Choosing unaccountability

The Globe and Mail reports that having already omitted several parts of the accountability legislation that they initially promised, the Cons are now looking to render useless the lobbying provisions of the Accountability Act that eventually passed:

The Harper government has opened the door to a watering down of its vaunted strategy to crack down on lobbying, as it contemplates forcing lobbyists to only report their formal verbal communications with federal officials, documents show.

Under proposals that are circulating in the government-relations industry in Ottawa, lobbyists would not have to report “spontaneous” verbal communications with government officials, nor would they have to disclose e-mail or other written exchanges.

The proposals stand in contrast to the Conservative Party's pledge in the 2006 election to “require ministers and senior government officials to record their contacts with lobbyists.”...

(T)he government has laid out five options that would define the type of communication needing to be reported, with only one of the five options including written communication.

In the four options that only include oral communications, three would call on lobbyists to report only their “arranged communication” with government officials. This would have the effect of excluding informal communications in settings such as cocktail gatherings or unplanned meetings on the street, where lobbying nonetheless can occur.

“It's just a huge loophole. People will say, 'Let's go golfing and have a spontaneous communication,'” said Duff Conacher, co-ordinator at Democracy Watch.

“The Conservatives have clearly broken their promise to end secret lobbying,” he said...

A spokesman for the Treasury Board confirmed that the Accountability Act will not force federal officials to record their own contacts with lobbyists. “The onus is on the lobbyist to report,” said Robert Makichuk, chief of media relations at Treasury Board.

While Conacher focuses on the ease with which any "spontaneous communication" exception could be manipulated, the other two proposals are equally problematic.

In the case of limiting any reporting requirement to verbal communications, the result would be to leave e-mail communication in particular wide open for abuse. And regardless of what restrictions are actually in place for lobbyists, the lack of a recording requirement on the government end of any lobbying activity - which the Cons seem to consider a closed question by now - will only lead to problems in trying to enforce whatever requirements exist.

Of course, it's still possible for the Cons to choose the better of their listed options. But it shouldn't be much of a secret that where the Cons stack the options on one side of the ledger, that division tends to reflect the outcome they prefer to see implemented. Which means that any good the Cons have done on the accountability file appears to be at an end - and that Canadians who want a more transparent government have every reason to make sure the Cons don't hold onto power any longer than can be avoided.