The committee met at 9:03 a.m.

[Steve Morissette in the chair.]

Steve Morissette (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Steve Morissette. I am the MLA for Kootenay-Monashee and the Chair of the Special Committee to Review the Lobbyists Transparency Act.

I’d like to acknowledge that we are meeting today on the legislative precinct here in Victoria, which is located on the territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking Peoples now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

Our committee is currently conducting its review of the Lobbyists Transparency Act. The committee has until May 4 to complete this review. As part of its public consultation, our committee accepted written submissions over the summer. Today we’ll be reviewing presentations from some of those that made submissions.

I’ll now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Good morning, everybody. I’m Rosalyn Bird. I’m the MLA for Prince George–Valemount. I’m looking forward to an interesting day of presentations and questions.

Kiel Giddens: Good morning. MLA Kiel Giddens from Prince George–Mackenzie. Happy to be here today.

Janet Routledge: I’m Janet Routledge. I’m the MLA for Burnaby North. Looking forward to hearing the presentations.

Harwinder Sandhu: Good morning, everyone. Harwinder Sandhu, MLA, Vernon-Lumby.

I’m joining you virtually from the traditional territory of the Syilx Okanagan Indian People.

Steve Morissette (Chair): MLA Susie Chant had a little travel issue this morning. She should be here in a few minutes.

[9:05 a.m.]

We’re now going to hear from organizations and individuals about their input regarding the review of the Lobbyists Transparency Act.

First we will hear from the B.C. Real Estate Association, and they will have ten minutes for the presentation, followed up by 20 minutes for questions by committee members.

Presentations on the
Lobbyists Transparency Act

B.C. Real Estate Association

Mark Sakai: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My name is Mark Sakai. I’m the policy and research manager for the B.C. Real Estate Association. I’m joined by my colleague Matt Mayers, who is our senior policy analyst. It’s our pleasure to present to you today, and we thank you for the opportunity.

For those who aren’t familiar with us, we’re a professional organization that represents some 26,000 realtors across the province. We work with the eight real estate boards and associations, and we provide professional development opportunities, advocacy, economic research and standard forms to help realtors provide greater value for their clients.

I understand that you have a copy of our written submission, dated the 17th of September, but we have three additional recommendations that we’d like to talk about in front of this committee.

Our first one is to amend the gift-giving prohibition time period from “within a 12-month period” to “within a calendar year.” The reason for this is that the value of gifts and benefits provided to MLAs is based on a 12-month period. We’re asking that this section be amended to be within a calendar year because BCREA, like many organizations, hosts an annual lobbying event in Victoria where we invite all MLAs and their staffers to a reception.

Each year, we work with the office of the registrar of lobbyists to ensure that our reception meets the rules of the legislation. But when the exact date of that reception is based on a number of factors — the calendar; because we hold it in March, the landing of spring break; potential elections; and the dates that the Legislature is sitting — sometimes there is some variation in those dates.

Rather than having to consult with the ORL, if by some chance we had to have our subsequent yearly reception a week earlier — which would then violate that 365-day requirement — if the requirement were on a calendar year, it would remove that requirement to consult with the ORL and be concerned about running afoul of the rules. If for some reason we decided to switch from a spring to a fall event, we could still do that the following year if the calendar year requirement were in place.

The second recommendation is regarding the definition of the term “designated filer.” Right now, it’s the senior paid staff member of the organization, which in most organizations, as with BCREA, is the CEO. I would guess that most organizations are like us in that the CEO is not the one who personally completes the monthly lobbyist reports and checks them for accuracy and timeliness. But that person is the one who receives emails from the ORL if there are any concerns or any questions about the report.

It would be far better if the designated filer were the person that would be appointed or named by the senior paid staff person at the organization as the person who was responsible for the monthly reports and who would be the one who would be first contacted if there were any questions or irregularities in the monthly report.

[9:10 a.m.]

Then our third recommendation is regarding the terminology on the website, in the reporting, to make the monthly returns more intuitive. In general use, the word “registration” usually refers to a one-time or initial process. If something happens on a regular basis, the term is usually “update” or “monthly” or “renewal.”

The current language of “registration return” can be confusing, particularly for new registrants who are initially accessing the ORL website and trying to comply with the LTA. The federal Lobbying Act doesn’t use language like “registration return.” They use language like “initial return” and then “monthly return.”

Both Matt and myself have been involved in filing the returns, and I think we both found the language challenging to use. Especially when you’re not familiar with the filing process, to do a monthly return and have it called the registration return…. I’ve always found it challenging. I can only imagine that first-time users or new users to the process would actually find it quite confusing. We would recommend amending the term “registration return” to something called a monthly return or perhaps a renewal return.

Those are our three additional recommendations to the ones that we made on our September submission. I would like to add that we’ve also reviewed the ORL’s five recommendations, and we don’t have any issues or concerns with any of those five recommendations.

Even though I have almost four minutes left, I think that concludes our formal submission. I’d be happy to take questions.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Great. Thank you very much.

Now we’ll take questions from our committee, if there are any.

Mark Sakai: If there are any, yes.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you very much, Mark, and your team, for presenting today. It’s useful and very much appreciated that you took the time for both the written submission and coming to speak with us today. That’s great.

As you have outlined in your written submission as well, your organization deals with a lot of small businesses but also sole proprietors. This is a very…. Your industry is one that I think MLAs know well. We’ve heard from your organization but from individual realtors as well.

You mentioned the definition of small organizations. I’d like it if you could expand a little bit on that, what the challenge on that would be. If you could define that a little bit further for us, I think that would be useful.

Mark Sakai: Well, I think it’s essentially a capacity issue. Small organizations, if we’re talking about a…. As a lot of you know, if you’ve been dealing in real estate or dealing with bought or sold properties, a lot of realtors are what they call PRECs. They’re personal real estate corporations. They don’t really have any capacity to lobby.

What we as BCREA do is represent realtors and real estate boards. We do the lobbying. We do that process for them. They can, obviously, if they want, participate in consultations that ministries offer from time to time. But they don’t participate in active lobbying. They simply don’t. As the title says, they’re personal real estate corporations.

Even brokerages are concerned with the day-to-day operations of their brokerage, compliance with FINTRAC requirements and ensuring that they’re working with BCFSA to make sure that all the practice requirements are in place. They don’t have a lobbying function and advocacy function.

[9:15 a.m.]

We, obviously, as BCREA, consult regularly with realtors and managing brokers through our various committees and feedback mechanisms to gather feedback from them on issues that come up from time to time that affect professional practice and real estate operations. We essentially do the lobbying for them. But, essentially, there’s no possible way that they can actually undertake lobbying and meet the requirements of the Lobbyists Transparency Act. It’s just not possible.

Even if the LTA was changed, realistically, I don’t think that small brokerages would be lobbying. They would probably still sort of run their lobbying and their consultations through us.

Matt, do you have anything to add on that?

Matt Mayers: Yeah, just even some of the eight member boards that Mark mentioned previously…. I think the current definition is six employees or less. Some of them may have more than six employees, but the government relations function is taken up by the CEO, who does government relations and policy and their regular CEO work as well, whereas BCREA has five policy and GR staff, not including the CEO, so we are more able to understand and take the time to be compliant with LTA.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Thank you. Any further questions from the committee?

Yes, go ahead.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Good morning, Mark. Thank you for joining us this morning and for both the written and the presentation you’ve given this morning.

I was wondering if you can give me a little bit more detail. In your written report, you indicated that there were some concerns around the fact that there’s actually no real-time support. For people that are new, as you said earlier, there’s nobody that they can call. It’s all through email. Can you give us a bit more detail on how or what sort of delays individuals in your organization are facing in regards to that or what sort of challenges they’re having getting information out of the office?

Mark Sakai: If you go to a lot of websites, they have a chatbot assistant that can provide opportunities to get fairly immediate feedback on frequently encountered issues. And, you know, we try to plan proactively, but there are times when you’re getting down to the deadline on the 15th to make sure that you’re filing your monthly return on time.

Sometimes time is very much of the essence in terms of getting feedback and getting a reply from the ORL on a question that you might have regarding your upcoming filing. So some type of more online or immediate response to questions — particularly in, I would say, the five days between the tenth and the 15th — would probably be beneficial.

Matt, is that essentially what we’re asking for in this situation?

Matt Mayers: Yeah, I think so. I mean, all of the information does exist on the website through the various documents and the FAQ, but I think, again, it goes back to those new registrants or member boards who may just engage in lobbying a few times a year. For them to begin engaging, or if they haven’t before, it becomes an intimidating process to try and sort through the 150 FAQs to figure out the answer to their questions.

Mark Sakai: I think for a lot of people, they don’t want to run afoul of the regulations and the requirements. People want to comply properly. Because of the fact that you don’t have to file every month if you haven’t had any lobbying activity, a smaller organization might only end up filing maybe two or three times a year.

When we speak to our colleagues in the industry, most people find the website or reporting quite challenging to use. It’s not necessarily the most intuitive website. As I mentioned in our submission earlier, the terminology can be confusing.

[9:20 a.m.]

The times that I’ve used the website, I found it quite challenging to make minor changes in our lobbying asks or our personnel. I can’t imagine it for a small organization that is new to the ORL process and only files a couple times a year. They could find it quite challenging.

Matt Mayers: I think, similarly, just to add on to that, there are organizations that don’t engage in lobbying that are concerned when engaging with MLAs in non-lobbying activity because they’re afraid they could run afoul.

For example, I talked to an executive officer from one of the real estate member boards yesterday. She was planning on doing non-lobbying, just inviting an MLA to speak, and she was hesitant to do that because she wasn’t sure if she could give them a pen or a mug as a thank-you afterwards or if she was able to invite them at all without registering for lobbying activity.

Yeah. If someone like that could have either a quick chatbot or person to chat to, to ask these kinds of questions and get clarity, I think it would be helpful.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Do you have a further question?

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): No. Thank you. I appreciate that. That’s good feedback.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Any other questions from the committee?

Seeing none, thank you very much for taking the time to submit to us and to do the presentation. We appreciate it. We appreciate your feedback.

Mark Sakai: We certainly appreciate the opportunity, and we thank the committee for doing this important work.

Matt Mayers: Yeah. Thanks for your time.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Great. Have a great rest of your day.

Mark Sakai: You too. Thank you.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Okay. We’ll call a two-minute recess to get the next presenter up.

The committee recessed from 9:21 a.m. to 9:23 a.m.

[Steve Morissette in the chair.]

Steve Morissette (Chair): Next we will hear from the Public Affairs Association of Canada.

You will have ten minutes for a presentation, followed by up to 20 minutes for questions from committee members. Go ahead, Jay. Thank you for coming.

Public Affairs Association of Canada

Jay Fedorak: Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee, Clerk of Committees. My name is Jay Fedorak, and I appear on behalf of the Public Affairs Association of Canada, British Columbia division. My role with PAAC B.C. is as a consultant contracted for my expertise in lobbying regulation, which I developed while I served as deputy registrar of lobbyists for B.C. between 2012 and 2018, as well as my expertise as a former volunteer member of its board.

PAAC B.C.’s role is to assist public affairs professionals by providing forums for professional development, networking and the exchange of new ideas. Its members are involved in policy development, government relations, lobbying, communications and opinion research.

[9:25 a.m.]

They are consultants and in-house practitioners in the private and public sectors in such organizations as industrial and financial companies, Crown corporations, consulting firms, small businesses, trade associations, educational institutions, law and accounting firms, and charities.

PAAC B.C. has consistently supported lobbying regulation in B.C. and the office of the registrar of lobbyists. It endorses the goals of promoting confidence in public policy development through transparency in lobbying and deterring the exercise of unfair influence.

It believes that providing citizens and stakeholders with opportunities to communicate with public office holders is necessary for a functioning democracy. It also believes that good public policy requires public office holders to obtain all information necessary to inform their decisions. This includes relevant facts and the opinions of stakeholders, which they should receive without any undue pressure or personal inducement. Public policy decisions should depend only on the facts of the case and the force of the relevant arguments.

PAAC B.C. values its reputation for embodying ethical practice in lobbying and believes that the Lobbyists Transparency Act reinforces high standards of practice in the eyes of the public. The registration requirements ensure that the public is aware of communications to influence the decisions of public office holders conducted by or facilitated by lobbyists. The prohibitions on contracting and gift-giving, as well as the limited lobbying prohibitions on former public office holders, contribute to promoting confidence in public policy–making.

PAAC B.C. also supports continuous improvement, and to this end, it has identified three issues it believes are worthy of your consideration.

The first relates to the gift prohibition. Section 2.4(2)(a) of the LTA and section 6 of the regulation restrict lobbyists in providing gifts to public office holders, including food and drink, to a reasonable amount, not exceeding a combined maximum of $100 per year. The LTA permits such gifts only when meetings occur under the protocol or social obligations that normally accompany the duties or responsibilities of the office of the public office holder.

In accordance with guidance from the registrar of lobbyists, lobbyists who provide or offer these gifts must report the amount of the value of the food and drink and associated costs as part of their monthly return on lobbying activities.

To promote the professional development of its members, PAAC B.C. hosts events during mealtimes, because they are the only opportunities when members are available. It provides lunches or light refreshments to facilitate maximum participation of members and guests who otherwise would not attend.

Formerly, it would often invite public office holders to speak, consistent with section 2.4(2)(a) of the LTA. To facilitate their attendance, it would offer them the same buffet-style refreshments available to members and guests and other participants.

The issue is the challenge in meeting the gift registration requirement in section 4.2(g) of the LTA. The purpose of these meetings is not lobbying, nor is it to provide opportunities for lobbying, but rather for public office holders to provide information to its members. The host is PAAC B.C., which, as an organization, has never engaged in registrable lobbying.

Nevertheless, because some of its board members or event organizers are lobbyists and may lobby the attending public office holders, the gifts of hospitality are reportable by those members. This also applies retrospectively. If any official commences a lobbying activity at any time within one year of the event, they will have to register the gift.

As a result of the challenges presented in identifying the precise circumstances when such minor hospitality is registrable and in calculating an accurate total value of the gift, PAAC B.C., like other organizations, has refrained from inviting public office holders to these types of events. Consequently, public office holders are deprived of these opportunities to explain their priorities and perspectives on important issues to some interested audiences.

[9:30 a.m.]

PAAC B.C. believes that the purpose of the gift regulation is to avoid creating the perception of public office holders receiving a personal inducement to make decisions favourable to the interests of the lobbyist. I think everyone would agree that lobbyists should not give significant values in hospitality that could create real or perceived conflicts of interests, such as, for example, tickets to the World Cup or champagne lunches at fine restaurants.

PAAC B.C. submits, however, that providing a sandwich, Nanaimo bar and box of fruit juice to a public office holder over a lunch-hour speaking engagement would not improperly influence a public policy decision. Therefore, it believes that also capturing minimum values of sandwiches and appetizers causes an unintended consequence that does not serve the purposes of the law.

It proposes the following: amend section 2.4 of the LTA to exclude from the definition of gift or other benefit the receipt by public office holders of minor hospitality in common with other attendees of a meeting in their official capacity where no registerable lobbying occurs.

The second issue is the funding reporting requirement for charities and other non-profit organizations. PAAC B.C. is supportive of the requirement in the LTA for designated filers to report funding from governments and provincial entities received by their clients or organizations. This improves public confidence by publicizing the extent to which public funding may be used indirectly to finance lobbying activities.

Nevertheless, it believes it to be an unintended consequence that this reporting requirement should impose the excessive administrative burden that it does on charities. PAAC B.C. submits that it would be appropriate to alleviate this burden on those organizations that are recognized by the Canada Revenue Agency as registered charities. It is reasonable to conclude that charities who have been verified by the CRA serve the public interest rather than individual or commercial interests.

In addition, that their primary function is to raise money renders reporting this information more burdensome for charities than for other organizations. Moreover, donors expect that their gifts should contribute toward community benefit rather than to administrative costs. Donors may avoid contributing to an organization that spends a high proportion of donations administration. To escape the burden of this reporting requirement, many charities report that they no longer communicate with public office holders. This deprives the latter of information that could be valuable for public policy decisions.

PAAC B.C. submits that the limited public benefit obtained by the ongoing requirement for reporting the receipt of public funding by charities does not outweigh the harm that is caused by either the lack of communication with public office holders or the diverting of donations to cover the administrative costs of tracking and reporting under section 4.3 of the LTA. PAAC B.C. recommends the following: amend section 4.3 of the LTA to exclude organizations which the Canada Revenue Agency has recognized as registered charities from the requirement to report funding from public sources.

The final issue is federal-provincial regulatory harmonization. Federal-provincial and territorial governments have begun to reduce inter-jurisdictional barriers to trade and mobility and to harmonize regulations. PAAC B.C. believes that the public would benefit from a similar cross-jurisdictional approach to the regulation of lobbying. Many of its members lobby in multiple jurisdictions.

Each regime varies with its requirements. While PAAC B.C. does not consider the requirements in any one jurisdiction to be preferable to others, compliance would increase across the board if there was a greater level of similarity in these requirements. PAAC B.C. recognizes that your committee has no jurisdiction to recommend how to harmonize lobbying regulation across Canada. Instead, it asks the committee to recommend that the minister responsible consult with their other jurisdictional counterparts to explore opportunities to harmonize consistent with other regulatory initiatives.

[9:35 a.m.]

PAAC B.C. thanks the special committee for inviting it to appear and for listening to my presentation. I am pleased to take any questions.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Thank you for your presentation, Jay.

I will now open up for questions from the committee.

Susie Chant: This may sound like a very silly question. However, here we go. I’ve got you in my agenda as Public Affairs Association of Canada. So, is PAAC B.C. an arm of Public Affairs Association of Canada?

