[open-government] Recently published - Transparency Case Study: Lobbying disclosure in Canada

Mon May 12 17:31:07 UTC 2014

*apologies for cross posting*

Hi All,

I wanted to share our latest in depth case study on the impacts of
technology enabled transparency policy (released last week). We looked at
lobbying disclosure and the use of the online lobbying registry in at the
federal level in Canada. I have included an exerpt from the introduction
below.

Also, check out the full piece here:
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/05/05/transparency-case-study-lobbying-disclosure-in-canada/

and stay tuned for our next case in the series which will focus on lobbying
disclosure in Hungary.

Best,
Zander

Introduction

By international standards, Canada has a fairly comprehensive and
well-implemented lobbying registry. The data is machine and human readable,
and it is easily accessible as bulk downloads or through a search interface
that serves the needs of its primary users. Journalists and advocates, as
well as those within the influence industry, all use the lobbying registry.
In many ways it is a picture of how lobbying disclosure is supposed to
work. At least that appears to be the case until one looks closer. While
there are many admirable features of Canadian lobbying regulation, current
disclosure thresholds and requirements actually create a subtly perverse
incentive structure that drives activity into the shadows.

Our look at Canadian lobbying offers a few interesting lessons both for
lobbying regulation and disclosure, and for technology enabled transparency
policies more generally:

   - Incentives matter greatly, and disclosure requirements can shape those
   incentives and subsequent regulated activity. In an environment where there
   is a presumptive advantage to non-disclosure and two substitute forms of
   activity with differing transparency environments, disclosed activity will
   decrease in favor of the more opaque.
   - Both public officials and lobbyists play a role in shaping the
   lobbying environment and subsequent disclosure. Effective regulation and
   transparency requires active participation from both groups, and the law
   should be constructed to align their incentives to produce appropriate
   disclosure.
   - No matter how good the tool or data release scheme, it can only be as
   useful as what the data itself represents. Effective transparency requires
   the data to be both accurate and accessible.

With the notable exception that Canada does not require the disclosure of
the monetary value of lobbying contracts, the Canadian Lobbying Act
requires fairly comprehensive disclosure about consultant lobbying.
However, in-house lobbying by corporations and other organizations, as well
as direct meetings with clients, must pass a certain threshold of activity
before registration is triggered. Absent this threshold being met,
disclosure of meetings or other influence activity is not required for
these outside groups. This is complicated by the fact that this threshold
is not strictly policed. The resulting two-tiered disclosure regime drives
activity away from the types of meetings and interactions that will show up
in lobbying registry records, and toward less transparent and more informal
interaction between the public and private sector.

Major lobbying regulation first passed in Canada in 1989. Since then, it
has been amended and strengthened successively in 1995 and 2005. The last
major overhaul of Canadian lobbying registration and disclosure was in
2008, with *The Lobbying Act* <http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/L-12.4/>* of
2008 (*R.S.C., 1985, c. 44 (4th Supp.). Among other things, this act
mandated electronic filing of lobbying reports, and established the Office
of the Commissioner of Lobbying, an independent regulatory commission, to
oversee and manage the public lobbying registry.

[...]

Here we are concerned primarily with the ability of public office holders
and the general public to “know who is engaged in lobbying activities”
under the current disclosure regime. This ability is dependent on who is
counted as a lobbyist, and what kind of activity is classified as lobbying.
These definitions vary widely across countries. The Canadian definition,
detailed below, is quite comprehensive. However, it leaves some notable
loopholes that highlight the difficulties of capturing all relevant
activity even within a well-designed system.

-- 
Alexander Furnas
Research Fellow | Sunlight Foundation <http://sunlightfoundation.com>
@AlexanderFurnas
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