One of the key prohibitions in the famous/infamous Accountability Act was an edict that any politician or political staff and some senior bureaucrats are forbidden from becoming registered lobbyists for five years after leaving office or their government job.
The law gave one slim out on this prohibition: If you wanted to become a lobbyist before that five-year ban was up, you could apply to the Commissioner of Lobbying, an independent officer of Parliament, and ask for the equivalent of papal dispensation to go ahead and become a lobbyist.
The commissioner, Karen Shepherd, was asked about this exemption process in October when she appeared in front of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.
I've blogged about this issue and that meeting before and this post updates that one with some new information.
At that meeting, Shepherd talked about the exemption process and noted that she had granted a handful of them since setting up shop (much to the disappointment of NDP MP Pat Martin). But she also noted that she had refused exemption applications for other political staffers. Liberal MP Michelle Simson wanted to know which staffers got turned down. Shepherd declined to respond saying that if Simson wanted that information, she would have to file a request under the federal Access to Information Act. Which is exactly what I did after that meeting last October.
The fruit of that request, such as it is, arrived this week. (Which is, sadly, remarkably fast for a ATI request these days).
I had asked for:
“The names of the public office holders who have applied for exemptions under the Lobbying Act since its coming into force on Jul y 2, 2008 and who were denied an exemption. Please provide the names of these individual s and public office or offices held”
Pierre Ricard-Desjardins, the Commissioner's Access To Information Cooordinator, and I had a telephone discussion about this last month and it became apparent that, under the rules of the Access to Information Act, the information I was seeking was “personal information” and, therefore, could not be released unless the individuals involved waived their right to privacy. “We therefore asked whether the persons in question would consent to the release of their names and of the public offices they held, as required under Section 19 of the Access to Information Act,” Desjardins wrote to me this week. “These persons subsequently refused to authorize the disclosure of this information. Consequently, we will not be able to release it.”
“it became apparent that, under the rules of the Access to Information Act, the information I was seeking was “personal information” and, therefore, could not be released unless the individuals involved waived their right to privacy”
So what exactly is your problem with this ? As I understand it, the commissioner declined to provide the information, and so did her department. If those are the rules, then so be it surely ? I get that the madia have a “thing” about the ATI, but I cannot understand why it is apparently impossible for you to accept that a rule exists. Maybe you don't like the way the Act was written, but Parliament, and a minority one at that, apparently did, so live with it amd stop trying to make the story about the poor media and their struggles to find out what is really going on.
To be honest, I think a better story would have been to ask why people were turned down for exemptions, with no names involved.