Jay Fedorak: Yeah. There’s the Public Affairs Association of Canada, which is a national organization, and then several of the provinces have created a sub-arm that’s part of the Public Affairs Association of Canada but is dedicated to work just within the province. That is the organization that, over the years, has worked with the registrar of lobbyists in British Columbia.

Susie Chant: Okay. May I have a follow-up?

Steve Morissette (Chair): Yes, you may.

Susie Chant: Is there legislation in each province of Canada around lobbying? Do the different lobbying associations get together to discuss it?

Jay Fedorak: Yes and yes.

Susie Chant: Okay. Good. Well, I’m happy.

Jay Fedorak: When I was deputy registrar of lobbyists, twice a year we would get together. From what I remember, I believe all of the provinces now have legislation in place. They didn’t all come in at the same time. It was sort of over time. A new province would get legislation and…. The Public Affairs Association of Canada does have an annual convention. There is a member from British Columbia that’s on the national board, and so there are some discussions.

But most of the discussions within British Columbia have come up as a result of our members lobbying in B.C., federally, Alberta, Ontario, mostly. The regulations are similar, but there are enough differences that it takes longer as people say: “Okay, for this province, I have X number of days to do this. In this province, I have to report this.”

Susie Chant: I understand.

Jay Fedorak: I mean, you can keep…. It takes some work. From my perspective, in the federal provincial forums with the regulators, we had often talked about what we thought was good in different provinces and how it would be beneficial across. But those are decisions of individual legislatures. The regulators and the Public Affairs Association of Canada aren’t in a position to harmonize. That would have to be an initiative of the federal and provincial ministers who are responsible possibly discussing this.

All we’re suggesting is that it would be a good idea if at some point the ministers could talk, and maybe there could be some consensus about what the best way forward is to make it easier for public affairs professionals to work across provinces.

Kiel Giddens: Just a couple of questions. I really appreciate, Jay, your presentation and your expertise. Particularly, thank you for your past public service in the office of the registrar of lobbyists.

Just a couple of questions. First of all, your presentation is very detailed, which I very much appreciate. But maybe just for the committee’s benefit, could you describe why in your first recommendation on gifts for public office holders…? It wasn’t as simple as recommending a change to the amount, but you’ve gone a little bit of a different approach to that. Can you just maybe describe in a little bit more detail why you chose this recommendation instead of just simply changing the amount, just in simple terms?

[9:40 a.m.]

Jay Fedorak: If you change the amount, that addresses a problem where a lobbyist may be giving multiple gifts of hospitality to the same public office holder. The limit is $100. What we’re talking about is an event over a lunch hour where there’s a panel including a public office holder that may be talking about an important public issue that is relevant to public affairs professionals or possibly to their clients. And so they want to hear directly from people who are knowledgeable about the issue. Offering them…. There’s no problem in terms of keeping a sandwich, a Nanaimo bar and a box of juice under $100. That’s not the issue.

What the issue is, is identifying the circumstance, and because…. It’s not all of the members who might have to register, because they’re not paying. It’s the members of the board of PAAC B.C. and any of the people that are organizing the event that have been identified as having to register a gift. So the issue is the fact that….

We might have an event today, and nobody’s lobbying the public office holder. But nine months down the road, somebody who was on the board who may have been on vacation the day the decision was made, or may not have attended the event, may have a client that ends up lobbying that public official. In that circumstance, they would have to be really careful and on top of everything to make sure that that didn’t get missed. That’s one issue.

The other issue is calculating the gift. What the organization would do is they would authorize the spending of a certain amount to pay a caterer to deliver the sandwiches and the rest of the lunch. Then they have to figure out: “Okay, how much did all that cost? Do we have to incorporate the cost? Did we have to rent the room for the event, or was it provided for free? How many people attended?”

The office of the registrar of lobbyists has provided a description of how you actually do this calculation. Just the fact of how involved it is has made the organization reticent. It just said: “Okay, this is complicated. We don’t want situations where people have registered the wrong amount or somebody’s forgotten. We’re just not going to have public office holders come to these events.”

So they have to look at opportunities such as: “Well, let’s find a retired public office holder, somebody who was an MLA five years ago or someone who might have worked for the….” But then that person doesn’t have the up-to-date information that the public office holder has.

It’s more about how complicated it is and the fact that members value their reputation so highly they don’t want to risk making a mistake and being identified as not being in compliance. As I said, I think the purpose of this provision is to ensure that the public doesn’t perceive lobbyists giving personal inducements to change decisions.

What’s happening in these cases is just…. If you invite somebody over a lunch hour and you don’t feed them, they’re going to be hungry. Then they either have to arrange to…. And they might just say: “Well, look. I won’t have time to eat before this event because I’ve got a meeting right after.” So it’s just to facilitate people’s attendance. It’s certainly not something where anyone would particularly look forward to coming to an event simply because of the nature of the food that’s being provided.

I’ve been to these events. I mean, it’s not…. Again, sometimes it’s after work hours, and it might run till about seven o’clock. Well, there are some people that just won’t last till after seven without eating something, so we just want to provide something. But the way the law is written, this is getting captured.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Thank you.

Any further questions?

Kiel Giddens: I think you described the logistical challenges well, but I do appreciate that you’ve also outlined that, you know, depriving information flowing from the public office holders is also a problem, because it’s not like…. It’s not necessarily that a lobbying actually occurs. It’s actually information being provided.

[9:45 a.m.]

Jay Fedorak: The purpose of these events is not to communicate to the public office holder. It’s to learn from the public office holder.

Kiel Giddens: Right. My second question…. Sorry, Chair, I’ll be as quick as I can here. Just on your second recommendation on the reporting requirements for charities and non-profits. I agree that finding ways to support non-profits is absolutely critical in this making it workable for those organizations. And you’ve outlined that they don’t serve commercial purposes. They’re there to provide benefits to the community. I fully agree with that.

However, there are some registered charities that have a dedicated public policy focus and advocacy focus, and there are some that it’s a very small side piece of what they have to do for their organization because they’re providing those benefits to the community. Some do not do that. They just provide advocacy. And so my only concern would be…. What does that mean from a public policy standpoint if we have a whole bunch of organizations registering only to focus on that, if there’s some sort of ability to do that?

I’m just wondering how you would respond to that or how you would see that as a potential risk in, I guess, changing the current rules.

Jay Fedorak: Okay, I understand your concern, and I also want to make it clear that PAAC B.C. felt it important to offer a specific proposal relating to the law rather than just some sort of general idea. But certainly, from PAAC B.C.’s perspective, it’s entirely flexible, and we’d certainly agree that the problem could be addressed by using different wording.

We just wanted to throw out an option for your committee to consider. And if, in your deliberations, you can think of a way of modifying or qualifying it or come up with a creative solution that addresses the issue that we’ve raised but avoids creating any other problems with the law, PAAC B.C. would certainly be grateful to the committee for having done that.

I think the issue has been raised by smaller fundraising charities in the area of health and other sorts of community benefits.

We understand that there may be other organizations that are considered registered charities that are much bigger. I believe the Canadian Cancer Society has made a submission to your committee, and they’ve recognized that they have more resources than other charities do. There might be other options that can address the problem because certainly there may be some charities where this, because of the staffing that they already have in place for other reasons, isn’t that much of a burden for them.

There may be ways of addressing the differences between them, but we just wanted to identify the issue in general and at least show you that we were looking at the law and thinking: “Here’s one option for you to consider.”

We certainly appreciate that, based on all the submissions that you receive, you’ll be looking at issues like this from different angles and may come up with other ideas or may decide that it’s not worthy of a recommendation going forward, and we respect that.

Susie Chant: I have two questions, if I may. First one: what are the consequences of non-compliance?

Jay Fedorak: The consequences of non-compliance depend on numerous factors, such as the seriousness of the offence, the implications, whether it’s a repeated offence, how well the lobbyist cooperates with the investigation of the register of lobbyists.

[9:50 a.m.]

It could be on the range on, from the one hand, merely saying: “Look, you didn’t comply. Here’s what you should have done. Make sure you do it the right way next time.” That might be done completely privately.

For a more serious offence or for an organization that has repeatedly contravened the law in similar ways over multiple occasions, they could be subject to a public report by the registrar of lobbyists. That public report could also include an administrative monetary penalty of varying amounts, depending on the circumstances.

I think from my experience talking with public affairs professionals and from my experience as a deputy registrar of lobbyists, they’re more concerned about the publicity than they are…. If they have to pay…. I think some of them would say: “I’d rather pay $500 and keep it quiet than pay nothing and then have it made public that I didn’t do this right.”

In the circumstances where the registrar feels it appropriate and necessary to issue a public report, that, from the perspective of the lobbyist, is a very serious consequence. But as I said, if people overlook something, if they make an honest mistake, the registrar is reasonable, takes all the factors into account and, in the first instance, tends to be remedial rather than punitive. But it can be punitive.

All the public reports are available on the website of the registrar, so you can certainly, if you’re interested, have a look at how much people have been charged for what types of offences.

Susie Chant: And can you be struck off?

Jay Fedorak: I don’t believe…. I’ll get back to you on that. I’ll just have to confirm.

I know that there are certain laws across Canada where the registrar has the ability to prohibit a lobbyist from lobbying. It’s probably right in the law. I just have to read that section of the law to confirm that for you.

Susie Chant: Yeah, no, no. Just out of interest.

The other question that I have is…. My brain was running around it when you were talking about the harmonizing piece. Do you think there’s ever been a document created by the various members across B.C. that would be accessible as a beginning sort of template to look at if we were to recommend that suggestion?

Jay Fedorak: My recommendation from about ten years ago was…. The federal Lobbying Commissioner did develop a document at the time that compared different requirements across the different regimes. I haven’t checked…. It wasn’t something that was made publicly available. It was something that was made available to different offices, and it was an internal document for them.

I’m not sure whether they’ve kept it up to date, because things have changed. I mean, in British Columbia in ten years, things changed considerably when the Lobbyists Registration Act was revised into the Lobbyists Transparency Act. There were significant changes made to that.

I know that there are some academics from Canadian universities in political science or public administration who’ve written articles comparing. Again, I remember seeing an article from maybe around 2015. I don’t know whether they’ve updated that, so it would be important to get an updated version. But at least there were, at one time, efforts made to compare and put down on paper what the differences were.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Any further questions?

Seeing none, thank you very much for your presentation. Appreciate you coming and presenting to us. And, yeah, the question Susie asked, you can send the information to the committee, and it will be shared amongst us.

Jay Fedorak: I’ll just verify whether the law enables the registrar to suspend the ability of a lobbyist to lobby.

As I said, I’m quite sure that the federal commissioner at one point had that power, but I didn’t think it was in British Columbia. As deputy registrar of lobbyists, I don’t remember that issue ever coming up. But I want to make sure I get a chance to look at the law and get back to you on that.

Thank you for listening. For me, it was a personal pleasure being able to attend the first statutory review, as I was deputy registrar under Elizabeth Denham and I helped her draft the report that recommended that there be statutory review. A great pleasure for me.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Thank you very much.

The committee will now take a 20-minute break till 10:15. We should have the next presenter here then.

The committee recessed from 9:55 a.m. to 10:19 a.m.

[Steve Morissette in the chair.]

Steve Morissette (Chair): Welcome back, everyone. Next up is Capilano Students Union.

You’ll have ten minutes for the presentation, followed by 20 minutes for questions from committee members. Welcome. Thank you for presenting to us. You may go ahead.

Capilano Students Union

Vansh Kalra: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to be here today. My name is Vansh Kalra, and I’m a student leader with Capilano Students Union, where I serve as the vice-president external.

Joshua Thomas: Good morning, committee members. I’m Josh Thomas, and I’m on the staff side of the Capilano Students Union, where I hold the position of director of policy and campaigns.

[10:20 a.m.]

Vansh Kalra: We are grateful to speak with you as a part of this important review of the Lobbyists Transparency Act. The CSU represents more than 9,000 students at Capilano University across North Vancouver, Squamish and the Sunshine Coast. Our job is simple.

Our job is simple, to elevate student voices, reduce barriers to education and work with the government and a university to make life better for students. Student unions are often the first place where young people learn how democratic participation actually works — how to organize, how to advocate and how to work with the decision-makers constructively.

This act directly shapes how emerging generations experience civic engagement. We support the goal of transparency in lobbying, but we want to ensure that transparency does not unintentionally create barriers that make it harder for grassroots organizations, especially student-led ones, to participate in public life.

Today we want to share what the act looked like in practice for small non-profits like us and how thoughtful changes could strengthen transparency while removing unnecessary barriers.

Joshua Thomas: We want to begin by acknowledging the intent of the act. The purpose of helping the public understand who is trying to influence government decisions is sound and important.

But the act as currently designed does not differentiate between a multinational corporation with a professional government relations team and a small student-run non-profit with limited staff and highly frequent student leadership turnover. Our student leaders serve one-year terms. They’re also full-time students. And when you layer every administrative framework onto organizations like ours, the effect is disproportionate.

Let me give you a sense of what this looks like on the ground. One of the things we struggle with is the duplicated reporting requirement for a single interaction. Under the act, simply arranging a meeting counts as a lobbying activity. Then you must file a second report when the meeting itself actually happens. These two filings contain identical information, and for us, that is double the work for one conversation, and every extra administrative hour comes directly out of time that we could spend serving our students.

We also struggle that routine low-stakes communications still count as lobbying. If one of our student executives sends an email to an MLA asking to meet about bus service, that’s a reportable lobbying activity. If I write to our university’s board chair about student residence phases, again, that’s a reportable lobbying activity. Individually, these contacts are small, but in aggregate throughout a year, they become a significant compliance load for our small staff team.

We also struggle with the complex and technical reporting requirements for government funding. As a non-profit, our finances are transparent under the Societies Act already. Most government funding we receive is for summer students working on things like food security, Indigenous programming or EDI. But under the act, we must disclose detailed funding sources across all government levels, following rules that are far more complex than what is needed for transparency around lobbying and government funding.

What we are left with is a well-intentioned law that, in practice, redirects capacity away from students and towards paperwork without a corresponding transparency benefit for the public.

Vansh Kalra: I want to speak to why this matters so deeply for youth civic engagement. Student unions are one of the first places young people regularly interact with public institutions. When the rules governing civic participation are overly technical or burdensome, it teaches emerging voters that advocacy is complicated, high risk and only for the experts. This is not the lesson we want students to learn.

We have seen the effect first-hand. Student leaders hesitate to reach out to MLAs because they are afraid that they’ll do the registry wrong. Small organizations like ours without legal documents or dedicated compliance offers spend disproportionate time interpreting definitions. New student leaders inherit a system they barely have time to learn before their one-year term ends. The result is no more transparency. It’s fewer young people engaging with the government.

At the same time, we agree wholeheartedly that major lobbying companies and corporate advocacy should be transparent, and we believe there is a way to achieve both objectives.

Joshua Thomas: Our recommendations are grounded in our practical experience using the registry for the past five years. We included some recommendations already in our written submission, but I wanted to highlight three that we think would make the most difference for a small non-profit like ours.

[10:25 a.m.]

The first would be to remove the requirement to report arranging a meeting. This would eliminate one of the most significant sources of duplicative reporting for non-profits while still preserving full transparency on what the substance of those meetings actually are.

The second would be to introduce a streamlined reporting pathway for small public interest non-profits. And I want to be clear that we are not advocating for an exemption from the act or an exemption from transparency, but we are advocating for a simpler method, a short, consolidated monthly declaration for small non-profit organizations with limited staff capacity that would still give the public transparency over our lobbying activities.

The third is to simplify government funding disclosures. The current rules are deeply technical for us and difficult to interpret. A simplified high-level disclosure would preserve the public’s right to know without creating administrative hurdles that disproportionately affect small organizations.

Vansh Kalra: To close, we emphasize that student unions share the goal of a transparent democracy. In fact, transparency is a value that resonates deeply with students. They expect it from institutions around them.

Our request is simply that the act achieve its purpose without unintentionally silencing the voices of small organizations, youth-led bodies and community groups that work in the public interest. We are committed to being open, collaborative partners in this view.

Thank you for your time. We are happy to answer any of the questions.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Great. Thank you for taking the time to present to us, and I’ll open the floor to any questions.

Susie Chant: Good morning, Josh. Good morning, Vansh. Nice to see you again. Sorry I missed you two weeks ago. It’s Susie speaking.

Question: when you say the government funding disclosures, are these all the funds that the student union has received over a certain time period or are they just particularly focused ones?

Joshua Thomas: I can answer that one.

Yes, we’re required to report all the funding that we received from all levels of government at any point during the last fiscal year.

It could be for anything. Most of our funding is just for the Canada summer jobs program.

Susie Chant: Okay. For instance, if you got some funding towards, as an example, the food bank or something like that, that would have to be disclosed?

Joshua Thomas: Correct.

Susie Chant: Interesting. Thank you.

Janet Routledge: Hi. My name is Janet Routledge. I’m the MLA for Burnaby North. I think we can see each other across the inlet.

I just want to say that I find your case, your argument, quite compelling in terms of what it means for an organization like yours.

I think when we think about lobbying, when we think about lobbying that needs to be regulated, we think about, you know, the big companies, the companies that are hired to lobby. When you talk about what it means practically for a student union, I think that this is something we really need to look into.

This may sound like too obvious a question, but when you talk about what it’s like for a student union, what it’s like for students, what their priority has to be and the importance of what students are learning about democracy participating in lobbying…. I guess my question is: if it’s too bureaucratic and too many rules and too overwhelming, what kind of impression does that leave with students about the democratic process?

Vansh Kalra: Yeah, so to the student it feels like doing lobbying is so complicated. We have to do…. Students are scared of doing the wrong registry.

[10:30 a.m.]

That’s why it feels that doing democracy could also be the same thing. Students would have such a burden, because we have to ask for a meeting.

Joshua?

