Five B.C. Liberal candidates running in the current election are also former lobbyists who advocated for corporations including Chevron, Pacific Northwest LNG and ExxonMobil in the offices of Premier Christy Clark and other top ministers, according to records contained in the B.C. Lobbyist Registry.

None of the candidates’ profiles on the B.C. Liberal’s website note their previous work as lobbyists.

“I am alarmed at the number of lobbyists who are running in this election,” Dermod Travis, executive director of IntegrityBC, told DeSmog Canada.

“It may in fact point to a worrisome trend.”

“It’s not a generally considered a stepping stone in politics to go from being a lobbyist to an elected official. Where B.C. risks not electing a government but electing a boardroom of interests — whether corporate or union, it doesn’t matter,” Travis said. "In this instance it's obviously corporate."

B.C. has no broad rules preventing all former public office holders from moving directly from the public sector into employment as a lobbyist to serve private interests.

In Ontario former politicians must wait 12 months before registering as lobbyists. Federally the 'cooling-off period' is a mandatory five years.

B.C. does impose a one-year cooling-off period for senior politicians and bureaucrats from lobbying their former colleagues in instances where they had “substantial involvement in dealings with an outside entity,” but the system is far from perfect, Travis said.

Former Corporate Lobbyists Running for B.C. Liberals Part of ‘Alarming Trend’: Watchdog https://t.co/LbOCFb2YZG #bcelxn17 #bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 5, 2017

“We have a ‘defrost period,’ “ Travis said, “because it’s not a mandatory cooling off period even where it exists.”

Multiple loopholes mean former public employees are often exempt from the rules.

“We see people going back and forth sometimes in the revolving door where at one moment they’re in the private sector and in the next, the public sector,” Travis said, adding lobbyists aren’t required to disclose if and when they receive kick backs from companies they secure government funding or contracts for.

These ‘contingency clauses’ are banned at the federal level, but in B.C. are kept secret, further obscuring the power lobbying has in the political process, Travis said.

“What’s happening through that process is special interests, self interests are getting put ahead of the public good.”

So who are the candidates?

Gabe Garfinkel, Christy Clark’s former top aide turned lobbyist, is running for the B.C. Liberal party in the riding of Vancouver-Fairview.

Garfinkel made headlines in 2013 after leaving his position of executive assistant to Christy Clark to work with prominent public relations firm FleishmanHillard which lobbies on behalf of high profile corporate clients like Kinder Morgan.

According to provincial lobbying records, Garfinkel registered to lobby on behalf of Chevron Canada, Fortune Minerals and Port Metro Vancouver among others and frequently listed the Premier as a “target contact” for these meetings.

In his work as a lobbyist representing mining and oil and gas interests, Garfinkel lobbied the office of the premier as well as Environment Minister Mary Polak and Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett.

Jas Johal, candidate for Richmond-Queensborough, was the former director of communications for the BC LNG Alliance and registered to lobby on the behalf of BG Canada, ExxonMobil, Kitimat LNG, LNG Canada, Pacific Northwest LNG, Triton LNG and Woodfibre LNG between 2014 and 2015.

Brenda Locke, candidate for Surrey-Green Timbers, was an MLA between 2001 and 2005 and served as Minister for Mental Health and Addiction Services.

Locke left that position to lobby on behalf of the Massage Therapists’ Association of B.C. as recently as December 2016.

Kim Chan Logan, registered to lobby on behalf of TELUS from 2011 to as recently as March 20, 2017, was previously a ministerial assistant and chief of staff to the Minister of Health Services from 2001 to 2004.

Andrew Wilkinson, the B.C. Liberal Vancouver-Quilchena candidate was former Deputy Minister for Intergovernmental Relations, Deputy Minister of Competition, Science and Enterprise, and Deputy Minister for Economic Development between 2001 and 2006.

Wilkinson was a registered lobbyist for McCarthy Tetrault on behalf of Covanta Energy Corp., Energy companies Vattenfall AB and Kronos Project Management and mining company Thompson Creek Metals.

Between 2010 and 2012 Wilkinson registered to lobby the Premier and Energy and Mines Minister Rich Coleman among others. He previously registered in 2009 to lobby on behalf of Simon Fraser University.

Wilkinson is now the subject of lobbying in his positions as both Minister of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services and Minister of Advanced Education for the B.C. Liberals.

Two additional former B.C. Liberals also left politics to take up lobbying work in the private sector.

Don Fast, former Deputy Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development from 2011 to 2013 left to start his own lobby firm, D. Fast Consulting.*

Dimitri Pantazopoulos, former campaign staffer for the B.C. Liberals, principle secretary to Christy Clark between 2011 and 2012 and former Assistant Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental Relations and Trade between 2012 and 2013, left for a career in lobbying.

Between 2013 and 2017 Pantazopoulos lobbied on behalf of Consumer Health Products Canada, Adobe, production company Cavalia, farm fish company Cermaq, Comcast, Johnson&Johnson, Pacific Newspaper Group, Black Press, Uber and Woodside Energy among others.

The back and forth movement between lobby firms and the public sector is a practice Travis considers “an incredible threat to how our system works.”

“It creates too many suspicions as to whose interests are being served.”

* This article has been updated to correctly indicate Fast was the former Deputy Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development and not Minister as previously stated.

Image: Premier Christy Clark at a Woodfibre LNG announcement. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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Political donations made to the BC Liberals under the name of a prominent Teck Resources lobbyist were actually made by the company and were registered in error, according to the company.

A joint investigation between DeSmog Canada and University of Victoria researcher Nick Graham of the Corporate Mapping Project uncovered seven Teck Resources registered lobbyists who have also donated to the BC Liberals.

According to the Elections BC database, Carleigh Whitman, manager of government relations for Teck Resources, made personal contributions totaling $4,275 to the BC Liberals.

Political donations by lobbyists are in the spotlight after a Globe and Mail investigation revealed some lobbyists are being reimbursed for their contributions, a practice that is illegal in B.C., a province with some of the weakest political donation laws in the country.

Last week Elections BC launched an investigation into the matter and, after receiving additional complaints regarding personal donations, it has now referred the investigation to the RCMP.

When asked if Teck Resources reimbursed Whitman for her donation to the BC Liberals, Chris Stannell, senior communications specialist for Teck, said the contributions “were listed in error as being made by an individual.”

“They were donations made by Teck and paid using a Teck corporate credit card,” Stannell wrote to DeSmog Canada in an e-mail.

“Our practice is to report all such administrative errors and request a correction as soon as we are made aware of them,” he said.

