Ontario should toughen rules on lobbying: Editorial

The Ontario Liberals should strengthen the law to prevent former ministers from lobbying their former government only 12 months after leaving office.

Chris Young / THE CANADIAN PRESS 

Former premier Dalton McGuinty mingles with former colleagues at Queens Park in Toronto in July. 

Published on Mon Sep 22 2014

 

The Ontario Liberals would be doing themselves – and the whole province – a favour by strengthening the law to prevent former ministers from lobbying their former colleagues in government only 12 months after leaving office.

Right now, that’s exactly what’s happening – as evidenced by former premier Dalton McGuinty’s decision last month to register as a lobbyist so he can represent an educational software company in its dealings with Queen’s Park.

McGuinty is working on behalf of Desire2Learn, a Kitchener-based firm that sold $3-million worth of school technology to the provincial government this year. That means he could be lobbying his old government just 15 months after he quit his seat in the legislature, and 19 months after he stepped down as premier.

There’s absolutely nothing illegal about this – and that’s the problem. McGuinty is following Ontario’s rules, which require that former politicians observe a one-year “cooling-off” period between the time they leave office and the time they start lobbying the government they left.

But while it may be perfectly legal, it doesn’t pass the smell test. A former premier roaming the corridors of Queen’s Park, seeking advantage for a private company from politicians and officials he worked closely with as recently as last year, is bound to raise eyebrows.

The rules are tougher in Ottawa. The federal Lobbying Act imposes a five-year cooling-off period, on the theory that a new government will have been elected and turnover in the bureaucracy will have diluted the influence that a former politician might be able to wield as a lobbyist.

Cindy Forster, the NDP MPP for Welland, proposed last year in a private member’s bill that Ontario adopt the same five-year period. It was a good idea then, and it sounds even better now that McGuinty has surfaced as a registered lobbyist at Queen’s Park.

Unfortunately, the Liberals have dismissed that idea. Treasury Board President Deb Matthews says there’s no problem as long as lobbyists register and everything is above board. She and the government would be wiser to go the extra mile and ban ex-politicians from lobbying Queen’s Park for five years after they leave.


Source: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2014/09/22/ontario_should_toughen_rules_on_lobbying_editorial.html