Joshua Thomas: I think it’s always a shock to student leaders when we do our training every summer when they start their term, to hear that a mistake, while unlikely to happen, could end in jail time. That is something we have to communicate to our students, and we do our best to provide them with the resources to make that not happen, but it is still a reality of the act for non-compliance.

Harwinder Sandhu: Thank you both for your great presentation and also highlighting how when we talk about the lobbyists act, we think of big organizations, companies who have designated lobbyists, and they take care of all the things.

I really find it’s thought-provoking, you reporting that duplication of reporting. You mentioned not only duplication but lots of identical information, which I don’t think is doing justice when we’re trying to encourage our youth to be engaged in democratic political process. We want students to be excited, not afraid, when they want to reach out to us elected members. As well, we totally support — I can say all my colleagues here too — encouragement versus discouragement when you want to come share your concerns.

I totally see the importance of administrative hours that can go to helping students rather than having to make sure that all the process is done, and it could be cumbersome. I really want to appreciate you for highlighting that. That’s something we’ll be having conversations on, moving forward.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation, guys. That was excellent.

I wanted to highlight one piece that I thought was actually very, very valuable. In section 4, you talk about differentiating between advocacy and actual lobbying, particularly for organizations or student organizations. I think that’s a really interesting piece for us to have a look at.

Going back to what you were saying about the training, I’m just curious. We had somebody present earlier today that said that there was some complexity around getting answers and getting direction out of the lobbyists office themselves.

Have you guys had any challenges with that, because there isn’t a chatbot that sort of answers questions or you can’t reach somebody directly? Have you guys had any challenges with that from your student union side?

Joshua Thomas: Yes and no. Right now understanding our obligations does require cross-referencing the act itself, the regulation and then the multiple guidance documents that are made available by the office of the registrar of lobbyists. So it’s very hard to figure out sometimes what our actual obligations are under the act.

However, I will say that any time we have had to contact the office, we have had exemplary help from the individuals who are a part of that organization. They’re always quick to respond and very helpful, helping us figure out what we need to do.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Yeah. Thank you for that. I appreciate that answer.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Any further questions?

Susie Chant: Josh, when you refer to training, at the risk of sounding unkind, has the training been updated?

Joshua Thomas: Whenever there are updates to the…. Well, not updates to the act, but there are, I guess, new interpretations. For example, recently there were some around gift giving. We do then update our slide deck, which is our training material. We do try to keep it as up to date as possible.

There’s just so much to go over. Even myself and the other co-worker I do this with, we have been doing it for five years, and we still are sometimes like: “What does this mean? What do we need to do?” It’s not always obvious what the answer is, and it does take a lot of our time to figure it out.

Susie Chant: Okay. May I follow up? Is that all right?

[10:35 a.m.]

My concern is when you talked about jail time. I literally spoke with somebody in the previous thing and asked if anybody had actually ever been struck off, which to me would be the ultimate. I’ve never heard a reference to jail time.

I’m a little concerned about that, particularly when you’re working with as many international students as you are. That is, I think, particularly chilling and worrisome to me that that is a message that’s coming out from one of our entities, a government interpretation of a legislation. That kind of worries me a lot, just saying.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Any further questions?

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): I just wanted to follow up on the training piece. Did you guys put that training package together, or does the office of the lobbyists put a training deck together for you guys?

Joshua Thomas: We put it together ourselves.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Any further questions?

I have one more. I appreciate your presentation and the challenges that a small organization like yours has. I think that’s really great information that you gave us.

I’m just wondering if there’s anything else. Like for reporting, would it help if reporting was, say, quarterly versus monthly?

Joshua Thomas: Yes, I think that would be a big help. Doing it every month is a lot of time out of our day and our month. I do think simplifying reporting requirements and potentially moving it to quarterly would…. I think it may come with other challenges, just in terms of other recordkeeping we would need to do, but I think that would be easy to implement. But in terms of our compliance to the registry, I think it would simplify things, yes.

Susie Chant: So am I given to understand that compliance is actually a barrier to your folks reaching out to various governmental members and so on, including your own board?

Joshua Thomas: Yes. There are some board members and some of our executives where this is a barrier for advocacy. It also prevents us from advocating….

For example, as you know, Susie, we have our government luncheon every year, and we have to do a training session with our board members to explain that they aren’t allowed to tell government officials at that luncheon our priorities and what we’re advocating for, because that would count as lobbying.

There would be no way for us to actually comply with the act by recording every individual conversation that a board member had with a government official at that luncheon. So we have to tell them, “You just can’t do this because otherwise we’d be out of compliance,” which is a shame because part of our idea for that luncheon is for government officials to hear directly from students about what student issues are and what they’re facing.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Any further questions?

Seeing none, thank you very much for your presentation. You’ve brought some great points forward for us. Appreciate it, and appreciate your time. Thank you, Vansh and Josh.

Joshua Thomas: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Vansh Kalra: Thank you so much, everyone.

Steve Morissette (Chair): We’ll take a two-minute recess to reset with the next group.

The committee recessed from 10:39 a.m. to 10:41 a.m.

[Steve Morissette in the chair.]

Steve Morissette (Chair): Welcome back, everyone.

Next up is the Canadian Cancer Society.

You’ll have ten minutes for your presentation and 20 minutes for questions from the committee. You’re welcome to go ahead.

Canadian Cancer Society

Charles Aruliah: Thanks so much. Good morning, members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you on the Lobbyists Transparency Act and the impact it has had on our organization’s work.

My name is Charles Aruliah. I’m manager of advocacy with the Canadian Cancer Society.

I work and live on the traditional unceded lands of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm People in Port Coquitlam.

The Canadian Cancer Society, or CCS, is the only national charity that supports all Canadians with cancers in communities across the country. Cancer continues to have a significant impact on the lives of British Columbians. Two in five Canadians are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, and with an aging population — with one in four British Columbians expected to be 65 years or older by 2031 — the burden of cancer in B.C. is expected to grow.

This is why, at CCS, we’re committed to uniting Canadians and supporting those who are going through a cancer diagnosis so that no one feels alone. We do this through funding innovative research, operating support programs and advocating to government for better cancer care policies. In 2024-2025 alone, we invested over $50.8 million in cancer research and innovation, supported 18.3 million individuals with cancer information and achieved 67 significant policy wins that improved cancer care across the country.

While advocacy represents the most visible part of our charitable mission that intersects with government, we also engage with government as it relates to the programs and services we provide in B.C., as well as our contribution to cancer research.

As a non-partisan, evidence-based organization and through our impact, over the years we have developed a reputation that is respected and trusted among Canadians affected by cancer and decision-makers alike. We continue to strive to keep that high degree of trust by remaining committed to the high standards of transparency and accountability. That is why we support the goals of the Lobbyists Transparency Act to ensure that our engagement with government remains accessible to British Columbians.

However, the current reporting requirements in B.C. as mandated under the B.C. Lobbyists Transparency Act and required by the office of the registrar of lobbyists for B.C. are onerous and demand significant time and resources from our organization, all of which has impacted our ability to carry out our charitable mission more effectively.

We acknowledge that recent changes to remove the requirement to report on funding requested to all governments, as well as reducing the reporting frequency of funding received from government, have greatly reduced the reporting burden. Still, despite these welcome measures, no other jurisdiction in Canada approaches the same level of detail in reporting or frequency in reporting as required by the B.C. LTA, which continues to negatively impact our organization, as well as others in the sector.

I’ll first speak to this negative impact. In any given month, the Canadian Cancer Society has around 40 staff across the country dedicating time to provide input into our monthly reports, and we spend dozens of hours per month managing the registry in B.C. This mostly includes staff that hold direct relationships with government, as well as program staff that manage government funding across the country.

As non-profits and charitable organizations, our resources are limited, and we end up utilizing donor dollars, which should be dedicated to carrying out our charitable missions instead of managing the B.C. lobbyists registry.

[10:45 a.m.]

The registry’s reporting requirements have also had a cooling effect on the non-profit sector in B.C. overall. While our organization is fortunate to be large enough to have the resources to dedicate to maintaining the registry, many non-profits are not well-resourced. As a result, they end up either risking the $25,000 non-compliance penalty or do not engage with government altogether. This means that non-profits, which have a deep understanding of the communities they serve, do not end up advocating for the communities. In short, the LTA does not enhance but rather reduces the quality of public discourse in B.C.

We have been working with other non-profits and charities whose work has similarly been impacted by the registry to identify ways by which to reduce the reporting burden to the registry, as required by the LTA, while maintaining its commitment to transparency and accountability. Through this work we have identified three recommended changes.

Firstly, under section 4.3(1)(a) of the LTA, our organizations as non-profits and charities are required to report on “the full amount of funding received from any government, government agency or provincial entity.” What this means is that we end up having to report funding received from all levels of government across the country, not just from government in B.C., including all municipal, provincial and federal levels of government in every province and territory.

As a national charitable organization, we provide a variety of services that vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and receive funding from communities across the country in order to provide programs and services within those communities. As a result, most of the funding that CCS ends up reporting to the B.C. lobbyists registry is from jurisdictions outside of British Columbia, for programs and services outside of British Columbia, which ultimately do not impact British Columbians.

To highlight this, as an example, CCS had received a $540 contribution from the township of St. Clair, Ontario, which was a venue fee that was waived for a Relay for Life fundraising event in Sarnia. This amount had to be reported to the B.C. lobbyists registry, despite the fact that this funding had no relevance to our programs in B.C. or to British Columbians.

As another example, between July and September of this year, CCS provided 30 records of new funding received from government, zero of which were from B.C. This reporting requirement is also made partially redundant, as our organization already provides government funding reports as part of our lobbyist reporting obligations in other provinces.

The burden of reporting pertains not only to scope but to frequency as well. Under section 4.1(1) of the LTA, we are required to report government funding received on a quarterly basis. While this requirement was recently changed from the monthly reporting frequency, where it was previously, the quarterly reporting is still twice as frequent as it is in other jurisdictions in Canada. As a second recommendation, CCS recommends that the LTA be adjusted to align with other jurisdictions and require reporting of funding on a biannual basis.

Our final recommendation relates to the reporting of social media posts. Under section 1.1(a) of the LTA, the LTA describes the definition of “lobby” and “lobbying activity” as communicating with a public office holder in an attempt to influence public policy. In B.C., this has been interpreted to include social media posts. However, B.C. is the only jurisdiction that requires reporting on each social media post that is directed to a senior public office holder.

The process to report each communication is onerous and time-consuming, especially in light of the fact that postings on social media channels such as Facebook and X are already public information and easily searchable. Reporting social media interactions with government provides no new information for British Columbians, making this reporting requirement, as defined by the LTA, redundant. For many in the sector, this additional reporting obligation is an example of a redundant requirement that further adds to the reporting burden.

CCS, as one of the largest health charities, will continue to work in partnership with the government towards improving the lives of British Columbians with cancer, and their families, because we have the capacity to do so. As the committee reviews the LTA, we hope that the committee considers the resources required, not only for our organization but for smaller non-profits, to manage the B.C. lobbyists registry as it stands.

We also hope the committee considers the utility of these onerous and, in some cases, redundant requirements and the impact that they are having on the ability for non-profits to work for the betterment of the communities.

Thank you for your time. I’m happy to answer any questions you may have.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation, Charles. I’ll open the floor to questions.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you very much, Charles. It’s good to see you. I appreciate all of the work that your organization does in our province.

One thing that stands out, to me, from your recommendations is that each of them reflects a point where B.C. differs from other jurisdictions in Canada. Obviously, as a national charitable organization, you have to work in every jurisdiction. I sincerely appreciate that you highlighted in footnotes some of where those differentiate us from what other provinces have. I think that’s useful.

[10:50 a.m.]

For the benefit of the public here, on the reporting requirements for government funding in other provinces or territories, I’ll just highlight that, on the six months, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick have every six months as the frequency. Ontario, P.E.I., Nova Scotia and Newfoundland have within 30 calendar days after a change has occurred or six months. Some other provinces have…. Yukon territory is annually, and a couple of provinces are exempt. So B.C. does stand out, I guess, in this regard.

Compared to, say, Saskatchewan, which has every six months — clarity there — versus in Ontario, within 30 calendar days after a change has occurred or six months, I’m wondering how the differentiation works. Is there a preference there? Your organization works in both of those provinces as well.

Charles Aruliah: From my understanding, in Ontario, if there’s a funding change within a six-month reporting period, then that’s updated in the registry. Say, from January to July, or whenever the six months is, if our organization received funding from the Ontario government, we would update the registry in April as it changes. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need to update the registry until that six-month period is over.

In Saskatchewan, from my understanding again, it’s just every six months. So even if there are changes within this period, you would just update it at the six-month time period.

I think, for us, we understand why those provinces have the need to update it as you receive it. I’m not necessarily advocating for one position or another. I think what complicates this is the fact that we have to report funding from all levels of government.

So if we receive funding from the city of Toronto, that updates when we have to report our funding. If that were removed, then it would make it much easier to manage. But in B.C., because we receive funding regularly from everywhere, if you were to take Ontario’s rule, then we’d have to update it every month anyway.

Kiel Giddens: Just a follow-up comment. Notable for the committee was your example of this $540 contribution from the township of St. Clair, Ontario, and B.C. having to report on that. Things like that are good for the committee to be aware of, because I don’t think, necessarily, the public would understand or know why that’s the case, but the way things are worded right now in both the legislation and the regulations have led to that determination.

I appreciate you highlighting that. I just want that to be noted for sure.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Any further questions?

Susie Chant: First off, thank you for all the work that you and your entity do. It’s truly appreciated. I also really appreciate this overview of being a national agency and hearing what the complications are of the B.C. act in conjunction with yours.

One of the issues I heard from you is the piece about the social media posts. Can you dive into that a little bit more so that I understand?

I don’t know whether I’m allowed to use this word in committee, but to me, it sounds nonsensical. I’d like to understand. If I stand and have a picture with you and you post it, then you have to report that? Is that what I’m understanding?

Charles Aruliah: Our understanding is that if there’s an attempt to influence policy or a decision-maker within that interaction, then we’d have to report it. We report it anyway, just to err on the side of caution.

But if we’re saying, “Thank you for advancing this piece of policy,” then we’d report that to the registry as a social media post. Or, for example, if we had a meeting and we spoke with you and took a picture, then we would still report that to the registry.

[10:55 a.m.]

For the social media requirement, I think what makes this really an issue is that we do have certain awareness months, like Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, or we had our lobbyists’ Advocacy Day and Lobby Day back in April. At those times, we reach out to all MLAs and take many pictures. It’s not just our organization. Many non-profits and charities do this. That can be a real burden that’s added on top of the reporting that already exists.

We met with the B.C. lobbyists registrar to raise awareness of our issues. His reasoning was that sometimes…. It’s not necessarily that public-facing component. If someone sends a direct message to an MLA, then that might be something that the public wants to know, which I can understand. But I think there needs to be some clarification on that and separation of what’s publicly available and what’s not.

He also mentioned that from his point of view, the B.C. lobbyists registry presents a one-stop shop. If someone wants to find access to all information on social media posts, they can go to the registry and find that without having to go through Facebook and X.

From our point of view, those platforms seem more accessible to the public, and they use that more often than the lobbyists registry, where you have to go in and search for it. So there’s a difference in perspective on that, but that’s the reason we’ve been given. Again, I think, for those public posts, it’s already publicly available.

Susie Chant: Carrying on in the social media vein, could it generate a report all by itself? Would you have to report it all by itself, or would it be incorporated in…?

As an example, Canadian Cancer Society comes in and presents to us, and we take huge amounts of pictures — terrible. Is that incorporated in the report of the overall event, or does it generate a different kind of report or a different line item in a report?

Charles Aruliah: It’s incorporated within our overall monthly reports of government interactions. In our reports we’d say: “We sent an email to this MLA, and then we wrote a social media post to this MLA.” So it’d be within that government interaction piece.

Susie Chant: Wow. Okay. Thank you.

Harwinder Sandhu: Thank you so much for your presentation.

As we know — I believe in 2020 — when we moved from the older law to the modern transparency act, the purpose and goal was to significantly strengthen the oversight for the public’s benefit and to improve accountability and transparency, which are much-needed.

You highlighted organizations that are working to support people, with limited resources. We’ve heard from previous presenters too, that we need to take a thorough look at it. How can we make it so we don’t change?

From previous committees and in my work as MLA, I’ve heard that B.C. does have one of the best lobbyists transparency acts. In that case, how do we make those changes or consider taking into account the other organizations with limited resources? They’re busy helping serving people and different from the other organizations or companies. How do we make it fairer for everyone?

The transparency act was designed for accountability and fairness, and I think that’s where we need to have further conversations.

I sincerely appreciate your feedback and your report.

Janet Routledge: Hi. I’m Janet Routledge from Burnaby North. This is more a comment, something I’m grappling with as a result of the presentations today and your presentation. You’ve given us real food for thought, and I would welcome your comments on my observations at this point.

I’m wondering, as we’re improving the act, if we need to be clearer about a distinction for the purpose of lobbying. Do we need to define some groups, like yours, that are clearly for public benefit? It’s clearly to make people healthier, as opposed to the more traditional kind of lobbying that we think of, which is for economic benefit or investments, procurement. Maybe we need to make…. Those are the kinds of things, I think, that we have in mind about transparency, rather than lobbying to make people healthier.

[11:00 a.m.]

Charles Aruliah: Yeah, I think that’s exactly it. The act itself just needs a bit more nuance.

Again, we met with the lobbyist registrar to kind of raise our concerns around the LTA, especially when we were talking about the requirement to report on all government funding across the country. On our end, we were wondering why this information would be useful for British Columbians, particularly as we report elsewhere.

At that point, he said that not all non-profits are charitable. They’re not selfless. I don’t want to say we’re selfless. But they don’t have the best intentions in mind, so it might be of value for people to know if they’re receiving government funding.

