Open City Hall’s Closed Doors: Ken Gray Column

College Councillor Rick Chiarelli wants a lobbyist registry to apply to city staff.

College Councillor Rick Chiarelli has some real reservations about some pending legislation that’s part of Mayor Jim Watson’s accountability agenda.

Some time in November, the issue of a lobbyist registry will be coming forward. And what worries Chiarelli about this yet-to-be-seen legislation is to whom it applies.

“We’ve got city council covered,” Chiarelli said of myriad checks on the municipality’s elected officials. “What worries me is that it might not apply to staff.”

In fact, Chiarelli says, councillors should be a part of staff meetings with lobbyists, but often elected officials aren’t invited. You can’t go to a meeting you don’t know about. With staff included on a lobbyist registry, councillors can at least ask why they were left out.

The mayor’s office is unusually coy about the lobbyist registry, a list, theoretically at least, that would identify lobbyists and make public which city officials they contact. The record of those meetings would be available to the public.

All the mayor’s office would say when I broached the issue of the registry and applying it to staff was that it sounded as if it would be a mammoth bureaucrat exercise. Then I was directed to the city website where a rather vague report on governance is posted from last November. It reads under “Lobbyist Registry” that: “A Lobbyist Registry is a formal tracking of lobbyists and their meetings with public officials that would be made available for public inspection. Under Section 223.9 of the Municipal Act, 2001, City Council is authorized to establish a registry including significant flexibility to tailor the specifics of the registry to best suit the needs and goals of City Council. A number of Members of Council and the Mayor of the 2010-2014 Council have indicated the need for a Lobbyist Registry.”

However this governance document is unclear on exactly what constitutes a “public official.” Is that just a councillor, or his or her staff as well, or does it include city staff?

The November document continues with trying to define exactly who is a lobbyist, a daunting task on its own, for many people, from businesses to consultants to community associations, call councillors and staff to gain influence. The report reads: “Staff feels that the input of elected representatives is necessary to ensure a reasonable and workable definition of who is a lobbyist and to help determine appropriate accountability mechanisms. Therefore it is recommended that, if established, the Governance Renewal Sub-Committee be tasked with reviewing staff’s recommendations with respect to a Lobbyist Registry and making a recommendation to City Council.”

So we have the mayor’s office suggesting that making a record of lobbyist visits to staff would be a giant bureaucratic exercise and staff asking councillors for a “workable definition” of who is a lobbyist. So staff is seeking input from council on defining a lobbyist. Wouldn’t that be a bit of a conflict of interest given that the legislation presumably applies to councillors? And would staff be interested in having a lobby registry apply to itself? Not likely.

Accordingly, a lobbyist registry is something that should be tackled by an independent body … say the office of an integrity commissioner or the auditor general’s staff. That is unless the lobbyist registry is just a move to make staff, council and lobbyists look accountable, rather than be accountable. Perhaps a lot of words, a wonderful public relations exercise, some debate and a few of your tax dollars spent on nothing much at all.

Chiarelli feels that if the lobby registry is to have any teeth at all, it must apply to staff. He’s right.

Anyone who has been to a public consultation in recent years knows that by the time a new city initiative or private development reaches the public discussion stage, the broad strokes of the decision have been made by staff. On a development maybe a driveway outlet could be changed or the height of a tower might be amended to humour the locals, but the fix on the approval the project is usually in. Staff and the private interests involved have already made the decision. And when the project or initiative reaches the appropriate committee or council, particularly on a development, our elected officials have difficulty disagreeing with the staff report. In the case of a development, the city staff report can be used as evidence in an Ontario Municipal Board appeal … even a report that is diametrically opposed to city council’s decision, as was the case in the urban boundary issue where the OMB adopted the staff recommendation on expansion of the urban boundary over the decision of council. So much for democracy.

A lobbyist registry is severely diminished if it is not applied to staff as well as council. If Watson and council don’t have a city staff that agrees with its initiatives, the public service can shove a stick in the spokes of any council decision. A lobbying registry is one step in making both councillors, who can be turfed out every four years, and staff, who theoretically should be accountable to council and the public, more transparent. Accordingly, residents, media and community associations can find a list of lobbyist meetings if a particular decision smells a little off. And that might just put a bit more responsibility into some of the decisions that occur in secluded offices at city hall.

A registry designed by an independent body, not city council or staff, is not the answer for bringing needed accountability at city hall, but it is a small step in the right direction.

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Ken Gray is the former city hall reporter for the Citizen. His column appears on Wednesdays. As well, he writes a daily blog, The Bulldog, at ottawacitizen.com. He welcomes your emails at kengray20@gmail.com.

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Ken Gray is an Ottawa journalist who was the Citizen’s city editorial page editor, municipal affairs reporter and a member of the newspaper’s editorial board. He writes a weekly column Wednesdays in the Citizen. During the early ’90s, he edited the Southam News-Toronto Star First Edition, one of the first new media ventures in Canada. For more than three decades, he has worked in many posts from reporter to senior editor at the Montreal Gazette, the Winnipeg Free Press, the London Free Press, the Regina Leader-Post and the Citizen. As well, Gray founded and taught a course in media law and municipal government at Algonquin College. He earned a master’s journalism degree and a honours bachelor’s history degree at the University of Western Ontario in the 1970s.

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