New Westminster city council supports efforts to increase openness and transparency at city hall by registering lobbyist activities.
At its Sept. 9 meeting, council supported a motion from Coun. Daniel Fontaine related to the registering of lobbyist activities. The motion stated that lobbyist registries are intended to provide a public record, which is accessible to residents, of the interactions between public servants, elected officials, and lobbyists, and to allow rules regarding lobbyists to be enforced.
Fontaine said he gives “full credit” to Kennedy Stewart who brought a similar motion to Vancouver city council while he was serving as mayor.
“We all know that New West is not as big as Vancouver, and there probably aren't as many lobbyists in the city of New Westminster … but lobbying does happen in the city of New Westminster,” he said. “I can't speak on behalf of the mayor, but probably more people are trying to lobby the mayor than maybe us, individually. But collectively, we have a lot of people who have reason to encourage us to vote one way or to vote another.”
Fontaine said his motion is intended to require lobbying to New Westminster city council members to be registered, so the public is aware of those activities.
Fontaine’s motion asked that the city ask the province to immediately take one or the other of the following two actions:
- Amend the Lobbyist Registration Act to cover the City of New Westminster and other similar mid- to large-sized cities and to administer the regulation of lobbying in the city.
- Amend the Community Charter to allow the city to establish a lobbyist registry and give the city the legal authority to register lobbyists, create rules for lobbyists’ conduct in their interaction with elected officials and public servants, as well as the power to enforce those rules. It also asked that the province further empower the provincial registrar of lobbyists to work with the city to share the information so as to reduce duplication and costs for both orders of government.
“I think it would be good if the province actually took it on on behalf of municipalities, so we don't have a bunch of lobbyist registry acts all over, but I don't know … if they have an interest or not to go forward with that,” Fontaine said. “That's why part 2 of the motion would allow us as a city, if passed, to actually implement our own lobbyist registry.”
Fontaine said a handful of cities in B.C. have lobbyist registries.
“But what I will tell you is there are no penalties, there are no fines. There's no way to really enforce it. And there's really very limited information when you go onto the website, other than their name and kind of generally what they're lobbying about,” he said. “There's no record in terms of the more specific items – if they want us to approve a 45-storey tower or land approval or whatever. That's just simply not there; that information is not there.”
Coun. Ruby Campbell said she supports the concept of transparency for lobbyist activities but questioned if there was a “better path” to achieve that. She put forward an amendment that council ask staff to prepare a resolution to send to the Lower Mainland Local Government Association so New Westminster could potentially encourage other municipalities to be involved in this process as well.
Fontaine said he does not think it’s an either/or situation. He suggested council support his motion and Campbell’s amendment to send a motion to the Lower Mainland Local Government Association.
Council unanimously supported Fontaine’s motion and Campbell’s amendment.
Lobbying or not?
Mayor Patrick Johnstone said he would also like council to have more clarity about lobbying and how it is defined in terms of local governments. He noted that he and council members are regularly approached by residents and businesses who have questions and comments about the city.
“People come up to me and ask me questions about what's going on the city, and I have those conversations with them,” he said. “I'm not sure if that's lobbying or not.”
Johnstone said he views those conversations as being different than those with representatives from a non-profit, business, or real estate foundation who are getting paid to advocate for policy changes.
“We need to understand where that grey line is between them,” he said. “Even residents coming up to me and asking me about things that are happening on their street; they're asking me about issues and things they want to see. We have had delegations today; I don't think those are lobbying, and I think we all clearly understand those folks today were not lobbying us. But we need to have that understanding of what the two is, what that grey line is.”
Johnstone said he’d like the city to address the definition of lobbying from the perspective of local government.
“I think it's different for us than it is for the provincial government because of the way we are in contact with people every day on the street about these issues,” he said. “So, I do think we need to cover that definition.”
Johnstone said his understanding of the provincial registry is that it registers people and organizations as much as it does activities.
“I don't think people necessarily care about the people. I think care about the activity; they want to know what the meeting was and what we were asked, what the conversation was, and what we were being lobbied about,” he said. “And respectfully, I think we need to register the activity as much as the people. A person who runs a coffee shop in downtown shouldn't have to register – or if they ask me a question, I don't want to have to say, ‘Wait a minute, are you a registered lobbyist?’ before we have the conversation or tell them they have to register. So, I'm a little worried that the way the provincial rules are structured doesn't work for us in our everyday lives.”
Council unanimously approved an amendment from Johnstone to have the city’s ethic’s commissioner to report back on the issue of lobbying as it relates to council members.