On that part, I understand. As an example, if a retail association gets funded by the tobacco industry, that might be of value, and it might be of value for people to know that the government of B.C. is also funding that organization.

That, I think, requires some nuance. I’m not sure how to distinguish between that and the work of other organizations like ourselves. But I think there needs to be a distinction. Because again, it doesn’t make sense for…. I’m not sure what the value is for British Columbians to know that we are receiving funding from Newfoundland to support smoking cessation programs, right? That’s not clear to me. Just a bit more nuance, I think.

Susie Chant: Thank you. It sounds like you’ve had some very robust discussions with the lobbying. I also am impressed to hear that. That’s very helpful. I think that work is really appreciated from our perspective. I think it should be ongoing, as well, so thank you for doing that.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Any further questions?

Seeing none, thank you very much for your presentation. I appreciate it. Thank you for the work that you do.

The committee will now take a five-minute recess and try to tee up the next presentation.

The committee recessed from 11:02 a.m. to 11:12 a.m.

[Steve Morissette in the chair.]

Steve Morissette (Chair): We’ll call it to order, and the next presentation will be from the B.C. College of Family Physicians.

Welcome, Erin. Thank you for joining us. You’ll have ten minutes for your presentation, and then we’ll have up to 20 minutes for questions from the committee. So go ahead, and please present.

B.C. College of Family Physicians

Erin Murtagh: Great. Thank you very much. Good morning, members of the committee, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Erin Murtagh, and I’m the strategic partnerships and communications manager at the B.C. College of Family Physicians.

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge that I’m speaking to you today from the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ Nations, otherwise known as Vancouver.

As a non-profit member association representing more than 8,000 family doctors, our mandate is to empower, connect and advocate for family physicians and to strengthen primary care for patients across the province.

We strongly support the core intent of the Lobbyists Transparency Act, ensuring openness and accountability in government decision-making. Equally, we see opportunities to reduce unnecessary administrative burden, particularly for small non-profits and associations like ours.

Advocacy is a fundamental part of our work. Family physicians rely on us to ensure that experiences are represented in a meaningful way. We engage with government officials on an ad hoc basis, and we do so with a very small team.

For us, the admin requirements of the current act take up time that could otherwise be spent on more substantive work, such as physician engagement and supporting you with evidence-based recommendations.

We believe the current act can be modernized in ways that preserve transparency without compromising small organizations’ ability to participate meaningfully in advocacy work.

[11:15 a.m.]

We have three main recommendations for modernizing the Lobbyists Transparency Act. Firstly, we recommend modernizing the gift rules. Basing gift valuation on fair market cost only — excluding taxes, service fees and incidental costs — would improve clarity and reduce accidental non-compliance.

Requiring gift disclosure only once, after the gift is given, would eliminate duplicate reporting. Raising the gift limit from $100 to $200 would reflect inflation and align with provinces like Ontario and Saskatchewan.

Our annual award celebration recognizes incredible family physicians across the province who have been nominated by their patients and peers, but with dinner costs alone at $120, we’re not able to invite elected officials under the current LTA. This is just one example of how the gift limit can prevent government representatives from celebrating and recognizing the amazing work being done in their communities.

Secondly, we recommend introducing a 50-hour annual threshold for in-house lobbyist registration. This focuses the act on regular, ongoing lobbying and reduces admin burden. We also recommend extending the registration window to 60 days, aligning B.C. with other provinces and easing pressures on organisations with limited capacity.

Many family doctors engage in advocacy for BCCFP only once per year, often because they’re brought in as experts on a particular topic or a region, for example. Requiring full registration for these single engagements creates admin barriers that can discourage valuable clinical input from reaching decision-makers like yourselves.

Thirdly, we recommend replacing interaction-by-interaction reporting with summary reporting, tracking engagement frequency and topic areas. We also recommend shifting from monthly to quarterly reporting, mirroring the government’s own financial reporting cadence and aligning with other provinces.

At our legislature day in May this year, we brought 15 delegates, who met with over 40 elected officials. Some members of this committee participated in those conversations, and we’re deeply grateful for your engagement. However, documenting each of those engagements under the current interaction-by-interaction model required a disproportionate admin effort from our small team.

Taken together, these recommendations maintain a report element of transparency, reduce the risk of unintended non-compliance, align B.C. with established best practices across Canada and recognize the realities of small organizations with limited administrative capacity. We feel strongly that none of these changes weaken the intent of the act. Instead, they strengthen its usability and fairness, ensuring it remains a strong oversight tool while still allowing broad participation in the democratic process.

Members of the committee, thank you for your time today and for undertaking this important review. I welcome any questions and would be happy to expand on any aspect of our recommendations.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Thank you for your presentation, Erin. Appreciate it. I’ll open the floor to questions.

Susie Chant: Hi, Erin. I’m Susie Chant. I’m the MLA for North Vancouver–Seymour.

I just have a clarity question here. B.C. college of family surgeons, does it have any regulatory or disciplinary functions such as the College of Physicians and Surgeons?

Erin Murtagh: No. We are an independent organization from CPSBC. We are a chapter of the Family Physicians of Canada. We don’t have any part in regulatory. It’s more about accreditation.

Susie Chant: Accreditation and support.

Erin Murtagh: Yes.

Susie Chant: Okay. Very good. Thank you.

Janet Routledge: Hi. I’m Janet Routledge. I’m the MLA for Burnaby North.

If you covered this in your presentation, I’m sorry I missed it. Can you give us kind of a ballpark of what percentage of the college’s time is spent complying with this particular act?

Erin Murtagh: That can vary, of course, depending on the number of interactions that we have. It would be difficult to put a percentage on it because there are different members of the team, and it’s often down to capacity and who is able to carry out this work at the time, based on workload.

Yeah. If I could put a number of hours to it monthly, I would say that this probably takes up three to four hours.

[11:20 a.m.]

Kiel Giddens: Thank you very much, Erin, for the presentation. Your recommendations, I think a lot of them are around simplification and trying to streamline things to make things simpler for your organization. I appreciate that it was short and clear — concise recommendations, which I think are useful for the committee.

Just in terms of the gift limit portion, you highlighted Ontario and Saskatchewan. I appreciate that you used the example of your gala celebration. I think it is a useful kind of marker for an example there. In your opinion, Ontario and Saskatchewan, that similar event or similar interactions…. That is a suitable amount, I guess, for the committee’s consideration?

Erin Murtagh: Yeah, I think $200, as I mentioned, just provides more opportunity for events such as our awards celebration, and it does just give us more leeway so that we’re not so concerned about compliance. The $100 limit does place a limitation on us, especially now with inflation, and $120 for a gala dinner is actually often on the lower scale of things. As a non-profit organization, we are able to secure lower rates often with venues, so $200, I think, would allow us the opportunity to invite elected officials to these important events.

Kiel Giddens: And just a follow-up, Chair, if I may.

A previous presenter talked about the resetting of that limit, changing it to a calendar year versus the 365-day rule. Is that something that you think would make more sense?

I’m not sure, actually, how it works in Ontario or Saskatchewan either. Do you know how it works in those jurisdictions?

Erin Murtagh: I don’t. I don’t know how they do that in terms of the timeline.

But I do agree. I think that could be really useful because a lot of our programming is within that calendar year as well, s being able to align it with that would definitely be valuable.

Kiel Giddens: Okay, thank you.

Susie Chant: Can you talk to me a little bit more? You’ve made a recommendation of a 50-hour annual threshold. Can you tell me a little bit more about what that means?

Erin Murtagh: In terms of the amount of hours for lobbyists?

Susie Chant: Mm-hmm, sure. Give me an example, for instance, please.

Erin Murtagh: Yes, sure. That just allows, then… If we do have a number of family physicians who are engaged in lobbying, the 50-hour limit just allows us to not have to do that constant reporting.

Susie Chant: So doing one report for an event versus a bunch of individual reports. Is that what I’m hearing?

Erin Murtagh: Yeah, exactly. I think that if it’s 50 hours, that over the year just allows us to reduce that number in paperwork, so we’re not putting in that submission for every interaction and every single person that is involved in that interaction as well. It’s more of that summary reporting, as the recommendation we put forward.

Susie Chant: Interesting. Thank you.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for joining us today. I appreciate that, like Kiel said, your recommendations are clear and concise. That’s always nice for a committee.

I wanted to go back to what you mentioned about the delegation when you came to government. You had mentioned that you had to actually report back every single interaction you had over the course of that visit. Okay, that seems very cumbersome to me. Just in saying it out loud, I was like: “Good grief.”

How long would it take to actually report something like that back if you weren’t doing it in a summary-type report like you’ve suggested moving forward?

[11:25 a.m.]

Erin Murtagh: That individual…. Our Legislature day back in May, that in itself…. I took on most of the reporting for that, and I would say based on having to go to each of the delegates that came to join us, making sure we had all of their details and making sure that we had every single person that they not just met with but interacted with…. We held a lunch as well. Those weren’t formal meetings, but they were informal interactions. We also want to make sure that we’re fully transparent and that we’re reporting on all of those as well.

I would say that that took me a full day just of reporting.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): I just have a follow-up. When you guys go on a delegation or you send a delegation like that, is your organization reporting that for everybody, or does each of those physicians have to actually report also that they lobbied? Is there an overlap there?

Erin Murtagh: There’s not an overlap, no. We did that on behalf as the representatives of BCCFP.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Okay, thank you.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Any further questions?

Seeing none, thank you very much for taking the time to present to us. We appreciate your recommendations.

The committee will now recess until 1 p.m.

The committee recessed from 11:26 a.m. to 1:02 p.m.

[Steve Morissette in the chair.]

Steve Morissette (Chair): Welcome back, everyone.

We will now hear from the B.C. Federation of Labour.

You will have ten minutes for your presentation and 20 minutes for questions from committee members. Thank you for coming to present. Appreciate it.

B.C. Federation of Labour

Sussanne Skidmore: Thanks for having us. My name is Sussanne Skidmore. My pronouns are she/her. I am the president of the B.C. Federation of Labour.

Denise Moffatt: I’m Denise Moffatt. My pronouns are she/her. I am the executive director of the B.C. Federation of Labour.

Sussanne Skidmore: Excellent. Thanks for having us.

Just a little background about the B.C. Federation of Labour. We are a provincial organization that represents over 500,000 members from affiliated unions across B.C. Our purpose is to further the interests of working people in the province, and what the B.C. Federation desires for its members is what we wish for all workers. The Federation of Labour and many of its larger affiliated unions engage in lobbying around workers’ rights, occupational health and safety, and public interest issues such as better public transit services.

While we support the Lobbyists Transparency Act’s goal of improving the transparency of lobbying activities, we are deeply concerned that the LTA is imposing disproportionate administrative burdens on the not-for-profit organizations that are engaged in public interest lobbying. This has had a bit of a chilling effect, especially on smaller unions, on locals and, of course, advocacy groups, many of which now refrain from even minimal lobbying out of fear of non-compliance.

We have three recommendations for improvement. One is to harmonize the exemption threshold under the LTA for all organizations regardless of their purpose. Two is to create a new category under the LTA for public interest lobbyists. And three is to align the gift disclosure rules with the Members’ Conflict of Interest Act requiring a prohibition only for gifts over $250.

[1:05 p.m.]

When the LTA came into effect in 2020, it removed long-standing exemptions for small not-for-profit organizations that engage in a limited amount of lobbying. Prior to the 2020 changes, a limited amount of lobbying activity was considered fewer than 100 hours in a year, or about two hours a week.

Today a union local with one part-time staff person must register and report lobbying if they tweet at a minister, while a small business with the same staffing and more lobbying activity remains exempt. Unions and advocacy groups are specifically excluded from qualifying for the 50-hour annual exemption available to others, simply because their purpose is to represent members or advocate on issues. This contradicts the public interest roles these organizations play in democracy.

In our view, small non-profits, unions and advocacy groups should be offered the same exemptions as small businesses if they have fewer than six employees and the total lobbying time by all individuals is less than 50 hours in the preceding 12 months.

Because there are no exemptions for small organizations, the excessive administrative burden placed on them is a concern to us. Compared to the former lobbyist registry act, the current LTA imposes a ten-day registration deadline, down from 60 days; monthly reporting requirements rather than semi-annual; an ongoing requirement to disclose funding from any level of government; and more detailed reporting requirements, including political donations, historical contact with public office holders and even past event invitations.

This burden is especially heavy for small organizations with limited or volunteer staff. For example, reporting requirements now apply retroactively to gifts or invitations issued up to a year before lobbying begins, even if they were never accepted or intended as lobbying tools.

The system caters to consultant lobbyists who work for multiple organizations and who have dedicated staffing and directly bill their clients for the work required to complete the reports. The legislation is not responsive to the way member-based organizations and non-profits engage with public policy-making.

The reporting requirements can be especially time-consuming for organizations that must register their board of directors as in-house lobbyists even for small amounts of lobbying.

Denise Moffatt: I’m going to give an example of a situation we recently experienced. We held a lobby day in Victoria with members of our executive council at the end of October. There are more than 50 members of our executive council. It’s one representative per every major affiliate that’s part of our membership.

Because our executive council is, in our constitution, listed as our governing body, we needed to add each person who spoke at a meeting with the government to our registry as an in-house lobbyist. We had to ask them about political donations. I will flag that the Election Act already records political donations, but the threshold for the lobbyist act is different. There’s another area of a lack of harmonization.

I couldn’t just go on the Election Act website and look for these people’s names. I had to get them to individually report to me, because the threshold is lower for the lobbyist act. It’s that any donation, no matter how small, has to be reported. I had to ask them if they prescribed to codes of conduct. I also had to ask them for their previous employment and whether they were a public office holder in the past.

This requirement resulted in a staggering 29 people being added to our registry for this one event. It was so much so that the lobbyist registrar’s office actually said: “Denise, did you make a mistake in registering all these people?” I sent them the language from our constitution, and I said: “My understanding is, based on the requirements set out in this legislation, I have complied with the requirement.”

Quite ironically, these people don’t work for us. They are not paid directly by us, and they will probably only lobby for us once in this two-year period, but I was required to list them all in our registry, which gives a misappearance that they work for us, right? Somebody who would look at our registry would say: “Wow, the B.C. Fed has 35 paid lobbyists? That’s incredible.”

[1:10 p.m.]

I think that there’s clearly an issue for non-profit and board-administered organizations. These are certainly not the kind of administrative burdens I think anybody intended when they created this act, nor does it deliver the kind of transparency that the public is asking for. I think it’s actually a misrepresentation of the situation.

Another example involves social media. The ORL’s interpretation of the LTA creates every tagged social media post that asks for something as a lobbying activity. That means if we “@” the Minister of Labour and say, “Raise the minimum wage,” for example, that is a lobbying activity, which must be reported. We, of course, are very careful, and we report all of these tweets, but this, again, can lead to dozens of filings for one campaign.

The registry doesn’t distinguish between a logistical email that also must be recorded to set up a meeting, a face-to-face meeting or a tweet, and therefore results in, again, a misrepresentation, I think, of what kinds of lobbying activities are actually happening.

Now, I know that there may be some consideration of saying that we should classify the types of lobbying. I’m not going to take a strong position on that other than to say that our main goal here is to say that small organizations don’t need more work. They need less work in this regard. I’ll just leave that there.

But the overall result is that small advocacy organizations appear to be lobbying more heavily than corporate lobbyists because they’re more transparent in some of their activities. They write open letters, they use social media, and they tweet about things, because those are the things that are available to them in a lower-cost way. So it looks like they’re actually more active in lobbying than some of the corporate or industry representatives.

Our view, actually, is that social media is already public, so it doesn’t really need to be recorded on the registry. It’s already transparent and open to the public, and anybody can find it with a search. We think one way of solving that problem would be just to remove that requirement.

Sussanne Skidmore: The legislation, also, is not easily interpreted. This has led the ORL to issue numerous and complex guidance documents. There are about 30 guidance documents and a frequently asked questions guide that must be reviewed with careful attention in order to comply with the legislation.

If it needs 30 documents to explain it, then it is clearly too complex. Even with these resources, we often have to question and need to consult the registrar’s office or our legal counsel. This, again, is a deterrent for small organizations who simply don’t have the resources to be able to do that.

Rather than levelling the playing field, public interest lobbying is actually being discouraged by the current state. The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized that union advocacy serves broader public interests, yet under the LTA, these same organizations are penalized for their role in democratic engagement.

Recent penalties against not-for-profits, including fines of $2,000 to $8,000 for groups that were unaware that they were lobbying, demonstrate how the current system deters participation. In contrast, commercial lobbyists often have the legal and administrative capacity to be able to comply with these rules, reinforcing that lobbying is a pay-to-play activity.

The office of the registrar of lobbyists, the ORL, actively scans public content and media releases, making not-for-profits who engage in public awareness campaigns more likely to be flagged than corporate actors who often lobby behind closed doors.

A practical path forward is that, for example, in other jurisdictions, we have begun to recognize the distinction between commercial and public interest lobbying. A third category would be public interest lobbying. It could be used to differentiate union locals, advocacy groups and charities from industry lobbyists seeking regulatory advantages or investments to their financial benefit.

The LTA’s intent is to enhance transparency, but as it stands, the legislation is disproportionately burdening organizations that advocate on behalf of vulnerable populations and working people, and it is time that we need to see this fairness restored.

Lastly, we’d like to touch on the gift-tracking discrepancies. Under the conflict-of-interest rules, MLAs must report gifts over $250, but under the LTA, lobbyists must justify anything over $40 and ensure the total annual value per public office holder stays under $100. This discrepancy makes compliance unnecessarily difficult. They just should be lined up with each other, and the two things should speak the same language.

[1:15 p.m.]

Worse, the rules apply retroactively. For example, if an organization offers a $100 speaker gift and then begins lobbying the same POH months later, it is in technical violation, even though the gift was acceptable under the conflict-of-interest standards.

