huge pool of volunteers to pull from. We’re not New York. We don’t have millions of people that we could use as a volunteer pool. We’re a lot smaller than that. It’s harder to find volunteers with expertise in certain areas. I think what we’ve done here is we’ve discouraged or in some cases made it wrong to allow someone who used to hold a position with a provincial government entity to be involved with a volunteer organization.

Now, we have exempted the charities and sort of the good-works, charitable groups out of this, but you are still dealing with things like professional associations, chambers of commerce, the Alberta Medical Association, who was in here today, business groups, umbrella associations, unions, for example. They are still looking for volunteers and people willing to serve in their executive positions as well. Especially when you start looking at some of the groups that need a specialized interest and a specialized background – at least it would be a really steep learning curve for somebody else to pick it all up – I wonder if it’s really advisable for us to be cutting out people who may have gained their expertise by working for a provincial entity or, more to the point, formerly working for a provincial entity. The request was made to me to see if we couldn’t agree to exempt those individuals in this one particular section, which would open up that pool of volunteers. I agree, and I was clearly willing to bring the amendment forward and to argue for it. I hope that others in the House will see how difficult it can be to recruit volunteers in this day and age, especially when we’re looking at specialized or niche groups, where the hope is that there would be some kind of knowledge around the organization from the people who become involved with it, especially in executive positions. I mean, our civil service is not huge, but it’s a good pool of volunteers for us to be pulling from, and to say that anyone that formerly worked for a provincial entity is out, I think we’ve narrowed that pool of experts that might be able to contribute by quite a bit. I’m encouraging members of the Assembly to support this amendment.