While your article addressed the huge loophole in the Lobbying Act that allows in-house for-profit corporate lobbyists to lobby without registering or disclosing their activities as long as they lobby less than 20 percent of their work time, it ignored some key facts (Make 20% rule for in-house lobbyists clearer, or cut it, experts say – October 10).

First, your headline says that "experts" claim that the 20 percent rule is not clear.  In fact, the rule was clarified almost a decade ago in an interpretation bulletin issued by then Ethics Counsellor Howard Wilson.  The bulletin made it clear that the time counted in the 20 percent includes the employee's lobbying preparation time, not just the actual lobbying time, and should be counted on a monthly basis.

What could be more clear?  Count up your time over the month, and if lobbying preparation and lobbying adds up to more than 20 percent of your work time (one day a week) then you have to be listed in the business' registration.

Second, your article fails to mention that organizations that are not for-profit have, ever since the Act was passed, been required to list every employee who does even a minute of lobbying in their registration.  Yes it's true -- the smallest non-profit organizations have always been required to disclose more of their lobbying activities than the biggest businesses in Canada.

In other words, the 20 percent rule was, not surprisingly, designed to hide the extent of big business lobbying of the federal government.

Third, your article neglects to mention the huge loophole in the Act that allows for secret, unregistered lobbying if you are lobbying about the enforcement or administration of a law, code policy etc.

This loophole, the 20 percent loophole, and the unpaid lobbying loophole, must all be closed or secret, unethical lobbying of the federal government and federal politicians will continue to be legal -- NOTE: Also, cooling-off periods of one to five years must be established for everyone.  The more decision-making power you have, the longer you should be prohibited from lobbying, and everyone should be required to report their activities to the Ethics Commissioner regularly (as the Oliphant Commission also recommended)).

As for Rule 8 of the Lobbyists' Code of Conduct, as I've said over and over again, given the Federal Court of Appeal unanimous ruling in March 2009, and the Commissioner of Lobbying's interpretation bulletins and rulings since then, anyone who doesn't know what activities a conflict of interest for a public office holder is being intentionally ignorant.

Intentional ignorance of Rule 8 used to be a clear way to get let off the hook for unethical activities as a lobbyist because former Ethics Counsellor Howard Wilson and former Registrar of Lobbyists Michael Nelson were also intentionally ignorant of the clear line drawn by Rule 8 and so they refused to enforce the rule.

Very unfortunately, although Commissioner Shepherd knows clearly what is illegal, she has let more than 30 lobbyists violate the registration and/or Code rules without finding them guilty of violating the Code (which she can do without anyone else's cooperation or approval, and which she is supposed to do if she was doing her job properly -- as the Hill Times reported in May, click here to see article).

So, to actually end secret and unethical lobbying at the federal level in Canada not only must all the loopholes be closed to make secret and unethical lobbying illegal, Commissioner Shepherd must also be fired and replaced by an actual watchdog who is required to enforce the Act and Code and can be challenged in court if they fail to do so properly.

Oh, and by the way, the same loopholes exist in the lobbying disclosure laws of the six provinces that have such laws (Alberta, B.C. , Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Québec), and in the ethics rules of every province and territory and municipality in Canada (except the City of Toronto, which has closed the loophole that allows for unethical lobbying (but still has the other loopholes)).

For more details, go to Democracy Watch's Government Ethics Campaign and Money in Politics Campaign pages

---

JOIN THE CoffeeParty.ca movement

TV and Radio interviews