Again, this is an area where legislation has left too much grey area for interpretation and, consequently, complex guidance. Gifts are prohibited, except in various circumstances where they’re not, and the yearly limit is $100, but you can only spend $40, except in most circumstances. It’s simply confusing.

The legislation must be reviewed and amended to be clearer and to simplify compliance requirements. It should recognize and support the participation of small advocacy and member-based organizations, while holding deep-pocketed organizations accountable for their lobbying activities.

What we are urging you, as a committee, to do is: (1) harmonize exemption thresholds across all organization types, (2) create a distinct category for public interest lobbying under the LTA, and (3) align gift reporting thresholds with those of the POHs, which is over $250.

That is our submission. Thank you for considering it.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Thank you for your presentation, Denise and Sussanne. We’ll now open it up for questions from the committee.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Thanks for joining us, ladies. I appreciate that. Those were excellent examples, Denise — very, very clear examples.

I just wanted to mention that having different types of lobbying — and you didn’t want to weigh into that — has actually been a conversation all morning in regard to where the line is between advocacy and lobbying. I would tend to agree.

I mean, if the B.C. Federation of Labour puts out a tweet that says, “The minimum wage should go up to meet the cost of living,” I personally wouldn’t consider that lobbying. But probably, according to the act, it is. This is actually something that has come up all morning long. Your particular examples, though, made it very clear.

I very much appreciate you and Sussanne coming today and chatting with us.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you to both Sussanne and Denise for your presentation, and thank you for advocating for workers in our province. I think what you’ve described, particularly the board aspect for small organizations, resonates well with all of us. It’s something we’d been having a conversation on, as MLA Bird said, this morning.

With that board example that Denise used — and what happened in that registration, with all those additional names that needed to be added — perhaps, just for the committee’s benefit, could you describe how that conversation went with those individuals?

Did it make it difficult for them to want to participate? Was it actually a barrier for them wanting to be a part of the important public policy conversations they were having? I just want to get a little bit more colour, so that we can use that in our deliberations, I guess.

Sussanne Skidmore: I’ll start, and I think Denise will probably chime in because, of course, Denise did most of the legwork on this, in actually having the conversation.

Our executive council is made up of union folks from all the different unions in British Columbia, in varying levels. Some of them are on full-time book-offs. Some of them are staff of the unions. Some of them are health care workers who generally go to a hospital and occasionally attend a board meeting with the B.C. Fed in a lobbying activity.

I suspect, and Denise will probably confirm what I’m suspecting, that for the folks who are like us — we are full-timers at what we’re doing — those folks would probably have said: “Oh, this is par for the course.” They may even be registered as lobbyists for their own organizations.

But the majority of the folks that were here for us, for those lobby days, were not. I would suspect that they would have felt that this was a pretty intrusive push into their world. They don’t see themselves as lobbyists; they see themselves as union activists, speaking for their members.

Denise Moffatt: I guess I would say we don’t dispute that the B.C. Fed should be registered as a lobbying organization and list what we are lobbying on. We think that’s part of our raison d’être: to advocate for public policy. We don’t dispute that there should be transparency on that.

[1:20 p.m.]

I think what we do dispute is this instance of somebody doing something one time for us and that, because they’re being paid, even though we’re not paying them, it creates a relationship and they become an in-house lobbyist for us. I think that, again, is a misrepresentation to the public of what the actual situation is.

Certainly, most of our organizations like to bring other people because we like to tell some of the front-line stories, right? So this is a common requirement for many unions, that they might have to register their entire board. And many of their boards might be people who are workers in health care or on a construction site. These are people doing their regular day jobs. They are not professional lobbyists.

Then maybe just to your earlier comments about the types of activities. Yeah, I think there is a question, and I think there should be a clearer distinction about what the LTA’s purpose is. I think the purpose is to provide transparency to the things that the public can’t see. I do think an open letter that gets published in a newspaper or on a website or on social media…. That’s pretty transparent. Everybody knows that we’re fighting for the minimum wage, whether they go on to the LTA website or not.

But I think what we want to capture is the way that we have relationships with government and could ask for meetings. And if we have a meeting with the Premier in the Premier’s office, then certainly that should be recorded. We’re not disputing that in any way. We think that that is in the public interest, and that is beneficial.

But again, we do this all the time. We have locals who might only have one issue one time in five years. I’ve had to explain the difference between advocacy and lobbying, and generally there isn’t one. I’ve had people argue with me about this and say: “No, no, no. I’m doing advocacy.” And yes, if it’s labour relations, there is an exemption for that. But generally, if you’re advocating for legislation to be changed, then yes, you are lobbying under the definition of the act.

So I think that this “public versus behind-closed-doors” could be an area used to also make that distinction of what the public really needs to know.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Did you say that you had…? You mentioned something about Elections B.C. and these particular individuals. Did you say that they had to disclose if they had made a donation to a political party?

Denise Moffatt: Yes. Part of the requirement to register an in-house lobbyist is that you have to report whether they have contributed to, since the writ dropped, or if they have made a political donation or a donation to a recall campaign. I believe that is the second one. There is a limit. I believe the Elections Act…. I know that this is on the record. I don’t know the exact number, but I think it’s like $250.

So if you have donated that much or more, then it goes on to the Election Act registry, and then you can search by name, and you can find a record of those donations. If somebody gave 50 bucks because they went to their local MLA’s fundraiser, then that wouldn’t be on the Elections B.C. website, but I would have to ask them if they went to a fundraiser and made a contribution, in order to comply with the act.

Sussanne Skidmore: Yeah. So in our in-house process, you know, we have staff that are assigned to do this, and we get an email out that says: “We’re doing the report. Has anyone made any donations or gone to any events?” And we have to disclose ourselves, which of course makes sense, but this group of 29 activists, you know, became a very big project of having to communicate with all of those folks and ask them all these questions and explain to them why so that they felt comfortable with having that information. Like, it was…. Yeah.

Denise Moffatt: So we book a room. We do a whole training session. It’s actually…. We have to build compliance into our structure of our event, right? So we took probably half an hour to talk about our compliance requirements and walk people through the form, tell them about the questions, tell them what would appear on the website.

And then the other thing that’s kind of strange is that then we’ll just remove them in a month or two because they won’t be doing more lobbying for us, certainly not within the next year or so.

[1:25 p.m.]

Susie Chant: It seems to me what you’ve just described would be actually kind of discouraging to somebody who might want to become a more active member of their local or of a community group or whatever. Am I getting that right?

Sussanne Skidmore: Yeah, I mean, I suspect it may create a barrier.

The other piece is the part that Denise tapped into, that often we will bring folks when we are lobbying. When I am, as the president, lobbying on behalf of some sort of legislative change that the federation would like to see government take on, we will bring workers with us to tell their stories.

They’re not always activists either. We lobbied pretty hard on some employment standards branch changes years back, and we brought workers who were on the tools. They were not active with their union. They had outstanding employment standards issues. They came here, and they told their story about why these changes were important to them. This level of scrutiny would encourage folks like that from participating in this process for a variety of reasons, which I don’t think I need to lay out for you.

For a union activist, most people I think would be like, okay, this seems like just part of the process. But for a young construction worker who’s coming and telling a very personal, compelling story, that then becomes part of the record. It becomes problematic for them. It puts them in jeopardy of being able to find new jobs and just all of those things.

So, yeah. It could potentially be very discouraging for folks to come and tell their stories, which is of course what moves people to make decisions, right?

Denise Moffat: I just want to clarify, because we may not have to register that person. The LTA has clarified that there are some people that don’t need to be registered, and we initially had some confusion about that. But there is a decision to make in each case.

I have to examine each situation carefully, because, for example, if that person sits on our executive council, or, for example, whether they were lobbying on behalf of their union or us, they might have to actually register with their own union, right? In that meeting, if they started talking about an issue related to their union’s work and not the B.C. Fed’s work, then they might actually have their own requirement to report.

That’s another logistical thing that I have to do. If I’m in a meeting with a bunch of officers and one of the officers says something that is lobbying, but not on behalf of the B.C. Fed, I have to let their staff know that that happened to make sure that that gets recorded properly on their end. So it can get complicated.

Again, we’re willing to do the reporting. I think it’s just really thinking about what the impact of that is on a small organization that does a small amount of lobbying. Our folks did feel that the 100 hour threshold that we used to have was the appropriate threshold. That is what they’ve asked us to say to you.

But, again, we think the LTA is an important act. It provides value to British Columbians, and it’s just about making the administration of it a little bit easier.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Just a question on reporting itself. You guys do a large amount of lobbying. That’s the whole purpose, really, for your organization. We’ve heard from smaller groups, student unions, those types of organizations, that the reporting requirements are extremely cumbersome. You’ve mentioned that for smaller groups. But they’ve asked us to consider reporting quarterly, versus every single time you do an event.

I’m just curious though, what a change like that may mean for somebody that does a significant amount of lobbying. Like, could you lose track of things? Would it add another layer of administration so you don’t not capture something if you were only reporting quarterly instead of every single lobbying event?

It may be beneficial. It may not be.

Denise Moffat: So I mean, one idea…. Again, this is just an idea. I don’t know if it would work. If an organization is only going to lobby a tiny little bit, maybe once a year, maybe they just do a report that says, “We intend to lobby this year about this topic,” and we will lobby less than 100 hours. Check box, and that’s all your work for the year. If you lobbied more than that, then you would go in and do a report, right?

[1:30 p.m.]

I know they made a change around the funding, and the funding is an issue for us because we have an Occupational Health and Safety Centre and the B.C. Centre for Women in the Trades, and they’ve received grants and funding, and we have to report funding regularly. Most of our affiliates probably are not in that position, but we are. Lots of non-profits, of course, have multiple funders and grants. That process has been clunky.

They’ve also just changed the funding requirements to every three months. I will still report monthly because it wouldn’t be easier for me, because of the amount of transactions. Our funders pay us monthly, so it’s easier for me to report it monthly. I don’t think that would help me in my organization. It might make it a little bit trickier for us if we had to remember quarterly, or it might be such a huge volume of reports. I think we would still want the option to either report as we go or to report monthly.

But I do think there should be a system for small organizations, again, where maybe they just make an annual disclosure of what their objective is and also a declaration that they will not lobby more than 50 or 100 hours or whatever the number is. Then the public still knows that they’re talking to government. They know what they’re talking about. But they don’t have to make monthly reports.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Very helpful. Thank you.

Kiel Giddens: Just, maybe, a clarifying question.

Appreciate the recommendation on the alignment to the conflict-of-interest process, as well, in terms of the amount. That’s a new idea. We had another presenter that suggested aligning with other provinces, which was $200. There were some other ideas that we’ve had as well on this regard. But this is a new recommendation, which I think is worth taking a look at.

Just to clarify that $40 amount, where the justification…. Can you maybe just clarify the position on what would trigger a justification then?

Denise Moffatt: What it says is that, generally, gifts are prohibited. There are certain situations where a gift is allowed. Generally, that would be like, if you’re speaking at an event and everybody’s getting a pen, you wouldn’t skip the MLA, right? So you could give them the pen.

The amount of those types of gifts…. There’s a secondary amount. So although there’s $100 per year, there’s guidance that says that, generally, a gift over $40 will be questioned by the ORL. So generally, you have to make sure that individual gifts are not more than $40 and your annual total does not exceed $100.

Now, that includes things like food. For example, if you were having an AGM and there was a lunch that was being offered and an MLA ate lunch as part of that event and them speaking at that event, then that would be considered part of that gift. If you invited an MLA, even if they didn’t attend, you need to record if your invitation said that there would be any type of gift.

What I find confusing is there’s this $100 number, but that’s not really the number. There’s a $40 number, but that’s not necessarily the number because in some cases, you could spend more than $40 if you couldn’t spend less than $40. So you can see how that, again, becomes pretty complicated guidance.

If I’m explaining to a small local that is having an AGM and they’ve invited an MLA to speak and there’s going to be popcorn and Cheezies and whatever, it gets pretty complicated for me to explain how that all works and how it should apply. It still seems that if I hold an event in a hotel and I can’t get a meal for less than $40, maybe my $55 meal is going to be accepted, but if I’m giving a union-made pen and it happens to cost $49, I might be in trouble.

I think we would just probably like it to be more clear. Even if they don’t accept a recommendation to harmonize, probably just say the limit’s the limit. If it’s $100, then it’s $100. It’s not: “$100; except in this occasion it’s $40.”

Kiel Giddens: The 30 guidance documents plus the FAQ, obviously…. And that frequently asked questions — I’ve gone through it. It is not clear. It leaves a whole bunch of questions along with it. It’s quite challenging to interpret, so no, I appreciate…. Your points are well taken.

Denise Moffatt: Yeah. People call us for advice, as the central labour body. That is one of the roles that we play. People ask us. And I’ll say that the registrar’s office has been very helpful, and they do try to help people. However, they also investigate and enforce the legislation. People aren’t always willing to call them and ask them questions because they’re also the same people who enforce the law.

[1:35 p.m.]

That is a bit of a tension point.

Again, I think another possibility would be maybe to have some separate function there where…. People have said: “Well, you could call in anonymously.” And I was like: “Yeah, but if I have lots of questions, you’re going to recognize my voice.” I worked as a receptionist in a hair salon. I recognized people’s voices after a while. You know, I don’t think an anonymous call is going to really…. There are such specific circumstances around that, that I think you need to be able to ask fully the kinds of questions and get the advice that’s appropriate about how to comply.

Harwinder Sandhu: Thank you so much for such an eloquent presentation, and your points are well taken, especially the one ask that legislation should be amended and more clear.

Thinking about your work and having to witness the advocacy B.C. Federation of Labour does…. whether it’s employment standards for fair wages, safe workplaces, it’s not only for unionized workers. You advocate on behalf of all workers, so it’s easy. It encourages people to get behind the work you do, so many people want come along, no matter which activity you’re doing.

They’re not necessarily probably aware about the Lobbyists Transparency Act. That is why I think that leaves that grey area. Even if we direct them to look into that, it does need more clear and concise language in many aspects. So I really appreciate the recommendations you made and the work you’re doing.

Denise Moffatt: Thank you for those comments. There’s one other area that we haven’t talked about, which is working together for the purpose of lobbying. This one has been a little confusing to me too.

There were some amendments in the legislation and then some updated guidance around this practice. I may have this wrong, but my understanding is that if an organization reaches out to us and says, “We’d like the B.C. Fed to sign on to an open letter,” and we agree to sign on, we would have to list that organization as one of the organizations we are working together with for the purpose of lobbying. But I believe that we may also have to list other organizations who sign on to those letters.

Again, I think if that is a requirement…. And I might not have this quite right because this was sort of newer guidance. If that is the case, based on some conversations I’ve had with the office, I don’t even know who signed on to that letter, right? Often somebody tells me. Maybe I’ll know the names of three other organizations; maybe I won’t.

I think that that is also a clumsy process. I think that if I am spending money with somebody else to hire a consultant and to go lobby on our behalf, then we are working together for the purpose of lobbying. If I set up a coalition, maybe, even, I can list those members as people that I’m working together with for the purpose of lobbying. But I’m not sure that signing on to the same letter is a sufficient relationship, again, that we’re working together.

I think there are some examples. If you look at the LTA website, I think there’s, frankly, mixed practice on how this has been handled. I think the business council or one of the chambers has hundreds of organizations listed. I’m assuming that’s because they’ve listed every organization who’s endorsed something that they’ve done.

Again, I just am not sure that that’s practical or, actually, that we could ever do it accurately. I just don’t know if I could meet the accuracy test on that. I’m happy to register the name of the organization who wrote the letter, or if we wrote a letter together, for sure. But other sign-ons seems a bit far.

Again, maybe there’s updated advice on that since I last asked.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Thank you very much. Appreciate your presentation and you taking the time to come present to us. It’s really critical because this is the first review of the act. We hear the challenges and appreciate you taking the time to convey those to us.

We’ll take a two-minute recess to prepare for the next presentation.

The committee recessed from 1:39 p.m. to 1:41 p.m.

[Steve Morissette in the chair.]

Steve Morissette (Chair): We’ll call the committee back to order. The next presentation will be from the Insurance Brokers Association of B.C.

Julie, you will have ten minutes for the presentation and up to 20 minutes for questions from the committee members. Please go ahead.

Insurance Brokers Association of B.C.

Julie Skelton: Good afternoon, members of the committee. Thank you for having me here today. My name is Julie Skelton, and I’m the executive director and chief operating officer of the Insurance Brokers Association of British Columbia.

The Insurance Brokers Association of B.C. is a non-profit trade association dedicated to serving as the voice of the general insurance brokerage industry and promoting its members as the premier distributors of insurance products and services in B.C. IBABC represents over 700 property-and-casualty insurance brokerages that, in turn, employ more than 12,000 people in approximately 140 communities in B.C.

We appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to share the perspective of the Insurance Brokers Association of B.C. and to speak on behalf of the many non-profit and charitable organizations across this province who are navigating the Lobbyists Transparency Act in its current form.

Advocacy is one of the main services that IBABC provides to its members and, indirectly, to the public. Like many other non-profits, our role includes sharing our expertise with policy-makers so that legislation and regulation reflect what’s happening on the ground.

However, under the current Lobbyists Transparency Act, these reasonable efforts to inform government are difficult to navigate. We believe in the importance of transparency and accountability in interactions with public office holders. However, the way the act is structured has made it increasingly challenging for non-profits to advocate while remaining compliant.

Under the act, non-profits are required to register as a lobbyist for any amount of lobbying. Even routine interactions with public office holders can have compliance requirements. This discourages non-profit organizations from engaging government at all to avoid the risk of accidental noncompliance, which limits the open exchange of information between government and community organizations that are closest to the issues affecting British Columbians.

