BC's Lobbyist Tracker Needs Big Fixes, Says a Creator
Former AG: Website tweak is overdue, but not enough.
Lobbyist Geoff Plant: helped start registry.
The provincial government has agreed to put money into improving the lobbyist registry website, but fixing the system will require more than updating the software.
As B.C.'s attorney general in 2001, Geoff Plant midwifed the birth of one of the first lobbyist registries in Canada. Now a lobbyist himself and a partner in the law firm Heenan Blaikie, in May he got to see the system from the other side for the first time. But you wouldn't know his name was on the registry at all, he points out, unless you knew to look for him as "Paul Plant."
Anyone curious to see who the former cabinet minister is lobbying would likely either miss his name in the public reports or conclude incorrectly he's trying to pull a fast one. Plant's full name is "Paul Geoffrey Plant," but the registry only allowed room for two of his names.
Aside from the lack of space for his full, publicly recognized name, says Plant, the site only allows lobbyists three words to describe what they are doing. The result is phrases like "seeking business opportunities" or "awareness and advocacy," which are too vague to be useful.
"When we put it together in summer 2001, we wanted to get something up and running," Plant says. The plan was always to go back and make it better, he says, but that's never happened. "I'd sure spend some money making that a more user-friendly computer software system."
Money for website fix
In December, the government's select standing committee on finance and government services agreed to give one time funding of $150,000 to fix the website to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, which acts as registrar for lobbyists.
In information and privacy commissioner David Loukidelis's Nov. 26, 2007, budget submission to the committee, he lists several problems with the site and notes a similar request was refused last year. "From the outset," the submission says, "the system has been criticized by lobbyists, the public and the media as being difficult to use."
The submission says the system is time consuming for people trying to register. They run into problems, and then require much support from the commissioner's office, using valuable staff time. Nor does the site accept online payments, which would streamline the process. Finally, the submission says, "the system does not have adequate reporting capabilities."
The problems are the direct result of the government going with the lowest bidder to build the registry before it was launched in 2002, the submission suggests. The top bid was $329,246. The average bid was $155,000. The government, however, chose a firm that promised to do the job for the bargain price of $29,900.
Bigger problems
While improving the website will solve some of the problems, there are also a number of problems that would require fixing the legislation that governs the registry.
For one thing, says Plant, when the Liberal government started the registry the only enforcement mechanism available was to make it an offence not to register. Fines were set at a maximum of $25,000. If someone fails to register, it means pursuing it through either the police or a prosecutor. "I don't think that's the best approach," says Plant. "There needs to be some powers given to the registrar or the commissioner."
There's also the question of whose responsibility it is to register the lobbying. The act puts the onus on the lobbyists to say what they are doing. But why not make the politicians, the people in the relationship who can and should be held accountable to voters, responsible? Says Plant, "I think those are good questions. I don't know that there's one right answer for all time to these questions."
The trick, he says, is designing the system so it captures the right things. The way it is now, people are supposed to list every MLA they plan to contact or might contact. Some registered lobbyists have responded by listing virtually every member of the house, which obscures to whom they are actually talking.
Guess who's coming to dinner
From the registrants' point of view, says Plant, it's pretty easy, when sitting at the computer to register, to imagine talking to anyone. "I can tell you from the perspective of someone who's lobbying, that's exactly the challenge. You run down the list of ministers and MLAs and try to guess who you might be talking to."
But it's not always predictable. Recently, Plant says, he was at a Business Council of B.C. dinner and there were a few MLAs and cabinet ministers there. What, as a former colleague and current lobbyist, was he going to talk with them about? "If I've got something burning a hole in the back of my brain I've been meaning to talk to somebody in government about, here's someone in government. Oops, have I registered [to talk to this person] or not?"
Still, he says, listing all the possible contacts does not make the registry more useful. Nor, he adds, would including the names of senior bureaucrats and political aids. "I worry that at some point it becomes overkill."
Changing what's recorded in the registry might also change how lobbyists work. The idea is to provide transparency, Plant says, not to change behaviours. "I was ambivalent then, and am still ambivalent, about whether there's much public benefit to regulating the activity of lobbyists."
It makes sense for the government to consult widely, Plant says, and you don't want to scare people away from talking to MLAs and cabinet ministers. The public would be no better served, he says, if lobbyists started targeting constituency assistants and other political aides not caught by the lobbyist act, making their contact invisible. "You can achieve a lot by knowing who's talking to government."
Windows covered over
The registry was supposed to be a window onto one part of how the government functions, and was a key part of the BC Liberals' promise to make B.C.'s administration the most open and accountable in Canada. As Plant says, "When we did this six years ago my primary interest was in the goal of transparency. I thought the registry would be an important step in achieving that goal."
While the goal is laudable, other jurisdictions have launched lobbyist registries with plate glass that make the B.C. registry look like it has garbage bags stapled over the windows. As the website Public Eye noted in December, Alberta's lobbyist registrar now has the power to conduct investigations and has judicial type powers to summon witnesses and compel evidence to be given. Alberta also now threatens fines of up to $100,000 for non-compliance, four times the maximum penalty in B.C., and can ban a lobbyist from government relations work for two years.
Nova Scotia's registry also puts B.C.'s to shame. It includes full names, addresses, phone and fax numbers for both the lobbyists and the organizations for whom they work. It has an extended space for a description of the lobbying activity, and many of the entries are very specific about what contracts or opportunities the client is interested in.