Stannell said the company does not make donations through individuals.

The BC Liberals previously admitted “there has been confusion” about how donations from individuals are registered in the party’s system because some donations made on the behalf of a company or special interest are not categorized as such.

Donations made on the BC Liberal website through a personal credit card are automatically registered as a personal contribution, even though the donation may have been intended to be made on a corporation’s behalf.

A spokesperson for the BC Liberals did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to Whitman, six other Teck Resources lobbyists have also made personal donations to the BC Liberals.

Mark Edwards (donations: $4,500)

James Fraser (donations: $1,186)

Mark Reder (donations: $3,465)

Marcia Smith (donations: $2,975)

Tom Syer (donations: $730)

Alexa Young (donations: $1,900)

Teck Resources declined to comment further on donations made by these six other individuals. The company also did not respond to questions regarding when Teck became aware of the donations being “listed in error” or when Teck reported such inaccuracies to the BC Liberals.

Teck Resources is the largest donor to the BC Liberals. Since 2008 Teck has donated $1,502,444 to the BC Liberals and $60,090 to the BC NDP. Since 2010, Norman Keevil, chair of the board for Teck, has personally donated $65,585 to the BC Liberals.

The company reported $8.3 billion in revenue in 2015 and operates five metallurgical mines in B.C. as well as an oilsands mine in Alberta.

Thirty Additional Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Contributed to BC Liberals

In total, 37 fossil fuel lobbyists from the 10 most prolific lobbying firms have donated to the BC Liberals since 2010.

Donations from these lobbyists total more than $116,000 with some individuals donating more than $11,000 through multiple small contributions.

The top 10 most active lobbying firms in the fossil fuel sector include the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Chevron Canada, Enbridge, Encana, FortisBC, Spectra Energy, Teck Resources and TransCanada.

Several of the lobbyists work under the employment of government relations firms including National Public Relations and Earnscliffe. Both firms did not respond to requests for comment on their policy regarding reimbursement for political donations.

DeSmog Canada also reached out to several of the top donors for comment, but those requests went unanswered.

BC Liberal Political Donations from Top Fossil Fuel Lobbyists April 2010 – March 2017 by DeSmog Canada on Scribd

Image: Teck Resources via Facebook

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The fossil fuel industry lobbied the B.C. government more than 22,000 times between April 2010 and October 2016, according to a report released Wednesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives as part of the Corporate Mapping Project.

The report also found that 48 fossil fuel companies and associated industry groups have donated $5.2 million to B.C. political parties between 2008 and 2015 — 92 per cent of which has gone to the BC Liberals.

The analysis found seven of the top 10 political donors from the fossil fuel industry are also B.C.’s most active lobbyists.

The Corporate Mapping Project is a six-year research and public engagement initiative jointly led by the University of Victoria, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Alberta-based Parkland Institute.

Researchers have painstakingly analyzed lobbying and political donation records to demonstrate the extensive political influence of the fossil fuel industry in B.C.

“I was definitely surprised at the sheer volume of lobbying contacts that we found,” Nick Graham, lead author of the report and PhD candidate at the University of Victoria, told DeSmog Canada.

Spectra Energy, Enbridge, FortisBC, Encana, Chevron Canada, CAPP and Teck Resources conducted the majority of registered lobbying contacts, more than 19,500 in total since the lobbyist registry was first initiated in 2010 — an average of 14 lobbying contacts in B.C. per day.

“We were expecting to see some overlap between political donations and lobbying,” Graham said. “Part of what donations help achieve is access to government so we certainly expected to see some of that.”

The top 10 fossil fuel industry donors were responsible for $3.8 million in contributions to the BC Liberals and $270,000 to the BC NDP.

The Corporate Mapping Project report, co-authored by Shannon Daub of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Bill Carroll, professor of sociology at the University of Victoria, is the first systematic analysis of fossil fuel lobbying in B.C.

Top 10 fossil fuel industry donors in B.C. Source: CCPA, Corporate Mapping Project.

Clear Connection Between Lobbying, Donations and Policy Outcomes

“There is a fairly clear connection between lobbying, donations and policy outcomes that is quite troubling,” Daub told DeSmog Canada.

“It can be difficult to draw a line between a political donation or a meeting and policy because so little information is released to the public about what is going on behind closed doors,” Daub said.

But, she added, a more broad analysis like this can help connect the dots.

“We did note the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, for example, in a one year period between October 2015 and August 2016, reported 201 lobbying contacts with the provincial government specifically in relation to the climate leadership plan.”

“And of course that plan turned out to not be much of a plan at all,” Daub added.

The analysis found 28 per cent of lobbying by the top fossil fuel lobbyists was with cabinet ministers.

Several cabinet ministers were the frequent target of lobbying contacts, the most popular being Minister of Natural Gas Development Rich Coleman, who was listed in 733 contacts with the top 10 fossil fuel firms.

The other most contacted senior ministers are Premier Christy Clark (618 contacts), Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett (437), Environment Minister Mary Polak (354) and Finance Minister Mike de Jong (330).

“It really does speak to the development of these close relationships,” Graham said. “You do see particular firms heavily targeting individuals. There is this really tight, if not cozy, ongoing relationship that develops and the perspective of the two become quite closely aligned.”

Companies such as Encana, with significant operations in B.C.’s natural gas plays focused heavily on lobbying Natural Gas Development Minister Coleman, the analysis found.

Source: CCPA, Corporate Mapping Project

Corporate Influence Far Outweighs Environmental Voices

Graham added the analysis was shaped in part by the B.C. government’s push for increased extractive industry projects in the province for nearly the last decade.

“The paper began from the perspective of seeing this really incredible push around expanding fossil fuel development in the province especially around natural gas and the really aggressive promotion of the LNG industry in particular by the government.”

“Part of our question was, ‘how can we explain this? What explains this?’ ” Graham said.

“What we found are there are multiple explanations that point to the structural power of industry and the provincial government’s reliance on resource rent. But also major corporate influence: the ability of corporations to have these stores of capital to pressure government on an ongoing basis.”

The analysis found a total of 1,300 lobby contacts between the government and environmental or non-governmental organizations during the same timeframe.

Daub said there is clearly not level access to provincial decision-makers in B.C.

“What shows really clearly from these numbers is that we have one industry with a very disproportionate level of access to government and government policy,” she said.

B.C.’s Ongoing Transparency Problem

B.C. has some of the weakest political donation rules in the country, which allow unlimited donations from individuals, foreigners, corporations and unions.

“Clearly it’s just time to ban big money in politics all together. One of the recommendations in our report is to put a stop to corporate and union donations and a cap on individual contributions.”