By raising the threshold to 50 hours of lobbying per year for an individual or organization, it would exempt many smaller non-profits who lobby only rarely from going through the effort and expense of registration and monthly reports and would prevent accidental infractions of the act by smaller organizations. It would also put B.C. in line with other provinces, like Alberta and Ontario.

The administrative burden of logging each interaction on a monthly basis is also significant and places heavy demands on organizations that are often run by small teams. A reasonable compromise, instead of logging every single interaction and its context separately, would be to report quarterly the number of times a public office holder was engaged and the general topics a public office holder discussed.

[1:45 p.m.]

The ten-day deadline to register after beginning lobbying activity exacerbates this problem. By contrast, other jurisdictions in Canada allow 60 days to register after lobbying activity begins. As well, under the current regulations for how gifts are calculated, simply inviting an MLA to attend an event or an award ceremony can trigger compliance issues. These events aren’t lavish gifts or attempts to influence. They’re normal gestures of professional courtesy.

With rising costs and inflation, it makes it difficult to engage with public office holders, even for just a single annual event. Raising it to a limit of $200 would prevent accidental infractions and bring it in line with other more restrictive provinces, like Ontario and Saskatchewan.

We’re not asking to weaken transparency. We’re asking to make compliance more reasonable and aligned with other provinces in Canada. When compliance becomes so complex that small organizations hesitate to engage with government, transparency suffers and legislators lose access to expertise and insights that non-profits bring. The goal should be a system that upholds transparency while ensuring that compliance is realistic and accessible for everyone.

We appreciate being invited to present to the committee. I’m happy to answer any questions from committee members.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Great. Thank you, Julie, for your presentation.

I’ll open the floor to questions.

Susie Chant: Julie, thank you very much for speaking with us today.

You talked about the ten-day limit post-lobby. Can you give me an example of that? For instance, a situation in which that is utilized and how it’s problematic?

Julie Skelton: Well, I think the biggest challenge, I would say, as an association of our nature is that determining whether a lobbying activity had occurred involves me reaching out to my board members, finding a communication input to say: “Did you speak to anybody? What did you do?”

We meet monthly. We have an actual lobbyist activity agenda item on every meeting. Everyone is to report in at that time so that I can collate any meetings that were held within communities.

Again, as you can hear from our footprint, we are advocating for all kinds of natural disaster and auto in this province. There are many, many complex issues related to insurance, and having me be able to track, as a COO, what’s going on in a ten-day window is a very tight timeline. That isn’t realistic for a not-for-profit with a volunteer board to properly manage that.

Of course, compliance is in my history. I’ve been a broker almost 40 years. I certainly respect process and compliance, but I find that very difficult to maintain.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you so much for your presentation and taking the time to make this submission.

Just wondering, we have discussed a fair bit today already the trying to simplify and taking away some of the administrative burdens. A lot of that discussion has been around the capacity of small organizations, but we’ve also been discussing a lot of board-led organizations, which yours would certainly apply.

Could you maybe just describe the idea of moving from a monthly return to a quarterly return? How, from an administrative perspective, would that benefit your organization?

Julie Skelton: Yes, thank you for the question. I appreciate that.

Again, as I mentioned, I am the one who does the submission, as the COO of an organization with ten team members plus myself. Being able to track it and manage it quarterly takes that administrative burden out of finding the communication within the groups. Especially if you look at our requirement to submit and the detail involved per individual who maybe attended a group event, it’s very time consuming.

Frankly, I would rather spend quality time collating the information within a quarter, submitting it once, versus trying to collate that information and track it down and prepare the submissions, which are very, very detailed and take a lot of time, quite frankly.

There’s also the concern of making sure we’ve submitted correctly, that we’ve captured everything correctly. If you look at the requirement to submit based on the gift allocation for an event, I would suggest that the complexity around that far exceeds what happens in any other province.

[1:50 p.m.]

I literally have to take an event — all the relevant costs. I’m reading right from the requirement. In case of food, drink or entertainment provided in an event, all costs relevant to the event must be factored in, including venue rental, catering fees, “bar-beverage costs, service costs, music or entertainment costs, transportation,” gratuities and other miscellaneous costs, and then divide them by the total number of people who attend the event to give a per-person value of the gift provided.

That is a very time-consuming exercise for an association to complete in the submission process and make sure that we don’t incorrectly file our report. It also is very difficult, if you’ve hosted any event in the province of B.C., to even literally plate a basic dinner for under $125 a person. That far exceeds every other cost that I’ve just mentioned here.

When you add it all up, there’s no way we could stay in compliance. Quite frankly, it means that we stop engaging where we really need to allow subject-matter experts on the issues within the industry in this province to be in the same room. We certainly don’t host a lavish event. It is literally an event with a meal. We hope to engage people to attend those events, which we do every year annually in February in Victoria.

Kiel Giddens: I appreciate that response. I think that certainly is clarifying.

Just from your response, too — this shows in all of the recommendations — the alignment with other provinces and comparison to other provinces seems to be a theme here as well. Is there a province that, in your mind, has the balance right in their legislation and current approach to it and that seems to have the level of transparency but is also doing the administration and streamlining, I guess, in a way that is effective?

Julie Skelton: Yeah. Well, I would say it varies by each part of the regulatory requirement. You know, the results of this…. There have been 18 fines issued in B.C. and not one fine for compliance issued anywhere else. In New Brunswick, their gifts are $250. Saskatchewan, their gifts are $200. Alberta is higher, at $500. We’re not asking for the moon here. Ontario is $200. I think that simple $100 threshold is one thing, but also the way you calculate that is another.

I don’t think there’s any other province that is remotely close to the compliance requirements here in B.C. So it feels to me — I’m not an expert on that side of the question — from my research and what I’ve been provided, that New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Ontario all have a simplified version of how this is created, transacted and processed within the not-for-profit cycle.

I am the B.C. association COO and ED. I am connected to every other association across Canada, and we all are part of the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada. Each of my counterparts does not face this requirement in their province.

Janet Routledge: Thank you very much for your presentation and your detailed answers to questions. Your presentation has been very, very helpful to the work of this committee.

My question — I do not mean this facetiously, but it did occur to me, as you’ve been so clear and so helpful: do you have to declare this?

Julie Skelton: Well, it’s interesting that you asked the question, because when I took over this role and spent some time with the lobbyists registry office to really understand what my expectation and roles were, after two hours of asking the question and walking through when I am lobbying and when I am simply being called to provide my expertise, the clarity around that is very grey.

Because I was invited to speak with you, my understanding is that I’m not lobbying.

Janet Routledge: Because we invited you.

Julie Skelton: If I had phoned you and said, “I need to meet with you to talk about this,” then I’m considered to be lobbying. Again, I would suggest that the definition, of what is lobbying and what is not, is very grey and also creates a concern.

I will tell you that at our monthly executive and board meetings, I literally say: “Has anyone done this, this, this? Has anyone called you to do this, this, this?”

It is creating an environment where the subject-matter experts that have decades of experience in this industry and that really want to support our elected officials to hear and understand what happens in our communities are scared to do anything that crosses a compliance line.

[1:55 p.m.]

That’s not a healthy environment for anybody. We have worked very closely with the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness. We’ve helped improve the DFA process. They literally reached out. We had meetings. They asked me to attend and provide my expertise. We hosted an event for brokers within the province, virtually, to educate.

That’s really what we’re trying to do. We want to just be that collaborator that provides information that helps government understand, and we’re here to support. It is a fine line that I feel is also very unclear, and that comes from the documents.

The supplementary information that I had to walk through to learn about my role here…. New Brunswick has ten frequently asked questions, and Saskatchewan has 12. Alberta has a simple guide for navigating administrative requirements and ten guidance documents. Ontario has some tutorials you can walk through.

B.C., in addition to FAQs and infographs, the office of the registrar of lobbyists has 29 guidance documents to read on its website. Each of those documents — an example of giving gifts — is 20 pages.

I do think administratively and, again, getting down to the cost, our events truly are bringing community together, government officials connected to stakeholders in the industry, like the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. We had them come to an event.

I wanted to bring more government officials to interact and understand wildfire, flood, earthquake exposure, building codes, the ability for us to build back better and not spend money. Bringing them together, I have to literally think: “Okay, did I talk to that person within 12 months about anything else?” If I ask them to come, then I’m violating my $100; I’m going to feed them lunch and give them a coffee because it’s an event.

That mechanical…. Having to think through all of that as an organization, where I’m just really trying to connect with government and help, is becoming an administrative concern. When you look at the fines that have been levied to associations and not-for-profit organizations, I don’t think that’s the intent of this exercise.

We are certainly not able, as a not-for-profit, to buy out any event that’s going to appear to be lavish to government, but as a professional courtesy, we do feed somebody dinner when we invite them to an event. That’s really the limit.

We gave away — and found out after that it was a violation — a radio at our MLA event in February. It is literally something you would use if we had an earthquake and there’s no communication. It was an $18 cost for 55 government attendees that attended. But when I added it to all of the other things I read off on the gift calculation, I’d violated the number. we had a 5.2 earthquake tremor in Victoria two days after that event.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): I don’t have a question. I just wanted to make a comment.

You had said at the beginning of your presentation that it was professional courtesy to invite MLAs and elected officials, particularly to things like you just spoke about, to help them better understand building codes and emergency procedures.

When you’re talking about gifts and the expense and the calculation that you just talked about, that’s actually an interesting one. I don’t think there’s an MLA in this room that hasn’t heard since the election that people want to see their MLAs more out in community and that they want to feel more connected to their elected officials. I was actually just thinking about an event that Kiel and I would’ve normally gone to. It’s the Spirit of the North.

Now, that’s the foundation that raises money for our hospital up north. We’re about to build a hospital tower, so their gala was a gala. Based on what you just said, we actually probably would not qualify to attend that event because of that dollar amount. I’m wondering, quite frankly, how much this has impacted government officials in being able to actually participate within their communities.

I’m not sure that’s something that would’ve been highlighted without us actually examining this. It’s come up a lot today, but it was just something about the words that you used that kind of sparked a question mark for me.

[2:00 p.m.]

Thank you very much. We very much appreciate you coming today and presenting.

Julie Skelton: Thank you. I actually came from Prince George when I moved down to do this job. I’m very familiar with that gala and the money for northern B.C. — and literally a gala.

Based on how we are defined in British Columbia to declare the cost, we could not invite any government official to even a lunch in the province of B.C., in Vancouver or elsewhere, because of all of the costs you have to factor in. It took my event planner and I about two hours to just do the math, to see if we did it correctly and get advice. New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Ontario — they just use market values for gift calculation.

I’m not sure that feeding somebody is a gift. In my mind, if I gave you the radio to help you survive when we had an earthquake with a communication tool, I guess that’s a gift. Feeding you lunch or letting you consume a beverage at an event doesn’t feel like a gift to me. Based on this definition, I have to declare it.

I also had to declare 55 attendees at the MLA event, one by one, and what we talked about. It was not officially lobbying by definition, because we were there to connect and build relationships and talk about what we do as an industry.

When we did that exercise and we sat down with them, I had to note the date, which was February, and put it all in. But if I did speak to them again from that date 12 months forward, I have to balance that and go: “Okay, wait a minute. I can’t invite Fred because I met him in February.” That calculated, because it’s less than 12 months, means he’s over $100.

The needle moves from the 12-month period all along from your events. That is not how any budgetary rules work in the normal world. You have a fiscal year, and you have a calendar year. This moving needle of event to event within a 12-month period is very challenging and creates a lot of confusion for a not-for-profit.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Any further questions?

Seeing none, thank you, Julie. Appreciate your presentation. It’s so valuable to us as this first review of this act. Hopefully, we can fix things, make things better and simpler and more streamlined for organizations.

Julie Skelton: Really appreciate the time today. Thank you, everyone. Always available for any further inquiries. Have a great rest of your day.

Steve Morissette (Chair): You too.

We’ll take a two-minute recess to reset.

The committee recessed from 2:02 p.m. to 2:04 p.m.

[Steve Morissette in the chair.]

Steve Morissette (Chair): We’re going to call it back to order. Our next presentation is from the CFIB.

[2:05 p.m.]

I’m Steve Morissette. I’m the Chair of the committee.

Welcome, Kalith. You will have ten minutes for the presentation and up to 20 minutes of questions from committee members. Please proceed.

Canadian Federation
of Independent Business

Kalith Nanayakkara: Sounds good.

Good afternoon, Chair Morissette and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

My name is Kalith Nanayakkara, and I serve as senior policy analyst for British Columbia with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, based out of our office in Vancouver.

CFIB is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that represents 100,000 small and medium-sized businesses across Canada, including about 9,700 right here in B.C. Our members span every sector of the economy, from family-run restaurants and retailers to manufacturers, trades and professional services.

All of our policy positions are set directly by small business owners through surveys and ballots. We don’t take direction from a board or executive council. Our job is simply to be their voice at every level of government.

Importantly for today, CFIB itself is a registrant under the Lobbyists Transparency Act. We, along with chambers of commerce, sector associations, unions, charities and other groups, are the ones who actually interact with this regime when we lobby on behalf of our members.

As an organization that lobbies on behalf of small business, CFIB values transparency and accountability in government. Our members want to know how decisions are made and who has had input along the way. They understand that trust in public institutions depends on people being able to see who is talking to whom about what.

At the same time, our research shows that smaller organizations bear a disproportionately higher cost of regulation, more than $10,000 per employee every year, including almost $3,900 that we estimate is purely unnecessary red tape. That includes the cumulative impact of rules like the Lobbyists Transparency Act. Those fixed compliance costs hit the smallest players the hardest.

Large organizations can spread the workload across legal, compliance and government relations teams. For a small business association or non-profit team, it often falls on one generalist, who is also trying to run programs, support members and keep the lights on.

The core message I want to leave you with today is that the Lobbyists Transparency Act is important for public trust, but the way it is currently structured can unintentionally put smaller voices at a disadvantage. Transparency and access to democracy have to go together.

In our written submission, we proposed four practical, low-risk changes to the act that keep all of the core transparency requirements in place, while making the system more workable for organizations like CFIB and our peers.

Our first recommendation is to update the definition of designated filer so that it is the most senior officer based in British Columbia rather than an out-of-province executive. In reality, many national organizations, including CFIB, have independent provincial offices with their own senior leader. That person manages day-to-day government relations and compliance in B.C. That would be my boss.

Under the current rules, the designated filer is often a CEO or senior executive in another province and another time zone. Even simple updates to the registry, like adding a meeting or correcting a typo, can get delayed because they need sign-off from the head office. For an organization like ours, that can mean a meeting with a B.C. MLA happens this week, the local team enters the details but the filing sits in a queue waiting for approval from someone in Toronto who’s managing files from nine other provinces.

There’s no gain in transparency from having that executive as the designated filer. In fact, accountability is less clear because the person legally responsible to the registrar is not the person who actually oversees the B.C. activities.

Designating the most senior B.C.-based officer would align responsibility with the people closest to the activity, reduce bottlenecks and late filings and give the registrar a clear local point of contact who can answer questions and correct issues quickly. We see that as a straightforward change that improves both compliance and accountability, without changing what gets reported.

Our second recommendation is to simplify the rules for gifts and other benefits and to clearly exempt basic courtesies like coffee, snacks and light refreshments provided during a meeting.

[2:10 p.m.]

Right now the public FAQ on gifts, including whether you can provide snacks or coffee, runs to about 20 pages of scenarios. That’s a good indicator of how complex the rules have become for something that, in most cases, is a shared pot of coffee or a tray of muffins for everyone in the room.

For organizations that lobby, this creates a lot of confusion and time spent on edge cases. We have staff asking ourselves: “If we host a roundtable at 8 a.m., can we put out muffins? If we split the bill at a cafe, does that count as a benefit?” None of that complexity adds meaningful transparency.

A cup of coffee does not change public policy. We are not asking to loosen the rules on real gifts or hospitality. We are asking for a clear de minimis exemption for light refreshments that are provided to all participants in that meeting and are not intended to confer a personal benefit on a specific decision-maker.

We also recommend that any annual limits reset when a new legislature is formed so that limits reflect political cycles rather than crossing into a completely new parliament. This would keep the focus on real influence, not incidental courtesies, and make the system more understandable for organizations that are trying to comply.

Our third recommendation is to move from monthly to quarterly filing periods. Monthly filings create a perpetual deadline, even in months where there is very little lobbying activity. For a small association or non-profit with a few staff, that means 12 compliance cycles a year, on top of everything else they do.

Quarterly filings would still offer regular, predictable disclosure of who met whom, about what, and when — data that is more than frequent enough for journalists, researchers and the public to analyze, and the same core information about lobbying activities. What changes is the fixed overhead. Instead of having to log in and file every month, regardless of activity, smaller organizations could consolidate entries, reduce duplication and focus more on member services and democratic engagement, rather than paperwork.

It’s worth noting that other jurisdictions like Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia use six-month or annual renewal and update requirements rather than a standing monthly return, while still maintaining robust transparency. We believe this is a balanced way to preserve transparency while improving data quality and reducing unnecessary administrative burden for organizations that lobby.

Our fourth recommendation is to clarify how in-house lobbyists report communications that arrange meetings, particularly the phrase “someone other than yourself.” The intent seems clear when you’re talking about a consultant lobbyist who is arranging a meeting on behalf of a client, but for in-house teams like us, it is much less clear how to handle internal coordination.

For example, if someone books a meeting for a colleague with an MLA, many organizations are currently reporting that as if someone other than yourself arranged the meeting, even though everyone involved is inside the same organization. To be safe, they overreport. This leads to duplicate or overlapping records in the registry and time spent filing entries that add noise, not clarity.

We recommend clarifying that for in-house lobbyists, “someone other than yourself” means someone outside your organization. Internal coordination stays internal; external arrangements are reported. That simple clarification would reduce duplication, improve the signal-to-noise ratio in the registry and make the data easier for the public to interpret, without reducing actual disclosure.

