If the March 9 ethics committee hearing was supposed to be Parliament’s long-overdue reckoning with Canada’s lobbying law, Democracy Watch says MPs barely scratched the surface.
In comments after the hearing, Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher said the House of Commons ethics committee largely failed to confront Commissioner of Lobbying Nancy Bélanger over what he called a “negligently bad enforcement record,” even though the hearing opened the door to exactly that line of scrutiny. Bélanger came to committee with 21 recommendations to modernize the Lobbying Act, framed around transparency, enforcement and efficiency. But much of the most revealing testimony came not from her opening statement, but from the admissions she made under questioning.
Conacher’s central complaint is straightforward: MPs heard enough in Bélanger’s own testimony to press her hard on how weak federal enforcement has been, and they did not. Conservative MP Michael Barrett got closest. Under questioning, Bélanger said she has referred 19 cases to the RCMP over nine years and that only two charges have been laid, with four files still sitting with police at the time of the hearing. Yet her own annual reports show she has let off 98% of lobbyists she caught violating the Act (894 out of 911). Conacher argues that Bélanger’s testimony left the impression that possible violations routinely move into the RCMP channel, when in his view most cases never get that far, including the 13 cases Democracy Watch highlighted in its March 9 release.
That exchange is exactly where Democracy Watch says the committee should have gone further. Conacher argues that Bélanger’s testimony left the impression that possible violations routinely move into the RCMP channel, when in his view her annual reports show the opposite: most cases never get that far, and most lobbyists caught violating the Act are simply let off. Conacher says that is the real enforcement story, and the committee failed to dig into it.
Democracy Watch is also taking direct aim at another point Bélanger made repeatedly during the hearing: that once the RCMP closes a file, her hands are effectively tied. In one exchange, Bélanger told Bloc MP Luc Thériault that investigations “rarely” become public under the way the law is written, because if she believes an offence occurred she must send the matter to the RCMP, and she does not have the power to say publicly that someone infringed the Act. When asked whether she wants that power, she answered: “Yes, absolutely.”
Conacher says that answer left out a critical point. In Democracy Watch’s view, even when the RCMP declines to prosecute, Bélanger can still issue public rulings under the Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct and identify lobbyists who breached the rules on a civil standard of proof. Democracy Watch argues that in the 13 cases highlighted in its March 9 release, Bélanger could have done exactly that after police sent the files back. Instead, Conacher says, the cases were buried.
The sharpest split between Democracy Watch and the commissioner may be over what Bélanger did not recommend. One of the most striking exchanges in the hearing came when Michael Cooper raised the Mark Carney advisory arrangement and Bélanger acknowledged that unpaid lobbying is a major blind spot in the law. She told MPs that people who lobby the federal government generally must be paid for the Act to apply, and that if someone is “lobbying for free,” they are not covered. She added that former designated public office holders who are barred from lobbying for five years may still communicate with former colleagues if they do so as volunteers, because they may not be covered when acting “for free.”
That point landed hard with Democracy Watch. Conacher says the unpaid-lobbying loophole is one of the biggest in the entire Act, and he argues it is glaring that Bélanger raised it aloud during the hearing but did not include it among her formal recommendations to Parliament. In Democracy Watch’s view, that omission matters because it leaves one of the easiest workarounds in the lobbying regime intact: influence can still be exerted through volunteers, unpaid advisers, or people working through organizations without triggering registration.
The same pattern runs through the commissioner’s treatment of the “significant part of duties” rule; better known as the threshold that lets in-house lobbyists stay out of the public registry if they do not lobby enough hours. Under questioning, Bélanger confirmed that she has reduced the threshold from the old 32-hour interpretation to eight hours a month, and added bluntly that it “should be zero.” She also told MPs that the eight-hour rule remains only because that is how she is currently interpreting the law, not because she thinks it is a good system.
That testimony overlaps directly with one of Democracy Watch’s core demands: eliminate the threshold entirely and move to registration by default. Conacher says the current rule is one of the main reasons lobbying remains hidden in Ottawa. Bélanger herself gave Parliament part of that case when she acknowledged that under the current system, organizations often say they stayed below the threshold, and that if lobbying happens below that line, it can remain invisible unless someone complains. She also told MPs that the system still relies heavily on trust, with only 35 employees overseeing thousands of lobbyists and verifying disclosures after the fact.
Then there is procurement lobbying, which may have been the most explosive admission of the entire hearing. Barrett and later Gabriel Hardy walked Bélanger through scenarios involving former ministers or former senior officials using their networks to pursue federal business. Bélanger’s answer was unequivocal: communications to obtain contracts are not covered by the Lobbying Act for organizations and corporations. She said that is “a problem,” and that her recommendation is to add contract-related communications to the Act, except where the communication takes place within a transparent public process such as an RFP or standing offer. When Barrett pressed her again, Bélanger repeated it: “It’s not” covered right now.
For Democracy Watch, that concession goes to the heart of why the federal regime remains so porous. Procurement is one of the largest channels of government spending, yet under the current structure some of the most politically sensitive positioning for contracts can occur outside the public registry. Conacher says the committee should have treated that as a central defect in the statute, not just another technical amendment.
The hearing also confirmed what Bélanger herself called “shadow lobbying.” Cooper asked what happens when a former designated public office holder who is barred from lobbying personally sets up a firm, hires others, and lets them use his reputation, network and contacts to do the communicating. Bélanger answered that if the former official is not the one communicating, “it’s not coverage.” She then acknowledged the term directly: “People call this shadow lobbying.” Her bottom line was even more telling: if someone else does the communicating for them, “what can I do really?”
That exchange is another place where Democracy Watch says the committee should have pushed harder. Conacher argues that the law still focuses too narrowly on who makes the call or attends the meeting, while leaving the broader machinery of influence, the strategic direction, the network access, the use of proxies, largely untouched.
To be fair, the hearing did produce some useful clarity. Bélanger openly supported stronger enforcement tools, including administrative penalties, mandatory training, and faster public disclosure of lesser violations rather than sending everything into the RCMP pipeline. She said not all offences are equal and that the current system makes it difficult to deal proportionately with repeat late filings, failures to register, and other routine non-compliance. Right now, she said, some offenders get repeated letters with “no consequences.”
But that is exactly why the hearing mattered less for what Bélanger proposed than for what she left out. Conacher’s view is that the commissioner’s recommendations close only part of the secrecy problem, miss some of the biggest loopholes entirely, and still do not grapple with the deeper enforcement failures that his group says have defined the office for years.
So here’s the question nobody in that committee room wanted to answer out loud:
If the regulator herself is telling you the unpaid loophole exists, the eight-hour rule hides lobbying, contract deals slip through unregistered, and shadow lobbying lets former insiders pull strings from the sidelines and Parliament still doesn’t demand immediate, sweeping changes then who exactly is this system designed to protect?
Once those facts were on the table, the committee had an obligation to push harder. They didn’t. They listened politely, thanked the commissioner, and let the status quo walk right out the door with them.
Because in Ottawa, the rules aren’t written to expose influence. They’re written to manage it, quietly, safely, and always in favour of the people already inside the tent.