Federally, political parties cannot accept donations from corporations or unions and provinces like Quebec place a $100 limit on personal donations.

“It’s supposed to be one person, one vote,” Daub said. “Instead in B.C. it’s more like one dollar, one vote.”

A level democratic playing field is important for the public to have confidence in the political system but also to feel they can meaningfully participate in the process, Daub said.

Beyond problems with special interest dollars flooding the political process, B.C. also has poor transparency requirements when it comes to lobbying.

Lobbyists must register to lobby in B.C. and provide a list of intended meetings. However, there is no official record kept that distinguishes between intended and actual meetings.

Any meetings requested by public officials are not registered.

In addition, lobby records do not give the public detailed information about the content of meetings.

“Teck is one of the biggest lobbyists in the province among industry groups and they have a particular focus on MLAs,” Daub said. “But what they report they’ve lobbied on is things like ‘mining,’ or ‘employment and training’ or ‘aboriginal affairs.’ ”

“That doesn’t tell us anything about what they’re actually talking to these public officials about.”

Daub said better records should be kept of lobbying interactions that gives the public a decent account of when and how frequently these meetings are taking place and what public policy matters are at stake.

“A more transparent system would make it much easier for the public to find out what is going on in these closed door meetings.”

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The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), Canada’s largest oil and gas lobbyist group, asked the federal government to introduce a carbon pricing scheme that would “recycle” revenues back into oil and gas operations, documents released via Freedom of Information legislation reveal.

The documents, released to Greenpeace Canada, contain an August 2016 submission CAPP provided to the federal government in which the group argues a price on carbon should be revenue neutral for industry.

“One of the decisions governments need to make is what to do with the revenue generated from the carbon pricing mechanism,” the document reads. “There are many options available to enable innovation for distribution of this generated revenue; CAPP recommends that to enable innovation, revenue generated by industrial emitters is best recycled back to industry for technology and innovation.”

Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist for Greenpeace Canada, says, “The oil industry formally supports action on climate change (in exchange for pipeline approvals) but wants to shape how the policy is implemented so as to minimize the impact on its own operations.”

In a summary piece for Policy Options, Stewart says the recommendation to channel carbon taxes back into industry operations “dramatically weakens the effectiveness of the federal policy.”

“The primacy advantage of a carbon price is that it sends an economy-wide signal to investors and consumers, leading to a shift to lower-carbon options. If the largest share of the revenue goes back to the oil industry, the signal to investors to switch to low-carbon energy is muted.”

Pressure from CAPP comes as the federal government is preparing to release the first Gazette I version of greenhouse gas emissions for the oil and gas sector later this month.

Industry lobbying efforts successfully staved off greenhouse gas emission regulations for the oil and gas sector throughout the entirety of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 10-year rule. Further lobbying efforts also stymied a European effort to label fuel from the Alberta oilsands as more carbon intensive than other fossil fuels.

Under the international Paris Agreement and the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, Canada has committed to a 2030 target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 524 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, a 30 per cent reduction from 2005 emission levels.

Environment and Climate Change Canada estimates new oil and gas regulations will reduce emissions by 20 megatonnes (MT), greater than Nova Scotia’s total emissions at 17 MT.

The upstream oil and gas sector is Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition to imposing a nationwide carbon pricing mechanism — provinces have until 2018 to implement one or have one imposed — the federal government is also implementing regulations to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.

CAPP Lobbies Government to ‘Recycle’ #CarbonTax Revenues Back to Oil Industry https://t.co/U6ydduAMfn #ableg #cdnpoli @carollinnitt pic.twitter.com/JEtq49vlNk

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 3, 2017

CAPP’s Fight Against Methane Regulations

Additional internal documents released to Greenpeace Canada show CAPP overestimated the cost of implementation and argued the new rules will damage industry’s competitiveness.

“Canadian production is already at risk of being displaced by U.S. competition,” a CAPP presentation made to the federal government in September 2016 reads.

It is “not a good time to impose additional costs on industry,” a slide states.

In March 2016, former president Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau announced an ambitious plan to nearly halve methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 2025.

In Canada the reductions would be the equivalent of removing every passenger car from the roads in both B.C. and Alberta.

Canada’s forthcoming methane regulations are expected to outline how the sector will achieve those reduction targets.

CAPP, however, recommended the federal government delay implementation of methane regulations beyond the currently proposed 2020 and argued some aspects of the rules, such as mandatory retrofitting of all equipment or regular equipment inspections, should be voluntary.

CAPP’s argument that the new rules are too costly is simply a negotiating tactic, Stewart says.

“CAPP says that the cost to industry of implementing the federal methane regulations would be roughly triple what Environment Canada calculates: $4.1 billion over eight years, compared with Environment Canada’s estimate of $1.3 billion,” Stewart writes.

“Industry push-back on environmental regulations is to be expected and is most effective when conducted behind closed doors.”

Image: Machinery operates in the Alberta oilsands. Photo: Kris Krug/DeSmog

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Since the Liberals formed government last November, Enbridge and Northern Gateway Pipeline have lobbied Ottawa an astounding 86 times, federal lobbying reports reveal.

Fifty-one of those meetings have taken place since August — which, funnily enough, is around the same time Prime Minister Justin Trudeau started backtracking on his commitment to ban oil tankers on B.C.’s north coast, a policy that would leave Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline proposal dead in the water.

Since October last year, representatives from Enbridge and Northern Gateway Pipeline met with representatives from the Prime Minister’s Office eight times, Transport Canada 10 times, Fisheries and Oceans Canada 10 times, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada 12 times, Natural Resources Canada 31 times, and mostly Liberal Members of Parliament 39 times to name just a few.

During this time Enbridge and Northern Gateway Pipeline lobbyists met with more than 130 top-level chiefs of staff, policy directors, and ministers, records show.

Diesel Spill Off B.C. Coast Creating New Urgency Around Promised Tanker Ban

The issue of oil transport along the B.C. coast has been thrust back into the spotlight in the wake of ongoing diesel spill recovery efforts near Bella Bella.

Coastal residents were in a state of disbelief last night after learning an emergency response vessel, sent to B.C.’s central coast to retrieve the diesel-leaking Nathan E. Stewart, sank beside the sunken tug in windswept waters.

Since October 13, cleanup of the diesel spill in the traditional waters of the Heiltsuk First Nation has been slow and unsuccessful, hampered by a lack of response equipment, relief crews and favourable weather.

