Here is another column in my series of unpleasant truths to hear.
The newspaper tells us that former Liberal minister David Heurtel, duly registered in the register of lobbyists, is working to obtain from Minister Fitzgibbon the right for the private firm he represents to produce hydroelectricity to power vehicles.
Lobbying and Fitzgibbon: put these two words side by side and the reactions will be predictable.
Transparency
Let us focus here on the phenomenon of lobbying itself.
Scandalous? Organized corruption?
Lobbying is any attempt by an individual or group to try to influence a government.
So who is lobbying? Almost everyone.
Private companies, but also unions, professional orders, the community sector, environmental groups, artists, groups of seniors, students, women, LGBTQ, ordinary citizens for or against a project, etc. .
In short, we have all, sooner or later, lobbied.
We do it to take advantage of an opportunity or to create one, to counter a threat, to counterbalance the lobbying of a rival, or simply to let people know that you exist, because if the government does not know you, it it’s like you don’t exist.
We’re lobbying for a seat around the table, because if you’re not around the table, you’re probably on the menu.
If person A wants something and finds person B who wants the same thing, they will band together…and an interest group is born…to lobby.
The lobbyist disturbs us when he wants something that we disapprove of or when he has means superior to ours.
When he works for us, we’ll call it “self-defense of our interests”.
Can we conceive of a democracy without interest groups, only made up of individual citizens? Of course not.
It is often said that lobbying is a misappropriation of the general interest. Sometimes, yes, but is there a consensus on what is the general interest?
Of course not. Democracy is organized competition between opposing interests.
If a minister meets a lobbyist, we will say that he is “under the influence”. But if he does not meet anyone, if he is isolated under a bell jar, we will say that he is “disconnected”.
But is he not surrounded by civil servants to assist him? Precisely, they often find it very useful to know the expectations and interests of a sector.
For lobbying to be legal and legitimate, it must be transparent: we must know who is meeting whom and why, hence the existence of a public register, easy to access, which you and I can consult in all the time.
Hours of free fun, believe me.
Resources
Is there still illegal lobbying? Yes, but much less than before.
Obviously, not everyone has the same resources in this game of influence, and this is a problem without a fully satisfactory solution.
This is why we seek to prevent the worst slippages by requiring transparency.