To summarize, CFIB and small businesses strongly support transparency and accountability. The Lobbyists Transparency Act is an important tool for protecting public trust, but the way the rules are currently structured can create disproportionate burdens for smaller organizations, which risks filtering out some of the very voices we want at the table.

Our four recommendations — a B.C.-based designated filer, simpler gift rules, quarterly rather than monthly filings and a clearer meeting arrangement reporting — are commonsense, low-risk adjustments. They preserve all of the core disclosure about who is communicating with whom, about what and when, while making it easier for small businesses and non-profits to participate in the democratic process.

Thank you again for the opportunity to present today. I would be happy to answer any questions the committee may have.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation, Kalith. We’ll open the floor to questions now.

[2:15 p.m.]

Kiel Giddens: Thank you very much, Kalith, for CFIB taking the time to present and to provide a submission. Thank you for your work advocating for small businesses in the province.

I think some of the themes that you’ve raised are things that we’ve discussed today. It is good to see some trends, I think, overall. But one of the topics we haven’t spent much time on is really the difference in the reporting requirements for arranging a meeting between consultant lobbyists and in-house lobbyists, so I think you’ve raised an important point in your fourth recommendation there that we need to dive into a little bit.

The overreporting out of abundance of caution — I think that I would agree that that has an element of red tape. What about the concept of arranging the meeting and having that as a reportable to begin with versus the actual act of the meeting itself that’s the second reporting?

Obviously, in the submission, it sounds like CFIB is okay with the idea of reporting the arranging of the meeting. Is that correct?

Kalith Nanayakkara: Yeah, we do that anyway. Our fear is that there’s overreporting happening, so we’re spending our time on things that may not matter. That’s why the clarification would help, because right now even when we are filing our activities, even if it is reaching out to schedule a meeting, there’s an area where we can indicate if this is for someone else. In the situation where a colleague is reaching out, the question arises whether we should check that box off or not.

Kiel Giddens: Okay, thank you. Just a follow-up if I can. Just in terms of that, I think I can appreciate your position on it. From a simplicity standpoint, obviously it would also reduce that administrative burden from the monthly to quarterly. We’ve heard that several times already today. Are there other areas where…? From the importance of the change within your recommendations, is there a rank of where you would put some of the various priorities?

Kalith Nanayakkara: I would say our main recommendation is regarding the designated filer right now. Our organization is headquartered in Toronto, so we have to navigate a different time zone and go through different channels simply for them to log in with their credentials and then certify. So I think having that instead be done within our province, where we have staff based — and we’re a federation, so we operate quite independently, as well, as a provincial office — would save a lot of time and avoid redundancies.

And then to your question, I would rank the matter regarding booking for someone else as second.

Janet Routledge: Thank you, Kalith. You’re really contributing to what is a trend in terms of what we’re hearing and giving specific examples from your organization.

The reason I put my hand up is that I was really struck by, when you referred to the issue of gifts, what constitutes a gift. When you referred to them as “basic courtesy should be exempt,” that really struck me in terms of the implications that it turns lobbying into something that’s too transactional.

I think this is something we need to take a look at. Basic courtesies are basic courtesies. They should not be something that is considered that you’re trying to get something for it, you know? That’s really all I want to say. That was a powerful way of putting it. Basic courtesies.

[2:20 p.m.]

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): I just wanted to go back to your recommendation 4 when you’re talking about providing clearer guidance and education. It sounds like your organization has a tendency to lobby on behalf of lots of smaller organizations. Have you had feedback from smaller groups regarding this piece?

We spoke to an organization this morning, a student association. They put together a whole training package that they use for the students that are involved in these types of activities. But that wasn’t something that was provided from the office. It was actually something they created themselves. Has your organization had to do that on behalf of other businesses also?

I’m trying to figure out if this is something we actually need to have a better look at, the training piece. It seems to be a fairly…. There seems to be some language that’s rather confusing throughout the act that we’ve heard continuously today. Like Kiel had said, there are certain things that we’ve heard snippets of here and there throughout the day. I’d like to know a little bit more about how you feel about the education piece and who should be doing that and at what level?

Kalith Nanayakkara: For sure. This might be as simple as updating the language or just clarifying the language in terms of the portal itself. However, at CFIB…. We lobby as CFIB. We bring that collective business voice to the table. So as CFIB British Columbia, our policy stances are based on our surveys that we run with our membership and then sometimes beyond that here in B.C.

We don’t undertake lobbying on behalf of any individual business specifically. In the case of a consultant lobbyist, that might do that more directly in that situation. When we lobby, it’s more so regarding overall policies that impact small business in B.C. We don’t do it on behalf of any other organizations. We lobby as CFIB. Everything is done in-house — our research, our policy writing and the meetings itself.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Can I have a…?

Steve Morissette (Chair): Yes, go ahead.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Thank you for that.

We’ve had a number of organizations tell us that B.C. has just a few guiding documents that…. I think it was 29. Is that what we’ve been told? So 29 documents.

Again, if we go back to the education piece, from your perspective, do you think there’s something more required out of the office that is just really, basically, something more simple for people to understand other than trying to decipher an entire act? Almost a “lobbying for dummies” guide…. I don’t know. That sounds terrible, but we’ve heard over and over today that people get quite confused cross-referencing 30 different documents. I mean, that’s a lot, especially for a small volunteer-type organization or for students that should be spending their time studying, not figuring out if they’ve been lobbying or advocating.

Kalith Nanayakkara: To your question about education, absolutely. I think it’s a matter of simplifying the act itself. The conversation around gifts, for example. I was trying to go through the FAQ and get a better understanding of gifts myself, but it is a very long document.

You want to be careful, and you want to avoid making mistakes. An organization like ours can’t afford to take on any fines. In those situations, you just avoid interacting with any possibility of that happening. I think it’s (a) simplifying the act, simplifying these rules and regulations, and (b) making that clearly available to those that are going to use it.

For bigger organizations, navigating that may not be as big of a challenge, but on a personal level, I’ve lobbied on behalf of student unions when I was a student back in the day. Now in my role, it is challenging to understand what we can and can’t do.

To your question about basic courtesies like coffee, sometimes you might be meeting with a public official that, no matter what you buy them, will get them to change their mind or policies regarding what you’re lobbying on. But sometimes it is nice to have a coffee waiting for them. But reading through that document and trying to understand whether that’s something we’re allowed to do just makes for an awkward time.

I think, definitely, a guide that simplifies and dumbs things down, for the lack of a better word, will help.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Any further questions?

Thank you, Kalith. Your presentation has been wonderful, and it feeds information to us in this first review of the act. Hopefully we can make some improvements to streamline it and make it simpler and easier for people.

Kalith Nanayakkara: Thank you very much for your time. Have a good day.

Steve Morissette (Chair): We’ll take a recess till 2:45.

The committee recessed from 2:25 p.m. to 2:44 p.m.

[Steve Morissette in the chair.]

Steve Morissette (Chair): We’ll call it back to order. The next presentation will be from Vantage Point. I’m Steve Morissette, chair of the committee, and I ask that you will have ten minutes for your presentation and up to 20 minutes for questions from committee members.

Please go ahead, Zahra and Tyler.

Vantage Point

Zahra Esmail: Wonderful. Thank you so much for having us. I see a few familiar faces. Thank you for the warm invitation here. My name is Zahra Esmail. My pronouns are she/her and hers. Good afternoon to you, Chair and members of the committee.

I’m speaking today from the traditional territories of the Coast Salish People, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ Nations.

[2:45 p.m.]

I am speaking on behalf of Vantage Point, a non-profit organization which is the convener of the B.C. non-profit network, or BCNN. Vantage Point convenes, connects and equips non-profit leaders in B.C. with the training and other supports they need to be successful. Currently there are over 31,000 non-profit organizations in B.C., including community, business and government non-profits. Our sector and the BCNN represent over 370,000 jobs in B.C. and contributed nearly $32 billion to B.C.’s GDP in 2023. That’s a huge contribution, so thank you for giving us time to share some of our views.

Beyond the numbers, we’re talking about the people and organizations who deliver social services, programming for arts and culture, recreation, housing, child care, environmental stewardship. These are the building blocks of our communities. Our sector helps bridge the gaps within the public support system, strengthening communities, providing key services, activities and connections, supporting people in need and enabling people in B.C. to thrive.

Since the 2020 update to the Lobbyists Transparency Act, Vantage Point and our partners have been actively engaging on this legislation, meeting with the Attorney General, the Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, the Parliamentary Secretary for Community Development and Non-profits, the registrar of lobbyists and many others. We appreciate the government’s willingness to listen. The changes that came into effect this May are a meaningful and positive step forward, and we thank you for that.

We also consistently engage the sector on their concerns regarding the LTA, through surveys, webinars, formal and informal engagements and more. The message from the non-profit sector is clear. The LTA’s reporting requirements are both onerous and confusing.

In our most recent BCNN survey, three out of four non-profits said that the LTA affects their ability to engage with governments. This is a major red flag for us and, I believe, for you as well. Non-profits want to be resources to the government, and we want to be able to talk to our elected officials without fear. A reporting regimen designed to promote transparency should not, in practice, discourage legitimate public engagement.

Vantage Point has three key recommendations that we believe strike the right balance between transparency, accountability and administrative burden.

Number 1 is to simplify and clarify the reporting requirements. We are asking that reporting be required only for prearranged meetings with senior public office holders.

Non-profits absolutely support transparency. We believe that’s very important. However, the LTA goes beyond what’s reasonable in our view. It requires organizations to report not only meetings but also letters, email threads and even social media posts. That means that small charities have to track every message, every post and then decide if it might be reportable. For most non-profits, which have small teams and no in-house government relations staff, this is simply unmanageable.

Let me give you an example. A non-profit writes to a minister’s office about a piece of legislation. They exchange four emails, meet once and then send some follow-up materials. Depending on interpretation, that could be seven separate reportable interactions or as few as two.

Organizations often are left guessing. Many overreport on engagements or correspondence just to be safe. Others, we’ve heard, disengage completely out of fear of making a mistake. While the ORL has dedicated guidance on their website available for non-profits, it is not clear or easy to understand for non-profit organizations, the vast majority of whom are small and medium-sized organizations with less than 20 staff.

Additionally, non-profits often indicate to Vantage Point that they are unable to get clear answers from the ORL staff. While the ORL is eager to provide support, they are unable to give definitive answers to non-profits on specific issues. I know, for myself, on questions that I’ve asked and had answered, I’ve always had to recommend that people again phone directly to get advice because it’s not clear that it’s cookie-cutter responses that are given to similar circumstances for different organizations.

This together with the ORL’s multiple decisions this year to penalize non-profits for non-compliance with the LTA has created a chilling effect. Some 14 percent of non-profits in our April surveys said they’ve paused or stopped engaging with government altogether because of the LTA. This chilling effect hampers the connection between our critical sector and decision-makers in government. Often non-profits are the voices that governments need to hear the most to be able to make good decisions and understand what community is dealing with.

[2:50 p.m.]

We’re recommending the province adopt a similar model, close to the federal reporting model, to only report on prearranged meetings with senior officials. It’s easy to understand, consistent and fair. This approach would preserve transparency, eliminate unnecessary administrative burden, preserve the connection between non-profits and our elected officials and allow non-profits to spend their time doing what matters most, which is our work in communities.

Our second recommendation is to move to an annual reporting deadline for government funding. We appreciate the 2025 amendments that removed the requirement to report requested funding and to lengthen the reporting timeline. It’s an appreciated step forward. However, the rolling three-month deadline for reporting received funding is still problematic. Most non-profits already submit multiple extensive financial reports each year to funders, boards and the CRA. Asking them to track multiple rolling deadlines throughout the year adds administrative complexity and stress.

We’re asking for a simplified single annual reporting deadline instead. This would let organizations align LTA reporting with their regular year-end filings, reducing duplication, streamlining administration and freeing up resources for what really matters, delivering programs and services to communities. Again, this will maintain transparency and reduce red tape, and it would align B.C. with federal and other provincial practices.

Finally, our third recommendation is to adjust gift limits for clarity and fairness. Currently, the annual limit is $100, calculated as a rolling 12-month period from the last event, not a simple calendar year. That’s confusing and, in some cases, quite impractical for people to report out on. For example, if a non-profit hosts an annual appreciation event that happens to fall a few days earlier one year, they might technically breach the 12-month rule even though it’s clearly the same annual event. Moving events or dates isn’t always possible when event dates are set by external bodies like a caucus office.

We recommend that the limit be applied on a calendar year basis and that it be raised to $200 to reflect inflation and current costs. This would bring clarity, encourage compliance and retain transparency. Additionally, raising the limit to $200 would bring a greater degree of flexibility, ease non-profits’ fears of accidental infraction and be more reflective of reality, given inflation and continually rising costs.

In conclusion, the non-profit sector is one of government’s most important partners. We deliver essential services, build social cohesion and reach into every corner of this province. The Lobbyists Transparency Act and its interpretation and administration have made many organizations hesitant to speak up even when their voices can and should make public policy better.

Simplifying and clarifying the act’s requirements, aligning reporting with existing financial cycles and updating limits will improve compliance, strengthen trust and transparency on all sides and lead to greater engagement between our sector and the government. The government needs the input of non-profits to understand what’s happening on the ground. Our sector needs clear, accessible rules that make engagement possible and that are not punitive. We want to be partners in building a stronger, fairer and more transparent B.C., and we believe these changes will help achieve that exactly.

Thank you for your time and for your commitment to improving the act. I’d be happy to take any questions.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Thank you, Zahra.

I’ll now open the floor to questions from the committee.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you very much, Zahra, for this presentation and for the submission. I think that’s fantastic.

One of the very important things that your organization has provided is real-time survey information as well. That is invaluable, I think, to this process, to be able to have that.

It was quite alarming to read, and to hear from you directly, what has been described as a chilling effect on engaging for non-profits. What jumped out to me was that 14 percent of non-profits said that they would pause or stop engagement altogether. That is a huge concern, actually, to us as elected officials, I believe. So it’s something we’re going to have to really take a look at in in this regard.

I’m wondering, you know, in terms of what’s causing that fear. Is it partly the lack of clarity around where the rules are?

[2:55 p.m.]

We have heard from presenters today that there are up to 29 guidance documents, and obviously there’s a frequently asked questions on the office’s website, but there still is that lack of clarity. Is that the biggest fear — fear of the unknown? Do you believe that…? Out of your recommendations, is there one that really sticks out that would provide that sort of certainty to really help non-profits to actually engage?

Zahra Esmail: Thank you. That’s a great question. Again, I appreciate the opportunity to engage and provide our perspectives based on what we’ve been hearing and our own experiences as well.

The three recommendations we’ve made, we do believe, would help simplify quite a lot and make it clearer what is in scope and what’s out of scope. We talk a lot about the administrative burdens on non-profits and the lack of capacity, because it is a strapped sector, stretched thin, as we know. So if the reporting was simpler and clearer, more organizations might be able to build confidence and competence to report properly.

I think, if I’m speaking very frankly, interacting with elected officials is intimidating in the first place for a lot of non-profit leaders. On top of that, having an idea that you could get slapped on the wrist for not reporting properly and be publicly shamed and also struck with financial payments that you have to make and potentially having your senior leader go to jail….

I remember when the LTA first rolled out, that was listed as one of the potential consequences for an area of work that’s already intimidating. Even though it’s extremely important for non-profits to be speaking to elected leaders, it doesn’t paint a very warm picture in terms of how we can do that engagement, often as small organizations that are simply trying to meet the needs of community and raise the voice of what they’re hearing and experiencing in community to the people who set those decisions about what policies look like and need that information.

These recommendations that we’ve made, we believe, will help to ease that chilling effect and maybe help to warm up that relationship again, so that you still get the transparency that’s needed but that it becomes easier for non-profits to be able to interpret and follow through and be able to support each other to build that confidence that’s necessary for the partnership between non-profits and governments to be strong.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): I wanted to go back to your first recommendation because I’ve found some of the content in your presentation, which…. Thank you very much for joining us and for taking the time to write your submission. I wanted to go back to the meetings and emails. There’s not an MLA here that wouldn’t tell you that we get a million emails a day, so I’m just curious how organizations track that.

If you’ve reached out to an MLA or a government official and said I want to meet on ABC, and there may be somebody else in your organization that is working with you, do all of those emails and any subsequent information that you get regarding that particular request…? Where does that get captured?

Is there a possibility of an audit or something coming back, especially if somebody has decided that you are non-compliant? How is that information captured and stored, and what kind of time frame does that take for your organization to keep all of that in order?

Zahra Esmail: Maybe I can pass this question over to my colleague Tyler.

Tyler, do you mind?

Tyler Arnold: Yeah, for sure. I’m Tyler Arnold, by the way. I’m the policy and advocacy specialist here at Vantage Point, and I actually administrate the LTA’s requirements for our organization.

You’re right. There are a few different people at Vantage Point that all interface with government officials on a pretty regular basis. The way it works for our organization is that I actually have to reach out to everybody else that works at VP to see if they’ve engaged with any government officials, and if they have been, what has been the substance of those communications so that I can properly report it in the LTA. We need to do that on a monthly basis, right? If something happens in October, we need to report it by November 15. It does take a little bit of time.

In terms of investigation and audit, as you say, I think I think that’s the purview of the ORL. I don’t know how they run all of their investigations, but I do know that they do happen. As we’ve seen this year, there have been multiple non-profits that have been penalized, hit with fines for non-compliance with the LTA, which contributes to that chilling effect that we’ve been talking about before.

[3:00 p.m.]

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Just a follow-up. What I’m trying to figure out: are you guys required to keep all of that, like your engagement materials, for a certain period of time? If there are six emails that went back and forth and it wasn’t an actual email chain…. I’m trying to figure out where you take all those emails and where you put them in one place so that, if somebody comes back and asks you a question, you have all of the information around a singular engagement event with government in one place.