This has heightened criticism of the federal government and Trudeau who made a clear commitment to enact an oil tanker ban for the north B.C. coast during his election campaign last year. Trudeau even included formalizing the tanker ban on the list of ‘top priorities’ in Transport Minister Marc Garneau’s mandate letter in early November last year.

When pressed on his promise to ban tanker traffic — a proposal some say is not nearly comprehensive enough to protect the coast from vessels like the Nathan E. Stewart —Trudeau awkwardly dodged the question.

“Over the past year there’s been a lot of underinvestment by the federal government in marine safety and spill response. That’s something we’re absolutely committed to turning around,” Trudeau told Breakfast Television.

“And one of the symbols of that — as someone who knows Vancouver and the Lower Mainland as well as I do — one of the first things we did was reopen the Kits coast guard base because we understand that having responders there if something happens is absolutely essential.”

Jess Housty, tribal councillor for the Heiltsuk, took to Twitter to express her dismay with the Prime Minister’s comments.

“Saw your interview today,” Housty tweeted. “You know Kits is ~650km away from Bella Bella and Seaforth Channel, right?”

Nathan Cullen, MP for the Skeena-Bulkley Valley region in B.C. and environment critic for the NDP, said it is incredibly frustrating for coastal people to have the federal government stall on the tanker ban.

“When we are talking about protecting the coast out here, for the people who live here, that’s life and death,” Cullen told DeSmog Canada.

“The insult is twice because the promise was twofold: one, to bring in a tanker ban. It’s been a year and we’re still waiting. Two, to establish respectful relations with First Nations.”

“This is literally killing two birds with one stone,” Cullen said.

He added Trudeau’s inability to follow through on his promises is indication of a dangerous duplicity.

“We are a year in and one has to wonder if there are two Justin Trudeaus. One that campaigns and does public events and Twitter. The other that meets in the private backrooms in Ottawa with more oil lobbyists — one would imagine by a factor of 10 — than he has with environmental and First Nation leaders.”

Cullen said it isn’t just the diesel spill near Bella Bella that British Columbians have to worry about, but the pending decision on the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

“You wonder if the West Coast is being thrown under the bus for nothing other than political calculation.”

John Horgan, leader of the B.C.NDP, said the response to what is unfolding in Bella Bella at both the federal and the provincial level has been “frustrating” and “astounding.”

“It does really speak to an Ottawa-based arrogance to believe that reigniting the much-needed Coast Guard base in Vancouver is somehow a benefit to the coast north of Vancouver Island all the way to Prince Rupert,” Horgan told DeSmog Canada.

When asked about Enbridge and Northern Gateway’s recent lobbying spree, Horgan said “the government should spend more time with the people of B.C. when considering these problems and less with those lobbying government offices.”

Lobbying Records Disclose the Bare Minimum: Watchdog

These high volumes of lobbying are troubling, according to Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, a government accountability watchdog.

“Everybody should be worried about the power of large corporations in terms of lobbying governments,” Conacher told DeSmog Canada.

“They not only have economic power in terms of threatening to sue under trade deals or to take their business elsewhere…but they also usually hire people who have connections to the ruling party to do their lobbying so they have undue and unethical political power as well.”

Conacher said Enbridge and Northern Gateway could be doing a lot more lobbying of the federal government without any disclosure due to vast amounts of lobbying loopholes.

The documented lobbying by Enbridge and Northern Gateway is likely just scratching the surface, he said.

“Only oral pre-arranged meetings are required to be documented in those monthly logs. So you shouldn’t think that’s all the lobbying: that’s just the lobbying they disclosed.”

– With files from James Wilt

Enbridge Northern Gateway Lobbying Aug 2015-Oct 2016 – Sheet1 by DeSmog Canada on Scribd

Image: Justin Trudeau via Flickr

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Enough isn’t being done to ensure companies are following Canada’s weak lobbying and disclosure rules, according to democracy expert Duff Conacher.

Conacher, founder and long-time coordinator of Democracy Watch, told DeSmog Canada there are numerous ways to evade lobby rules.

“Overall, secret lobbying is legal,” he says. “You just have to exploit the loopholes.”

Conacher says the Lobbying Act is rife with loopholes, making it very difficult for citizens to keep track of when and with whom corporations and organizations are meeting.

For one, if a meeting concerns the “enforcement, interpretation or application” of a law or regulation that applies to a company, they don’t have to log it. The Lobbying Act also only requires paid personnel to log lobbying efforts, which can lead to a “hired gun” billing a company for “strategic advice” and the conducting the lobbying for ‘free.’

Also, only the “responsible officer” of a company or organization — usually the president or CEO — is required to list themselves in a lobbying effort. As a result, it’s impossible to know who actually lobbied the government in a meeting.

For instance, on January 11 (improperly listed as January 12 in the registry), the Petroleum Services Association of Canada met with international trade minister Chrystia Freeland about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Mark Salkeld, the president and CEO of the association, is the only person listed in the communication. But seven other people involved in the oil and gas industry also participated in the meeting (as well as two chiefs of staff and a deputy minister from the government of Alberta.)

On paper, it looks like it was a meeting between Freeland and Salkeld. But it actually included a dozen people.

How Secret Lobbying Occurs

But perhaps the biggest loophole of them all is that only “oral, prearranged” communications need to be logged.

That means that any lobbying that occurs via writing doesn’t qualify. Nor does “accidentally” bumping into someone at a fundraiser or in a hallway.

Conacher says such tactics could be used for “any emails or any meeting where both the minister or their staff or any government official and Lone Pine themselves want to get around a disclosure they communicated. And if the person inside government was also wanting that not to be registered, what they would do is have the person call them at a non-prearranged time.”

In 2008, the Conservatives introduced the revamped Lobbying Act, requiring the monthly logging of communications between lobbyists and “designated public officer holders.” In 2010, MPs and senators were added to the list of designated public office holders, meaning a company or organizations would have to log a report if they made a communication with them.

But the aforementioned loopholes were never closed.

Lone Pine Lobbied Without Registering Report

On January 15, Jeff Smith — a lobbyist representing Lone Pine Resources, the company suing Canada for $118.9 million over the Quebec fracking ban — met with Brian Clow, the chief of staff for the ministry of international trade.

We know this because Lone Pine, like with any company or organization that participates in lobbying of high-ranking public officials including MPs, senators, ministers and staff, must register such a communication in the federal lobbying registry.

You can see the report of Smith’s meeting with Clow here.

The nature of the communication was peculiar for a few reasons: If the company is attempting to negotiate a settlement, it’s safe to assume that such conversations would happen between lawyers, not politicians and civil servants (although Lone Pine may be attempting to put internal pressure on the government to settle.)

