Here’s a look back at the news we covered this week:

New lobbying rules will be in force in British Columbia on May 4, and Kyle Morrow, an associate at law firm Fasken, recommends that businesses and organizations in the province begin to prepare for the change.

The updated rules will include a ban on most gift-giving between lobbyists and public office holders. In-house lobbyists will also be required to register with the province’s lobbyists’ registrar within 10 days of their first communication with government officials.

Morrow said these changes, among others, would make British Columbia’s lobbying regime one of the strictest in North America.

Democracy Watch was in the Federal Court of Appeal on Jan. 28 to challenge the appointments of Lobbying Commissioner Nancy Bélanger and Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion. The case was dismissed, and Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, told The Lobby Monitor he intends to apply for an appeal with the Supreme Court of Canada.

Conacher argued that the two commissioners were appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet without sufficient consultation with opposition parties. In the appeals court, Judge J.D. Denis Pelletier said he had not been persuaded that the cabinet’s view for these appointments was unreasonable.

Green Party parliamentary leader Elizabeth May joined her fellow Green MP Jenica Atwin and Paul Manly for a press conference on Jan 28 to discuss what they considered to be a problem of corporate influence over government decision-making.

May suggested that the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying should have greater independence and increased funding to improve the enforcement of lobbying laws. She also said that the office should increase its efficiency.

Atwin said that there is a “critical flaw” in the power extended to lobbyists, and argued that handfuls of corporations have more powerful voices when it comes to lobbying than large numbers of the public.

Environmental Defence Canada was the most active organization in terms of communication reports posted to the federal lobbyists’ registry between Jan 20 and Jan. 26. The advocacy group, registered with its executive director Tim Gray, filed eight communication reports in that time frame.

Two other organizations interested in discussing the environment, both from Alberta, also posted one communication report each last week. Those were Nauticol, a petrochemical company, and ATCO, a provider of electricity and natural gas that is also based.

In new registrations, health-focused organizations were the most prominent first-time registrations between Jan. 27 and Jan. 31. Four companies and organizations interested in discussing health made their first appearances on the registry this week. Among those is the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences (CSMB), which engaged consultant Kristina Proulx of Temple Scott Associates on Jan. 24, followed by Proulx’s colleague, consultant Don Moors, on Jan. 28. The CSMB is advocating for the federal government to implement recommendations laid out in the Naylor Report, which was released in 2017. The report, produced by a government-appointed independent advisory board, was a review of the level of government support for scientific research in Canada.

The two consultants will communicate with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Innovation, Finance and Environment, as well as with MPs and senators.

There are currently 1,132 organizations and companies active on the registry with an interest in discussing health. The number of filed communication reports related to health has been rising since October, reaching 106 reports in December. However, this is still well below the 209 health-related communication reports filed in June before Parliament dissolved in anticipation of the federal election in October.
 

New registry files posted between 2020-01-27 and 2020-01-31

Based on a search of the federal lobbyists' registry on Jan. 31 at 8:45 a.m.

New registrations posted between 2020-01-27 and 2020-01-31

Reactivations posted between 2020-01-27 and 2020-01-31