The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers was the busiest lobby group in 2012, meeting 217 times with designated public office holders from ministers and politicians to bureaucratic officials, according to the monthly communications records of the lobbyist registry.
The majority of the topics discussed were energy and environment, but CAPP also discussed fisheries, international trade, taxation and finance, science and technology, security, employment and training, and labour issues with various officials. While CAPP met with departments such as Natural Resources Canada, Environment Canada, Industry Canada and Finance as well as those relevant ministers and officials in the Prime Minister’s Office, among the more interesting designated public office holders included the deputy head of mission at Canada’s embassy in Washington Deborah Lyons, Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Richard Fadden and Canadian Ambassador to China Guy Saint-Jacques.
Although the communications do not say specifically what was discussed other than those top-level subjects, it’s likely CAPP was discussing the XL Keystone Pipeline last year with Canadian officials in Washington and security issues around proposed foreign takeovers of Canadian natural resources such as China’s CNOOC’s bid for Canadian oilsands company Nexen (which the feds approved).
Public Affairs Association of Canada president John Capobianco, a senior vice-president of lobbying firm Fleishman-Hillard, said he was not surprised with the number of meetings CAPP held with DPOHs. “I wouldn’t say there’s anything significant about that, because really meetings with advocate groups or associations tend to ebb and flow based on issues. So certainly whenever there’s an issue that comes up that pertains to their members or their association as a whole, you’ll see a robust movement of activity with members and so forth,” he told The Hill Times.
Other lobbyists, who spoke to The Hill Times on background, also said they were not surprised, given the federal government’s agenda and focus on energy and natural resource issues. They said CAPP has many “balls in the air,” with advocating for Canada’s oil sands on various issues such as emissions, pipelines and international trade. In addition, they are seen as a powerful lobby group. “They’re usually good at having a presence. People see them when they ask,” said one lobbyist.
The Canadian Bankers Association came in second for holding the most meetings with officials and politicians, at 169. The majority of its meetings were with Finance Canada, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada and Industry Canada. The association met with PMO and PCO officials on occasion as well. Some of the topics discussed ranged from financial institutions, consumer issues, budget and pensions to agriculture, labour, constitutional issues and justice and law enforcement.
One lobbyist said it’s natural for the CBA to have a high number of meetings.
“For one thing, the banks in any given year will be doing a lot,” the lobbyist said. “People don’t realize the bank system is really an extension of the country’s monetary system. You can’t very well implement fiscal and monetary policy without the banks. They’re so interdependent on one another.”
The third highest number of meetings came between The Mining Association of Canada and the government. MAC held 157 meetings with designated public office holders over the last year. Among the departments lobbied were Fisheries and Oceans, Aboriginal Affairs, Veterans Affairs, Health, Natural Resources, Environment, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and Transport. Issues listed included mining, taxation and finance, aboriginal affairs, international trade, environment and transportation. One lobbyist said some specific issues the mining industry is taking on are climate change, flow through shares, corporate social responsibility and some concern that the Canadian International Development Agency is “getting into bed with the mining companies.”
The Mining Association of Canada is registered to lobby the federal government on several issues such as shipping mineral products, mining skills development, the Fisheries Act, and the Navigable Waters Protection Act.
In total, there were 11,608 meetings between lobbyists and designated public office holders last year. That means lobbyists met with government officials on average 32 times a day. According to the lobbyist registry, there were 1,042 organizations or consultants who had contact with government officials. On average, each had 11 meetings with DPOHs. There were 243 organizations that only had one meeting each with government officials.
The meetings registered do not indicate what type of meeting occurred. For instance, many associations and organizations hold “lobby days” each year, and meet as many Parliamentarians and officials as they can. If the meeting was prearranged, each MP or Senator or official they met—perhaps even at a cocktail reception—must be recorded in a monthly communications listing. This could bump up the numbers if the association met with 100 people that day.
But lobbyists last week told The Hill Times that the number of meetings does not necessarily correlate to a successful lobbying campaign. Summa Strategies vice-president Tim Powers said that the number of meetings “don’t matter. It is impact. Some people just do meetings to look busy.” He noted that “smart campaigns with good research, communications and the right strategy-execution” are what matter in a lobby effort. “Anybody can get a meeting, not everybody can get a win,” Mr. Powers said.
One lobbyist said that it’s still useful to have meetings with elected and unelected officials and “tell your story.”