But stranger still were the results of an access to information and privacy (ATIP) request that DeSmog Canada made in regards to the meeting.

As it turns out, the meeting on January 15 wasn’t the first time that Lone Pine had lobbied Clow: an email exchange from four days earlier referenced a “discussion they had before Christmas.”

According to another email, Nadia Theodore — then a director of trade negotiations with the foreign affairs department — attended the January 15 meeting with Clow (an email noted that her “policy perspective would be appreciated.”)

Neither of these occurrences were logged in the lobbying registry.

Milos Barutciski, partner and co-chair of international trade and investment at Bennett Jones LLP (the firm that’s serving as counsel for Lone Pine in the suit against Canada), replied to a request made to Lone Pine’s CEO: “I can confirm that our client's government relations advisors understand and comply with their Lobbying Act registration obligations.”

“Note that only oral communications described in the regulations are required to be disclosed in monthly filings. The communications you reference are not within the scope of the regulations.”

The “discussion” prior to Christmas could have occurred via email, meaning it would not have to be logged in the database. And while Theodore’s presence at previous meetings with other lobbyists had been logged 22 times, she didn’t occupy a high-ranking enough position to legally require it.

This reality is a very major problem, and one that points to fundamental flaws in the way that lobbying is tracked and publicized.

‘Secret Lobbying is Legal’ if You Know Which Loopholes to Exploit, Says Democracy Watchdog https://t.co/dGh5LKGbWr pic.twitter.com/J8y1VO2CeO

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 8, 2016

Only Two Lobbyists Found Guilty of Breaking Rules Since 1988

The Liberals didn’t mention lobbying in their 2015 platform, although the party pledged to “amend the Access to Information Act so that all government data and information is made open by default in machine-readable, digital formats,” as well as extending the reach of the act to the Prime Minister’s Office.

Conacher says the government has shown no interest in increasing the responsibilities and scope of the lobbying commissioner, meaning many infractions are likely going unnoticed and unpunished.

The current commissioner, Karen Shepherd, doesn’t audit government departments. Since 2004, only 67 lobbyists have been caught violating the Lobbying Act. Almost all have been let off the hook without punishment or public scrutiny.

Only two lobbyists have been found guilty of illegal lobbying since 1988.

Bruce Carson, a former top aide to Stephen Harper, will be receiving a ruling on his alleged prohibited lobbying in the next few months.

Estimated 1,600 Lobbyists Broke Rules Over Past Two Decades

Conacher says there are some 5,000 active lobbyists working at any given time, and that around 25,000 that have registered since 1988. The number of lobbyists over the course of a year — many will deregister as soon as they’ve finished work for a company or organization — has increased in recent years as well.

In 2014-15, Shepherd only conducted 20 administrative reviews, finding one worthy of referring to the RCMP. The identities of lobbyists who violate the code, but aren’t charged, are kept hidden.

“The percentages are so small that our conclusion is only five per cent have been caught,” Conacher says. “And that 1,600 lobbyists have likely violated the code or the act since 2007. But only three have been charged.”

Conacher suggests the lobbying commissioner should be conducting random samples of every government institution: for example, obtaining all communications with ten companies for the last three months, including phone logs for the minister and staff.

Feds Not Interested in Changing Rules

Shepherd’s seven-year term just finished. She’s expressed interest in being reappointed, something that Conacher says “would be a tragedy and continue to undermine transparency in lobbying.”

There’s also talk about merging the responsibilities of the ethics commissioner and lobbying commissioner into one, which could potentially impact the overall effectiveness of the role.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already been accused of getting too cozy with lobbyists (during the campaign, the party’s co-chair had to step down for providing recommendations to TransCanada on how to lobby a Liberal government.)

All up, there’s clearly plenty of work to be done in improving the communication and monitoring of lobbying activities. What’s less obvious if anyone’s going to take such opportunities seriously.

Image: Danny Huizinga/Flickr

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In April and May alone, Lone Pine Resources Inc. — the oil and gas company that’s currently suing the government of Canada for $118.9 million in alleged damages — lobbied 11 MPs, a policy advisor for the Prime Minister’s Office and the chief of staff for Natural Resources Canada.

The sole subject matter listed for the lobbying efforts was: “Claim against the Government of Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by Lone Pine Resources Inc.”

The company is actively claiming damages for Quebec's 2011 decision to revoke oil and gas exploration licenses located beneath the St. Lawrence River that were granted to its subsidiary, Lone Pine Resources Canada Ltd., via a “farmout agreement” with Junex Inc. The $118.9 figure represents Lone Pine’s estimated sunk costs and lost future profits.

Actual case proceedings haven’t started yet: the last publically available document — a 251 page rebuttal by the Canadian government written entirely in French — is from July 2015.

These recent meetings could mean the company — which Sujata Dey, trade campaigner with the Council of Canadians, dubs “a Canadian company suing Canada through their U.S. tax haven and subsidiary” — is attempting to seek an out-of-court settlement with the government, an option that would allow Lone Pine to avoid mounting legal fees and the unpredictable nature of investment tribunals.

Investor-State Dispute Settlements Can Result In Large Payout, Rollback In Policies

Ben Beachy, senior policy advisor in the U.S. Sierra Club’s Responsible Trade Program, notes some settlements such as the Ethyl Corporation’s successful suit against Canada in the late ‘90s have resulted in weakened policy.

Even if that doesn’t occur, he says such investor-state dispute settlement procedures can create a “chilling effect” on governments: with the looming threat of lawsuits from foreign companies, officials are less likely to implement strong environmental protections.

Beachy said the threat of legal action is concrete: “It clearly is a consideration on the mind of policymakers: ‘Am I going to get sued in front of not a domestic court but three private lawyers whose rulings are unpredictable for millions or billions of dollars?’”

Lone Pine Suing Canada Over Quebec's Fracking Ban, Aggressively Lobbying in Ottawa https://t.co/YlkUqSMPTD @ccpa #NAFTA #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 25, 2016

Canada Argues Claims By Lone Pine Are ‘Highly Exaggerated’

Lone Pine Resources is suing the government via the infamous Chapter 11 of NAFTA for what it describes as the “arbitrary, capricious, and illegal revocation” to frack under the St. Lawrence River “without due process, without compensation, and with no cognizable public purpose.”

The government of Canada has contended: “The measure was enacted by a fundamental democratic institution of Quebec and was preceded by numerous studies that establish that the Act seeks to achieve an important public policy objective, namely, the protection of the St. Lawrence River” and that “the damages claimed by the claimant are highly exaggerated.”

