“Lobbying”

In my Government Relations practice, I rarely directly lobby governments. In fact, my government relations work in the past 20 years does not even qualify as “lobbying” under any existing federal or provincial law.

Rather I counsel clients on how to build their own government relationships. I help them to understand the public policy imperatives of government, the political considerations of stakeholders and the needs, wishes and sometimes whims of bureaucracies. I conduct underlying research including identification of those imperatives, issues, individuals and environmental factors relevant to the client’s position, and I build a formal plan of action to engage government and related stakeholders.

Since leaving government service in the early 1990s, I have only directly lobbied government on a handful of occasions:

— During my decade at Western Producer Publications I directly “lobbied” Canada Post, Department of Canadian Heritage and a number of cabinet ministers and Members of Parliament, but the lobbying never occupied 20% of my time so legally exempt.

— I have represented clients to federal cabinet ministers, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture, and several federal regulatory agencies, in every instance regarding the interests of agricultural producers, most notably regarding farmer access to competitively-priced farm inputs, and again all in manners exempt under the Lobbying Act.

— I met with Saskatchewan government and opposition caucus members once at the Saskatchewan Legislature, again on agriculture issues.

— I have spoken directly to senior members of the public service and cabinet ministers on a grand total of five other occasions  — that’s over the course of more than 20 years — on behalf of or in regard to clients, most recently a group of six small municipal governments.

In none of these cases did I seek, even coyly or suggestively, special consideration and never has any ever been offered.

The point is that my greatest involvement in government relations has not been by way of direct intervention.

The successes for clients have been found by developing for them a real government relations capacity. This means researching your own position, to understand implications beyond your own immediate needs or desires; assessing direct or indirect impacts on other stakeholders, the political environment, and the capacity or willingness of the bureaucracy to accommodate your position. On occasion, a client’s objectives are just not well-founded or justified and it becomes my job to help them reshape the objective to something that actually can achieve a desirable outcome for them.

In most cases it is a matter of finding the alignment between the client’s objectives and public policy goals; then managing the bureaucratic or other obstacles impairing that alignment. Governments have legitimate concerns and objectives that may not immediately line up with yours. Other stakeholders have legitimate concerns and objectives that may not line up with yours. The work is in showing how achieving your objective will also serve those other interests or at minimum, not unreasonably interfere with those other interests.

The fact is that the majority of client objectives are indeed in the public interest. The “trick” is in identifying that link and demonstrating it to the decision-makers. There is no trick in trying to squeeze a favour or hide an agenda and doing so will almost always, and should always, come back to bite you.