Maybe I’m not making myself very clear. I’m just trying to think of how many times I have different emails go back and forth about the same thing. Then when I go and try and find all of those emails and put the storyline together, it can be very difficult.

How do organizations manage that, in reference to this particular process, when they’re registering a lobbying event?

Tyler Arnold: I can tell you that per our survey, it takes about one to five hours of additional work per month to actually report all of this stuff. I don’t think there’s a centralized process that everybody uses.

Like I said, for us, that’s what it looks like in our organization. I just have to reach out to everybody that might have talked to a government official and see what happened, but we don’t have a centralized place for all of that stuff. In terms of centralization, the best place for it would be the LTA’s reporting stuff after the fact.

As far as holding on to stuff, I don’t know that there’s a specific prescription for that in the LTA, but we don’t delete any of our emails.

Zahra Esmail: If I can add to that, I think in summary I’d say: inconsistently and with great difficulty. There isn’t a standard practice.

Just from the organizations I’ve been involved in, it’s not easy. And it’s probably not to the same degree of thoroughness, depending on whether an organization has a policy and advocacy specialist like Tyler or if they’re a five-person shop that’s doing community-led work and talking to their MLA but really lack administrative capacity.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): I have one more question sort of around the same topic.

Are you aware or are you familiar with or have you worked with an organization that was told that they weren’t compliant and then they…? Is there a mechanism to try and prove that they did everything that they were supposed to do? And what happens if they aren’t able to do that?

Zahra Esmail: They’re fined. We have organizations that we’ve heard of. They are listed on the ORL, the report that’s on their website. There are organizations who reached out to the ORL to ask for guidance, were told to report with the backdated information and then were penalized because they hadn’t reported properly in the first place.

It’s tricky. There’s not, I’d say, a high degree of trust there. If organizations are doing things that they don’t know that they’ve done wrong and then reach out for help and then do try to report on it properly, there have been negative experiences there, which doesn’t encourage organizations to want to continue to be in relationship and continue to talk to MLAs, frankly. That adds to the chilling effect. So that’s a problem, I think, that needs to be solved.

Tyler, I don’t know if you have anything to add to that.

Tyler Arnold: No, that was great.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Thank you. Are there any further questions?

Janet Routledge: I want to thank you for taking the time to share your perspective with us. The presentations today have been a real eye-opener for me.

Most of us, when we think of lobbying…. Before I became an MLA, when I think of lobbying, I think of pharmaceutical companies or politicians getting jets. Public interest lobbying — it’s almost like we need to change the name. This is impacting democracy, I think.

I want to really thank you for taking the time to put this on our radar. Yeah, I just wanted to say that.

Zahra Esmail: If I can quickly comment. The heart emojis are disabled, I think, but I would throw you a big heart emoji, because I do think that this is a concern.

The purpose behind it is to raise community voice. I think you’re absolutely right about the threat to democracy and these rules being quite strict. It creates disengagement, and it creates fear. Then we’re actually behind a barrier to talk to you, which is a problem. So I appreciate and hope that we can get to a better outcome here, because it could certainly be better.

We actually do training programs with non-profits on government relations and advocacy. I can say this with quite a bit of confidence. There’s a lot of confusion about what is advocacy and what is lobbying. Different terminology that is more clear and maybe a special term for non-profit lobbying or community-based voice lobbying, as opposed to business interests, I think, would be in everybody’s best interest.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Any further questions?

Seeing none, thank you very much for your presentation. It’s great information for us going forward to do what we can to improve and streamline the process. I really appreciate your time.

Zahra Esmail: Thanks for the opportunity.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Okay. We’ll recess for two minutes to reset here.

The committee recessed from 3:05 p.m. to 3:06 p.m.

[Steve Morissette in the chair.]

Steve Morissette (Chair): Great. Thank you. We’ll call this committee back to order.

Lastly, we’ll hear from the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of B.C.

You will have ten minutes for a presentation and up to 20 minutes for questions from the committee. Please go ahead, Annabree.

Confederation of University Faculty
Associations of B.C.

Annabree Fairweather: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for having me. Welcome to this moment. It was nice to sit in on some of the earlier presentations as well, and you’ll hear some similar themes from me.

My name is Annabree Fairweather. I am the executive director of what is the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia, or CUFABC, and we represent, as a non-profit society, 5,500 faculty members through the faculty unions at B.C.’s research universities. That includes UBC, SFU, University of Victoria, UNBC and Royal Roads University.

We’ve existed for over 55 years now. Our organization is dedicated to advocating for the value of public post-secondary education, the research and the teaching, and sound public policy that strengthens post-secondary education in B.C. We approach this discussion with a shared commitment and the strong belief that the transparency and accountability in lobbying is essential and that it’s essential to building public trust in government and in our Crown corporations.

We also believe that for transparency to be effective, it has to be proportionate and practical. We should mitigate unintended consequences in our act as we design it itself. I think our experiences under the Lobbyists Transparency Act show that for small non-profit organizations like ours and like we heard in our earlier presentations, the system can sometimes create barriers to genuine participation rather than strengthening our confidence in it.

Let me start with the reality that we face as our small organization. We have 1.6 staff people — I am a full-time staff person — and a board of volunteers. We have no in-house legal counsel. We have no compliance officers in-house, unlike, maybe, larger associations or industry groups or those private corporations. In fact, I think the lobbyist that’s in our office is really me. I am the lobbyist within CUFABC.

With that, under this current act, we have to track every communication with government, even invitations to set up a meeting, whether or not a meeting takes place. In some cases, we question a lot whether our social media posts have to be reported, as well, to the office of the registrar.

[3:10 p.m.]

To put this into perspective, sometimes preparing our monthly reports does actually take longer than the amount of lobbying we engage in, in a given reporting period. We find ourselves spending a lot of precious time, our resources, interpreting the act, seeking advice from the office of the registrar, documenting our contacts and tracking levels of government as to who counts as lobbying, especially when it’s meeting with senior bureaucrats or chiefs of staff. Even for events that are already public, we’re reporting on things that also have documents as well.

I will say a shout-out to the office of the registrar, which has put together numerous and iterative, excellent resources. They’re also very responsive to us and have been a fantastic support when we reach out to them. It’s not that we don’t support the transparency of it, because we strongly do, but for small non-profits like ours, the current system feels disproportionate. The administrative energy it demands doesn’t match the level of influence that we perhaps have.

What we’ve observed, then, is that this burden doesn’t fall evenly across the landscape. Large organizations, including ones in our sector and in the research and education areas, often have the capacity to absorb the administrative burdens and the reporting requirements. They might employ communications staff or government relations specialists who handle this kind of work.

Meanwhile, smaller organizations — particularly, non-profits that represent the public interest — are left to navigate the same compliance expectations, with far fewer resources. Ironically, that feedback loop can have the effect of discouraging engagement from groups that exist precisely to bring that diverse perspective and diverse voice to government in their decision-making and to inform good public policy.

The result is this uneven playing field. Those with the resources to manage the administrative work will be able to continue to engage with government freely or, sometimes, just avoid registering or reporting, because they can absorb the fines that come with it — if they’re caught, that is — and those without the capacity, the small non-profit groups like mine, will hesitate to speak up. It’s not because we lack that perspective or information to bring; it’s because the compliance process is prohibitive.

I’ll add here another layer that is perhaps about proportion, in that we are smaller. We are less resourced; it’s true. We are incredibly efficient in our work. We have good relations, as best we can under the circumstances, with our MLAs and with ministers, but in our experience, we have less access to government than other stakeholders that might be larger organizations than us, like employer groups or bigger union groups.

We have had times where we’ve requested a meeting; we haven’t had that meeting, but we’ve reported on it. Then we’ve requested another meeting, we’ve had to report on it, and we haven’t engaged or materialized in that meeting. In the meantime, I’ve had to contact the office of the registrar to confirm if the person I’m engaging with needs to be reported or not. This administrative making itself doesn’t really capture the fact that no lobbying has taken place in that time, in all of that administrative work in process.

If the goal of the Lobbyists Transparency Act is to make influence on government policy more visible and fair, the reality is that it doesn’t, under this current structure. It captures the lightest-touch advocacy, and it leaves the more substantial and better-resourced lobbying relatively invisible.

That imbalance becomes even more apparent when we look at the current experience. It’s not only today’s lobbying — which I’m going to have to report on after this — but CUFABC was recently invited to a Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills consultation on post-secondary sustainability.

That’s ahead of us, end-to-end, happening in live time. It’s a formal, structured, government process, designed to seek input from a broad range of stakeholders — including not just faculty unions but also administrations, students and other interested groups — about how to ensure stability in post-secondary in B.C.

This is exactly the kind of collaborative engagement that should be encouraged. It’s open, it’s constructive, and it’s part of healthy, transparent policy-making. The problem is that I’m the person doing it. I’m also the person who’s having to determine how this participation fits under the Lobbyists Transparency Act.

Are we considered to be lobbying the minister and the ministry by attending meetings to which we’re invited in the public interest? Do we have to register at consultations? We’re clustered as a group in these presentations. How do we coordinate and inform each other’s positions in that moment of consultation? Do we have to register each other as groups or in witness of each other in these groups and in all of our public statements and social media leading up to it?

Maybe another part is that not everybody who’s participating in these is a registered lobbyist. Where does that leave those of us who are? So there’s a lot of uncertainty and inconsistency within this structure.

[3:15 p.m.]

It becomes what I think is an administrative burden that is out of step with the purpose of this act. The spirit of transparency isn’t advanced by requiring organizations to report public, government-led consultation work that’s already in the public domain in other ways.

Our point isn’t to undermine this act, but it is to align it more closely with its purpose. CUFABC supports the public’s right to know who’s trying to influence government decisions, but we also support fair and meaningful engagement, where small organizations can contribute without those prohibitive administrative costs and burdens.

Transparency should focus on the influence that’s material, in essence, the kind of lobbying that has a measurable impact on that decision-making that’s ultimately made, but not routine, low-level or invited participation that’s already going to be in the public record. And true transparency has to depend on that proportionality.

When reporting requirements are seen as excessive or misaligned, they risk, I think, undermining the trust that we need in government, and people start to game the system in ways to avoid disclosure. Or we actually wonder whether it’s for real oversight, or is it bureaucracy-making?

To address this, we do have three recommendations that we’ve also previously submitted in writing.

First, we argue the restoration of a reasonable threshold before registration and reporting are required, an example of 50 or 100 hours of lobbying activity per year. This approach would allow the registrar to focus efforts on organizations truly engaged in substantial and sustained government relations work rather than on those that are occasional or low-impact contact.

Second, we recommend the act differentiate based on organizational capacity — that large organizations with some threshold of staff members can reasonably meet stricter compliance standards, but small, volunteer-based ones like ours or low-capacity non-profits should have scaled expectations for that work that we do and that reflect their resources.

Then third, we really need to exempt some of those routine or low-impact communications, things like posts on social media, requests for meetings, participation in open consultations or one-off informational emails. These are part of what I think is a healthy participation in democracy and engagement, but not secret lobbying. Narrowing the scope to focus on substantive influence in an act can achieve the transparency that’s more meaningful and, frankly, more credible with the public.

We strongly believe in transparency and the accountable system of our government, but for it to work, it has to be smart, it has to be scalable, and it should capture what is real, systemic influence. We’ve seen firsthand how that current system diverts energy away from our core work at our organization, supporting sound policy in B.C.’s public sector education. It risks that chilling of public interest voices that are important to our democracy.

There’s an important opportunity here in front of us so that we can uphold that core purpose of making the powerful visible, without imposing unnecessary burdens on those who are not powerful. We believe a more balanced system is possible in this, one that distinguishes civic advocacy from corporate lobbying and that invites participation instead of what is chilling it.

Thank you very much for your time. I’ll leave it here and invite questions.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Thank you for your presentation, Annabree, and I’ll open the floor to questions from the committee.

Janet Routledge: Well, again, it’s not so much a question as a thank-you. I’ve written down a lot of your phrases. They’re very powerful. I want to thank you for your insight about what lobbying is and what lobbying isn’t, the whole issue of power. And yes, you’ve given us a lot of food for thought. I’m hoping you’ll find some of your phrases turn up in our work.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you very much. That was a very well crafted presentation. We really appreciate your effort in making a submission and then coming in person to present it to us today, so thank you.

Just going into your recommendation on the differentiating by organizational capacity, I do think that’s something worth considering looking into how that would work. How did you come to the five or more staff as sort of an example that you specifically included in that?

[3:20 p.m.]

It just would help for context maybe for us.

Annabree Fairweather: Sure. I think a sufficiently reasonable proportion is whatever that number determines to be. But I think when we look at the structures of non-profits — and I have also worked with Vantage Point before, as well — you can have a differentiation and specialization of staff that can start to take on some of those primary responsibilities of that.

When you have two people, it’s a lot of juggling between those two people to manage the entirety of what an organization does. Perhaps three, as well. But once you hit five, you start to see that organizations have sufficient revenue and also just a critical mass of workload distribution among the people that are doing that work.

Whatever number might be within that, or however you anticipate interpreting that….

Kiel Giddens: Maybe just one more question. Just in terms of the idea of restoring a lobbying threshold, your organization, obviously, operates elsewhere in Canada, as well, I’m guessing?

Annabree Fairweather: In British Columbia.

Kiel Giddens: Okay. Just in British Columbia. Okay. Sorry. If you had, I was going to look at other provinces to see if or where they do have thresholds. If there was an example that….

I guess you’ve left it open, which is perfectly fine. Fifty to 100 hours is a range of consideration there.

Annabree Fairweather: I can speak to that in that it previously was 100 hours, and so we were exempted from that. We didn’t make 100 hours in our lobbying. But if 100 hours is too much, 50 hours or under, I think, is a reasonable amount of time. It’s not the primary focus of our every day. It certainly is within our mandate though.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): I’m curious about the 50, because you said it has changed. For an organization your size, what would you say is your average number of hours per year that you actually spend lobbying? I don’t know if you can, actually, or if you’ve ever determined that.

Annabree Fairweather: I have tried to. I’ve tried to quantify that.

I also think there’s a sliding scale. Does an email count? Am I counting the minutes of that email in terms of not just writing it and sending it but also then reporting on it after the fact?

I think for actual face time with government, we probably don’t get more than ten or 15 hours with government at a time in a given year within post-secondary. It’s not a heck of a lot, other than the prep for it, the engagements with the meetings for it, but we…. Yeah.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): Okay. Well, see, actually, this is the second time this has come up again today as well.

It concerns me that smaller organizations, particularly non-profits, are actually spending four times as much energy on registering their activities than they are actually getting time with the individual that they’re registering to see. That seems very disproportionate to me, and so I’m glad that has come up a few times and that I asked you about that, actually.

Annabree Fairweather: Thank you. Yeah. I’ll add, as well, that the requests for meetings don’t always materialize into a meeting. Just the burden of having to keep reporting things that don’t necessarily mean we’re actually lobbying…. But in that lobby report, it looks as though we have, because we’ve been tracked as having participated in lobbying, I guess.

I just don’t think that that’s actually capturing the fact that we had no influence on the policy we were talking about — does that make sense? — when we are in those meetings.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): I just wanted to confirm what you just said. If you go through all the effort to try and make a meeting with myself, Kiel — it doesn’t matter who — or a ministry, and you send four or five emails and nothing actually comes to fruition, you still have to actually register the amount of time you put in to be denied a meeting?

Annabree Fairweather: We have to register every time we’ve made a request for a meeting. It’s not the amount of time, but it is the frequency.

Actually, may I answer your question from earlier that you asked a different group about how you track the documents and how you keep track of that during the reporting? I’ll just say that I do go through my emails to track the number of exchanges back and forth. But if it’s within, say, a perfect calendar month of the first to the 30th, I can keep a little running tally of the number of, maybe, emails that I’ve sent or if I’ve sent a text or phone call to try and reach out to a particular person to make a meeting time.

[3:25 p.m.]

I’ll keep the little running tallies of that. Then come time of reporting, you report how many times you’ve done things based on days. I report that on October 15, I sent an email to make a request for a meeting. On October 17, I sent another request for a different person for a meeting.

You’re reporting all of that, not necessarily adding the evidence of that email, but you are reporting the days that you’ve done it. I presume that if there was a follow-up from that office of the registrar, that’s when you would have your evidence somehow available. I don’t put that into a record repository. I just would dig it up if I had to.

Does that make sense?

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): It does, and it would actually be a very interesting question for the office of the lobbying. I’m not sure that I would agree that you sending a request that is not honoured or you don’t actually get a meeting from…. I’m not entirely sure I would actually qualify that as lobbying. But that’s a me versus the office thing. It would be an interesting question for them, actually.

Annabree Fairweather: Then I’m going to want to do all of my requests on the first of the month and not the end of the month, because when it spills over into the next month, then it becomes a part of the record of the following month. It’s silly games in there that you might undertake to try and reduce the frequency or the complicated nature of the reports we submit.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Are there any further questions?

Seeing none, thank you so much, Annabree. As you’ve heard before, we appreciate your input, because it feeds into what we will discuss going forward. Thank you for your time.

Annabree Fairweather: Good luck.

Steve Morissette (Chair): That concludes our presentations for today. We’ll be meeting again on Wednesday, December 10, to hear additional presentations.

Thank you, everybody, for attending. Thank you for attending online, MLA Sandhu, and for you others in person.

Is there any other business?

Hearing none….

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): I just have a clarifying question.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Go ahead.

Rosalyn Bird (Deputy Chair): I can’t remember because I didn’t look at the agenda yet for the tenth. Is the office actually…?

Okay. Are they the last ones?

Yeah? Okay.

Steve Morissette (Chair): Perfect.

And thank you to staff.

I’ll now ask for a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

Steve Morissette (Chair): The committee now stands adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 3:27 p.m.