In Nova Scotia lobbyists also describe what techniques they'll be using, including whether they plan on having meetings, making phone calls or sending written letters or e-mails. Perhaps most importantly, the registry requires them to reveal how they are being funded and whether their payment is contingent on their client getting what they want. Ontario's registry has similar details.
If Premier Gordon Campbell is serious about having the most open and accountable government in the country, catching up with and passing the other provinces will require much more than a small reinvestment in the lobbyist website.
Related Tyee stories:
- Do We Really Know Who's Lobbying?
B.C.'s lobbyist registry was supposed to tell us. Now the person in charge says it's full of 'loopholes.' - 'Open, Transparent and Accountable'
That's the government B.C. Liberals promised. By most measures, they haven't delivered. - Top Bush Adviser Made Millions Lobbying for BC Forest Biz
Ed Gillespie is 'New Karl Rove.'
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
Jeffrey J.
07-01-2008
Sign of the Times
If we hypothosize that BC's Campbell Regime doesn't believe in democracy, the above story provides evidence of its accuracy. This is a contemptuous group of people whose power and autocracy have grown exponentially. It's no wonder people like Geoff Plant, Carole Taylor etc etc have all left the cabinet. Somehow, BC has inherited a callous, mean spirited government whose goal is to dismantle every progressive social structure that we fought to create. Great article Tyee and Mr. MacLeod!
Grumpy
07-01-2008
Nothing much more to add..........
......but the Campbell regime is worse. It is a 'robber baron' style of government, where the people who live in BC are seen as shallow, stupid people.
Ferris, are built overseas as a punishment to local workers; BC Rail is sold off in questionable style; Fish farms are allowed to proliferate the West coast as they destroy native salmon stocks; new highways are steamrolled through with little regard to the environment and the government pretends it is green; sleaze and shifty deals are the hallmark of this government and history will show it was a plague of locusts, the stripped the province bare.
We have no opposition in BC, the NDP have been shown as wanting, with the worst leader in charge in years.
Even the media has kow-towed to the Campbell Liberals and his Brothers daily rant on CORUS, completes the media propaganda coup.
What will be left in BC once this government is gone? A shell of its former self, where the 'Best place in the World', will be in reality a shabby thralldom of global corporations, where the populace will have little say.
It is sad to see BC die and shrivel away into a joke, but this what is happening, unless we; well could I say a revolution could take place. Na, we don't have guts to do it.
Chris H
07-01-2008
Open and accountable
The problem is that Gordon Campbell is not serious about being open and accountable. Everything he has done points to the fact that he doesn't want the public informed or knowledgable about what is going on in the provincial government.
Dale Perkins
07-01-2008
Another example of Campbell's PR spin
The Tyee and Andrew MacLeod again can be thanked for revealing another example of Gordon Campbell &
Co preaching one message about openness and clarity in government while delivering almost zero in the way of a Registry for Lobbyists. Public accountability was sacrificed six years ago when Campbell waltzed into office. Those first four years they didn't even pretend to represent the voting electorate. The past two years of their second 4-year mandate they've had a large and talented Opposition and a knowledgeable and compassionate leader in Carole James to contend with. However, having excellent investigative journalists like MacLeod becomes increasingly more critical. Now we are seeing the extent of their duplicity and lack of integrity. While nothing in MacLeod's article surprises, to witness a former AG, now lobbyist 'Paul' Plant. give evidence that the entire registry enterprise is, at best, a joke is more fodder for the growing consensus that removing this gang of thieves in May 2009 cannot come soon enough!
lynn
07-01-2008
Will the Real Paul Geoffrey Plant Please Stand Up?
Changing what's recorded in the registry might also change how lobbyists work. The idea is to provide transparency, Plant says, not to change behaviours. "I was ambivalent then, and am still ambivalent, about whether there's much public benefit to regulating the activity of lobbyists."
So what exactly is Geoff Plant really saying here?
He doesn't seem all that willing to put any significant real teeth or accountability or rigourous oversight into the lobbyist registry? (Accountability accomplished rather easily, btw, by other provinces mentioned in this article.)
He just says it isn't working....and then goes ahead to emphasize the point of his continued ambivalence towards the "public benefit" of regulating the activity of lobbyists.
This seems like the same old spin that has accompanied and preceded every act of privatization in this province, from health
care, to BC Rail to ferries. Underfund it... then say it isn't working.... call it a failure. In other words, ultimately, make it fail.
There never has been a real liberal in the BC Liberal party. Not a one. Just a bunch of self-flatterers that like "to look" the part but have absolutely no intention of delivering the performance.
C'mon, Plant doesn't really want to regulate the activity of lobbyists nor does he in reality believe in a lobbyist registry.... he just wants "to look like" he does.
Which is what a running-on-empty Gordon Campbell DeceiveBC government has always been and is all about - the subterfuge of "looking the part" - no real deep or genuine substance or actual caring when it comes to the public good. Their private loyalties lie elsewhere.
So no real surprise we have a DeceiveBC lobbyist registry.
It all fits, doesn't it? It just falls into place beside every other shameless act of DeceiveBC deception and betrayal that has been incurred of late against the citizens of this province.
Deception and betrayal - it's what we have come to expect from our present pretend government...and its what they deliver best.
Geoff Plant ain't fooling anyone. As Skywalker makes clear, Plant's a lobbyist himself for gawd's sake.