Investment Tribunals Lack Safeguards and Equal Standing, Says Investment Law Expert

Gus Van Harten, associate professor at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School and expert in international investment law and arbitration, emphasizes that investor-state dispute settlement procedures don’t constitute an actual judicial process, lacking the usual safeguards of independence that judges have in domestic and international courts, or the ensuring of standing for all affected parties.

“It’s obvious that there are some foreign investors — not a lot — that benefit from it,” he says. “What’s usually claimed is ‘we’ll get more foreign investment and that will help the economy’ but there’s a real lack of evidence on that point.”

Over 70 Per Cent of NAFTA Claims In Past Decade Have Targeted Canada

Canada is the most sued country in the “developed” world.

A report published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in January 2015 noted that via NAFTA, the government has been sued 35 times since 1994, losing seven cases and paying out over $170 million in damages.

Over 70 per cent of NAFTA claims since 2005 have involved Canada. Two-thirds of the total suits have been related to environmental or resource management policy.

Over 70% of #NAFTA Claims In Past Decade Have Targeted Canada https://t.co/YlkUqSMPTD @TheEnergyMix #oilandgas #fracking #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 25, 2016

Nine foreign investors are currently suing Canada via NAFTA.

Beachy — who wrote and researched the Sierra Club’s recent report “Climate Roadblocks: Looming Trade Deals Threaten Efforts to Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground” — notes that 2015 featured the largest number of investor-state dispute settlement cases launched globally, double the number from just five years before.

In 2014, half of new cases globally were challenging policies related to oil and gas extraction, mining or power generation.

Investor Suits May Increase In Number With Implementation of New Trade Deals

Beachy describes the Lone Pine case as being similar in significance to TransCanada’s $15-billion suit against the United States for blocking its proposed Keystone XL pipeline as both “serve as a wake-up call that deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership would undermine our efforts to keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

Dey notes the ratification and implementation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership would add nine countries to the list in which companies could incorporate or set up legal vehicles in and sue Canada via investor protection clauses.

Beachy adds there are investors currently fracking in a dozen states that would gain new rights to sue the United States via proposed trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

“This one is clearly not hypothetical because of Lone Pine,” Beachy says. “We are anxiously looking at the Lone Pine case given that more and more states in the United States are trying to do what Quebec and New York have already done to protect their citizens from the dangers of fracking.

“It’s a really ironic time to be handing more power to fossil fuel companies, just after the world committed to curb greenhouse gas emissions and transition to green energy in Paris,” he says.

Lone Pine Filed Notice of Arbitration Three Weeks Before Announcing Its Restructuring

Lone Pine Resources has had a rough few years. In December 2012, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Lone Pine’s “corporate family rating” to Caa1 due to “strained liquidity and sharply declining production and reserves.”

Two-and-a-half months later, the company fired its CEO and CFO.

By January 2014, it completed financial restructuring and emerged from creditor protection, a process started in September 2013 (less than three weeks after it filed its notice of arbitration to the government).

In the process, it cut long-term debt obligations by over four times and rescinded its position as a publically traded company in Canada and the United States. As a result, it’s impossible to tell what Lone Pine’s net earnings are looking like these days and the potential significance of a $118.9 million settlement for the company.

Regardless of the outcome, Dey contends it’s a deeply troublesome example of what’s wrong with investor-state dispute settlement: “This is completely undemocratic,” she says. “It takes power from elected people and puts them into a supranational system that gives rights to corporations. It has nothing to do with democracy.”

“This is a corporate rights system that is even higher in position that our own democratically elected governments.”

Image: Mysterious foamy water collected after heavy rainfall near a fracking site. Joshua B. Pribanic/Public Herald.

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This is a guest post by Dermod Travis, executive director of IntegrityBC.

Last month, lobbyists gathered in Vancouver for The Future of Lobbying, a one -day conference put on by B.C.'s Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists, Simon Fraser Institute's Governance Studies and Public Affairs Association of Canada (B.C. Chapter).

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there does seem to be a future for the industry. In fact, if we're not careful, B.C. could be overrun by lobbyists.

Last year, there were 2,502 in-house and consultant lobbyists registered in the province, up from 1,451 four years ago. Whoever said the B.C. Jobs Plan wasn't working?

While others do get some attention — political staff, deputy ministers and the like — that works out to 30 lobbyists for every MLA.

In Ottawa, there are 3,008 lobbyists or nine per MP.

As one of 14 panelists at the Vancouver conference, it fell on me to provide a bit of insight on the public's perspective towards the industry and a few ideas on how it might be improved.

Somehow has to rain on the parade of rainmakers. Not a tough task, though. There's no shortage of material.

Last month, Missouri state legislator, Bart Korman, tabled Bill 2059.

If it becomes law, lobbyists in that state would be required to disclose any sex given by a lobbyist to a lawmaker or their staff each month. A dollar valuation will not be required when reporting sexual acts. Be thankful for small mercies.

Closer to home, former B.C. lobbyist Marcella Munro found herself in a pickle after taking a post with Alberta's new NDP government.

The Wildrose party was only too happy to blast her appointment by pointing to some of Munro's B.C. blog posts, including: “that saying no to projects like Kinder Morgan, to protect our environment and quality of life” are things to be celebrated.

The posts were quickly taken down and replaced with Alberta-centric messaging.

“My BMW 325i is my favourite possession” was Munro's new riff, telling the Calgary Herald: “there's no planet on which I could try to argue against the oilsands. I love all the good things petroleum does for me — including driving too fast on Highway 2.”

As the Herald's Don Braid put it: “If you have trouble reconciling the contradictions, you are most likely a regular human unconnected with the murky, interlinked worlds of lobbying, campaigning and government advocacy.”

If the industry is an unavoidable evil of modern politics, it was then sacrilege time for the assembled.

First up: transparency.

Reporting only intent to lobby — as the legislation currently requires — isn't good enough. The “if I'm really, really lucky the minister might open my email before he triple deletes it,” isn't the best approach for reporting lobbying activities.

It's meetings that count and lobbyists should be required to report who they've met with as well.

Those on the other end of the bargain — MLAs, political staff, deputy ministers — should also disclose who is lobbying them.

Good way to check to see if everyone's reporting matches up.

Fees paid by clients should be disclosed, as is done in the United States.

Last year, 11,169 lobbyists working Washington, D.C. billed US$2.4 billion, an average of $215,000 each.

A province-wide registry for municipal lobbyists is long over due.

Contingency fee agreements need to be trashed, as is the case at the federal level today.