Sometimes it’s not necessarily to raise a complaint or try to change legislation or ask for funding. Oftentimes, the lobbyist said, it’s to update relevant people on files they may be interested in.
“I mean, you’re trying to build a relationship over time but you’ve got to be careful you don’t waste their time because you very quickly get on the do not see list if you’re there wasting their time. It’s just a basic professional courtesy,” the lobbyist said. “You’ve also got to provide something of value to the person you’re meeting with, it can’t always be about hey, why don’t you make me rich?”
Other lobbyists agreed, saying that face time with a minister does not necessarily have the same impact as it did years ago because there are so much more avenues for influencing public policy. For instance, social media such as Twitter is changing how people communicate with their officials.
“Tweets can mean something because the politicians watch Twitter like a hawk. That didn’t exist a few years ago,” a lobbyist said, noting also that the media are covering a wider range of issues which put policy on the public agenda, while corporations and organizations are using communications and PR strategies to get their messages out.
“The days of the magic meeting are over. You’ve got to do the whole package. You’ve got to do issue management through the media, through outreach to stakeholder groups who can support you, corporate social responsibility,” the lobbyist said. “So I think 20 minutes of face time will have less and less importance as governments get complicated and as various things compete for public office holders’ attention.”
N.W.T. government in Ottawa to lobby for devolution, more infrastructure funding
Northwest Territories Premier Bob McLeod, who was in Ottawa last week with his entire Cabinet talking toe MPs and officials about the N.W.T.’s desire for control over its resources, land, and water, is “optimistic” his territorial government and the federal government will soon come to a final agreement on devolving powers but said “a deal’s not done until it’s done.”
Devolution is important, Mr. McLeod told The Hill Times and Embassy last week, because it brings decision-making power closer to those who will be affected by the decisions.
“We will take over responsibilities for 24 statutes and gas, so oil and gas, mining, lands, waters, and all of the programs, all of the funding and human resources associated with those programs will be devolved to the government of Northwest Territories,” he said.
“We will also obtain resource royalties, so the resource royalties that have gone to the government of Canada will come to the government of the Northwest Territories and that will allow us more flexibility in investing in our programs and services, and it will allow us to have provincial-like powers. We see it as having the best of both worlds where we’ll have provincial-like powers as well while maintaining our funding levels from the government of Canada,” said Mr. McLeod.
Mr. McLeod said a deadline for the end of 2012 to come to a final agreement was pushed back into this year, but he expects a conclusion to negotiations in the coming weeks.
“We have to get ratification and we’re still looking at a transfer date of April 2014,” he said. “I’d say we’re a lot closer, we’re very close to the finish line. We have a lot more partners aboriginal government partners that have signed onto the agreement in principle. There are seven aboriginal governments in the Northwest Territories. We’re still talking to the other three, we’re still optimistic that we’ll get one, maybe all of them to sign on at some point and I think that the negotiations are coming to an end.”
When devolution does happen, the Northwest Territories will be the first jurisdiction in Canada to have an official resource-revenue sharing structure with First Nations.
“With devolution, we’ll be able to do business and all you have to do is look at the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline which has been approved. Once it goes ahead, aboriginal businesses will have a one-third equity of ownership in that pipeline,” Mr. McLeod said. “The more development, the more resource royalties we collect, the more money we’ll share [with aboriginal governments].”
Mr. McLeod said infrastructure is another key issue that needs to be addressed in the Northwest Territories. He said of the 33 communities there, 25 have populations of 1,000 people or less. Many communities are not connected by all weather roads, and only accessible by air or water in the summer.
“It’s a very expensive place to live, and the more infrastructure that we can give, the better. More infrastructure will mean reduced cost of exploration, reduced cost of living, all of those things,” Mr. McLeod said, noting that the Conservative government has a particular interest in the North, and hopes the territory’s infrastructure needs can be met.
“We have tremendous potential that we can be a power house that can contribute to Canada’s economy, that we think we can show the rest of the Canada how to have balanced development and how to work with aboriginal governments.
“Through the devolution process we’re also negotiating an agreement on how we’re all going to work together on how we manage the land and water resources together because aboriginal governments are and will be the largest land holders in the Northwest Territories once all the land claims and some government agreements are settled.”
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: Bea Vongdouangchanh
No comments:
Post a Comment