Public agencies and local governments should be prohibited from hiring outside lobbyists.

In B.C., some universities, local governments, professional bodies such as the College of Dental Surgeons of B.C. and federal agencies like Via Rail and Port Metro Vancouver have all retained lobbyists in the past.

If there was an industry award for client development, it would have to go to Earnscliffe Strategy, who has represented Deloitte since 2013.

The goal: to raise Deloitte's profile and awareness about the services they bring to government. Who knew it needed raising?

Never let it be said that having a higher profile doesn't come with a price. For someone.

In 2010, Deloitte billed the B.C. government a little less than $20 million. By 2015, their billings had risen to more than $50 million.

Hope that wasn't a contingency deal.

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Only three-and-a-half months have passed since the federal election, but fossil fuel companies and lobby groups haven’t wasted any time in ramping up their lobbying efforts.   Suncor, the country’s largest energy company by revenue, has led the pack in meeting with high-ranking federal officials — logging at least 12 meetings in just over one month.   Between Nov. 2 and Nov. 19 the dominant oilsands player met four times with Louise Metivier, who was Canada’s chief negotiator at the UN climate summit held in Paris between Nov. 30 and Dec. 12.   Steve Williams, the company’s CEO and head lobbyist, also met three times with Environment Minister Catherine McKenna (on Nov. 18, Dec. 7 and Dec. 8) another three times with Environment Canada’s chief of staff Marlo Raynolds (on Nov. 5, Dec. 7 and Dec. 9) and twice more with Gerald Butts, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s right-hand man and principal secretary ( Nov. 18 and Nov. 19).   “The meetings were preparatory meetings for Suncor’s participation at COP 21 in Paris,” explained Sneh Seetal, spokesperson at Suncor, via e-mail. “Our president and CEO, Steve Williams, attended as a member of the Canadian delegation at the invitation of the federal government. We discussed Suncor’s perspectives on climate change and how industry can help be a part of the solution.”

Lobbyists Include LNG Canada and TransCanada

Other oil and gas interests have displayed similar determination since the Liberals formed government.   Take LNG Canada Development (a Kitimat-based joint venture composed of Shell, PetroChina, Korea Gas and Mitsubishi), which met with Erin O’Gorman, assistant deputy minister of Natural Resources Canada, on Oct. 27, Nov. 5 and Jan. 8.   TransCanada, the proponent of both the Energy East and Keystone XL pipelines, lobbied Canada’s ambassador to the United States, Gary Doer, three times on Oct. 30.

The Canadian Energy Pipeline Association met with NEB chairperson Peter Watson on Nov. 2 and Dec. 17. And the Petroleum Services Association of Canada lobbied McKenna, Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Employment Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk in separate meetings on Dec. 22.

It’s important to keep in mind that the lobby registrations are likely just scraping the surface of the actual lobbying happening in Ottawa.   Richard Girard, executive director of research centre Polaris Institute, notes that only employees who spend more than 20 per cent of their month’s work on lobbying efforts are required to register as a lobbyist. As a result, Girard suggests there are “lots of meetings that are more likely taking place that we don’t know about.”   Even the meetings that are registered lack specifics, only hinting at general subjects such as “environment” or “energy.”   “It certainly provides you with a list of who’s seeing who, which is helpful,” says Gillian Steward, author of the Toronto Star’s 2015 Atkinson Series on public policy on the oilsands. “They do have to at least put down the topic of what they’re talking about. On the other hand, it can be very difficult to get — say, from CAPP — exactly what they’re presenting.”

Bear Head LNG Lobbies Federal Government 15 Times in 10 Weeks

Some companies have clearly been making plenty of moves, with Bear Head LNG — the company proposing to build a liquefied natural gas facility in Nova Scotia — meeting with Doer on Oct. 21, Oct. 26, Oct. 30, Nov. 10, Nov. 11, Dec. 10 and Dec. 18.   Represented by former U.S. ambassador Derek Burney, the company also lobbied the duo of Jay Khosla (assistant deputy minister of Natural Resource Canada’s energy sector) and Terence Hubbard (director general of Natural Resource Canada) four times between Nov. 12 and Dec. 29, with Khosla chatting individually with the company an additional four times in the window.

‘It’s a Question of Balance’

Girard notes that while the Canadian lobbying registry has improved over the years, it’s still flawed because it doesn’t show how much companies are spending on lobbyists, unlike the U.S. But reasonable conclusions can still be made.   “The number of times people register communications increases around certain important pieces of legislation,” says Girard, who served as co-author for the Polaris’ report Big Oil’s Oily Grasp. “Many of those pieces of legislation were very positive for the industry. We can’t draw the line, but yes we can see there’s a correlation between the level of lobbying — who’s lobbying and for what — and the outcome of the legislation.”   The Polaris Institute’s 2012 report found that that 2,733 lobbying communications were made by oil and gas companies between July 2008 and November 2012, far outweighing similar efforts by mining and forestry interests. Prominent lobbying organizations such as the Canadian Association for Petroleum Producers (CAPP), TransCanada, the Canadian Gas Association, Imperial Oil and Suncor led the way. Meanwhile, only 11 environmental non-governmental organizations were registered as lobbyists in that window.   “It’s a question of balance,” Steward says. “[Oil and gas companies] have a right to go and do that. It’s just that they have more resources and more power to actually have those meetings, where environmental and First Nations groups and other kinds of NGOs don’t have the funds or staff, and aren’t represented as well. It’s much harder for them to actually get their message across to the people who influence those decisions.”

Image: Steve Williams takes the helm as Suncor CEO in 2011.  

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"The lobbyist" and "the lobby" are terms we often hear in political discourse and in the media.

I don't know how many times I have listened to, or been involved in, a conversation around a hot-button issue that has ended in something like: "Well, it all doesn't really matter because the lobbyists will just end up getting what they want anyways."[view:in_this_series=block_1]

This floating, nondescript spectre of "The Lobbyist" has served the lobby industry well, because the last thing a lobbyist wants is to have their name public. Better to remain an unknowable entity than, as Donald Rumsfeld put it, be a "known-known."

But once you realize a lobbyist is just another person out there in the world trying to make a paycheck, the abstract idea of lobbying becomes more understandable and relatable. 

It also becomes much more easy to keep in check.

Take for instance this lobbyist for TransCanada pipelines, Phil von Finckenstein of PVF Consulting. 

I found Mr. von Finckenstein by doing a search of Canada's Registry of Lobbyists, where anyone defined as a lobbyist by law must register their name, the corporation(s) they represent, who they have communicated to within government and on what issues. 

Mr. von Finckenstein's most recent lobbying report in the Canadian lobby registry looks like this:

As the lobby registry shows, von Finckenstein lobbied on behalf of TransCanada in its efforts to construct the recently cancelled Keystone XL pipeline project.

Von Finckenstein also focuses his workday on TransCanada's proposed Energy East pipeline and "discussions regarding the status of the government's overall climate change plan and the approach to future greenhouse gas regulations in respect of quotas that affect the energy and pipeline industries."  

A more general search online finds that von Finckenstein is a founding partner in an Ottawa-based lobby (also called "public affairs") firm Maple Leaf Strategies and formerly played senior advisor and communications roles for the office of the Leader of the Opposition from 1994 to 2001.

No doubt Von Fickenstein's seven years as a political staffer during the tumultuous transition of the Reform Party under Preston Manning to the Conservative Party led by Deborah Grey and then Stockwell Day gave him valuable insight into the internal machinations of the Conservative Party that would eventually assume government. 

Now I am not picking on von Finckenstein here, but instead I am using his publicly available information to illustrate what a bit of transparency can do to make something daunting and confusing like  "lobbyists" much easier to understand.

If von Finckenstein is like most other lobbyists in Ottawa, his work on behalf of TransCanada consists mainly of monitoring government activities related to the company's pipeline projects and then trying to communicate TransCanada's concerns and issues to the appropriate elected officials and government department employees via normal avenues like face-to-face meetings and e-mail. 

There are hundreds of people just like von Finckenstein working everyday in Ottawa on behalf of corporations (and, to a much smaller extent, on behalf of non-profits and charities). The lobbyist and the corporations they work for have every right in a free democracy to communicate their concerns to government and try to shape new laws, or reshape old ones, to help increase their profit margins. 

It is also the right of a free media and civil society to monitor and report on the activities of corporations and the lobbyists they hire. There is a major lack of disclosure when it comes corporate influence in Canada but lobbyists are required by law to register their activities both provincially and federally.

I propose we research and name these folks far more often, to demystify "the lobby" and show lobbyists are just people trying to make a buck like anyone else.

A much more systematic and sustained effort to put a face on the lobby sector in Ottawa would be a big step forward in maintaining a healthy balance between the influence of corporations and the influence of citizens over the decisions government makes. 

With things like the Registry of Lobbyists, government has helped the public scrutinize corporations and the lobbyists they hire, but this is only a first step. As it operates today, the lobby registry is not easily to navigate for the average user. It is also not very well known.

The task of making government data more accessible is often left to civil society and the media but it should also be seen as the responsibility of government itself.

In the next part of my series on the lobby bubble I will lay out some of the things Prime Minister Trudeau can do in the next four years to pop it.

Image: Joisey Showaa on Flickr

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In Ottawa there has always been a level of disconnect between the issues that really matter to Canadians and the issues that seem important to Canadian politicians working on Parliament Hill.  

In the United States this phenomenon is called "beltway politics" where the issues being debated by politicians within the boundaries of Highway 495, which forms a beltway around Washington, D.C., have relatively little importance to anybody outside the beltway.

Spend too long in the beltway and strange things can happen. For instance, a president can speak passionately on the issue of climate change, but hem and haw over whether to approve an oil pipeline that will lock in massive amounts of new greenhouse gas emissions. 

Nobody knows more about this inside political game than the lobbyists. Lobbyists are the people paid by corporations, and to a much lesser extent non-profit organizations, to ensure government policies and decisions by politicians are of the most benefit to those paying them. Lobbyists (at least the good ones) know that their most powerful strategy is to control the flow of information politicians receive on important issues. 

If you control the information, you control the questions that are raised and debated and ultimately you have good odds of controlling the final outcome.[view:in_this_series=block_1]

So for instance, if a story comes out in the popular press questioning the safety of new oil pipelines, lobbyists for the oil companies will work their tails off to ensure that political representatives and government staff are provided the "real facts" on pipeline safety in the country. Outside of reactive type work like this, it is the job of the lobbyist to meet as often as possible with politicians and government staff to provide an ongoing stream of new and "helpful" information.  

This constant barrage of information over time can actually create what myself and many others call the "lobby bubble" — a soundproof barrier of information created around politicians and government staff that is almost impenetrable to outside influence. 

Canada's new Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau has just come off the election trail where he has spent hundreds of hours talking to Canadians about what is important to them. Trudeau has also made many promises that reflect the needs and wants of the electorate. Trudeau right now is more in touch with Canadians than he will likely ever be in his term as prime minister, because the moment he steps into the PMO the lobby bubble will begin to form. 

The flow of information to Trudeau is about to shift from things he heard in the streets of Halifax, Vancouver and Montreal, to things he heard at a meeting he just had with representatives from the oil industry, health industry, insurance industry, agricultural industry and so on.

If you think I am over dramatizing the situation, think for a second about the logistics alone. How often does the average Canadian get to fly to Ottawa and sit down face-to-face with the prime minister to discuss their concerns about a new pipeline planned to run through their backyard? 

Now how often do you think the lobbyist with the office down the street from Parliament Hill, whose well-compensated full-time job is to lobby Members of Parliament, will get to meet with Trudeau and his staff over the coming years?

Heck, I would be happy to bet that most Ottawa lobbyists will have more drinks with Liberal government staffers in the next year than the number of everyday Canadians who will get to sit down face-to-face with the prime minister to voice their concerns over the next four-year term. That's a bet I would happily lose if this didn't turn out to be the case. 

Take for instance TransCanada Pipelines, the main proponent behind the Keystone XL and the Energy East pipelines. According to the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying, TransCanada has 18 company officials currently registered in the lobbyist database. And then there is the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, an association supported by oil companies like TransCanada to also lobby the government. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers currently has a whopping 32 registered lobbyists.

This is just a small sample of the corporate lobbyists that work everyday on Parliament Hill to help fill the lobby bubble with new information. You can go here and take a look at the lobbyist registry yourself to get a better idea of just how large the lobby sector is in Ottawa.

As the old saying goes: "If you don't like what your government is doing you have the opportunity to vote them out every four years."

And that is of course a very true statement, but for the other 1,459 days between elections, if the lobbyists and the companies they represent don't like what their government is doing, they can just meet face-to-face with whoever is in charge.

That's a pretty raw deal for voters and it does not have to be this way.

Next up in this series, I will discuss ways Trudeau can avoid the lobby bubble, or even pop it if he felt so obliged.  

Image: Justin Trudeau via Flickr

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