Industry lobbying under guise of pandemic stimuli pressing own interests behind closed doors

The pandemic emergency has been used by business interests to gain access to government officials to present corporate demands while claiming that they want to help out during this health crisis. Here are a few major examples that come from recent access to information requests or from leaks. Natural Resources Canada was receptive in 2020 to holding meetings that SNC-Lavalin's senior nuclear officers wanted during the pandemic. On the surface, the talks were supposed to be about helping out in the emergency crisis, but the presentations obtained under access legislation were largely about stimulus the SNC-Lavalin global nuclear sector division wanted. Redacted April 23, 2020, teleconference meeting notes with NRCan officials show SNC-Lavalin primarily taking the meeting as an opportunity to push for the sale of more nuclear reactors in Canada and abroad, and to ensure their lucrative refurbishing efforts at nuclear sites continued. NRCan saw the meeting as “SNC-Lavalin ... coming forward with their proposal for stimulus funding, which seeks to accelerate work in the nuclear space and investment in the Canadian economy,” followed by exemptions. Elsewhere in the meeting notes: “While this meeting is focused on stimulus proposals, it is an opportunity to request a full briefing from SNC-Lavalin on international CANDU projects and prospects.” SNC-Lavalin also wrote the then-clerk of the Privy Council, Ian Shugart, on March 25, 2020, offering COVID-19 help, but in that quarter were told their expertise was too far removed from the immediate medical crisis needs. SNC-Lavalin then went back for a July 6, 2020, video conference call with senior NRCan officials to continue pitching, this time promoting their version of a small nuclear reactor, the C-SMR, while talking more about global nuclear prospects as part of a clean energy future. Again, the exchanges were redacted as “advice” and commercially sensitive records not to be publicly disclosed. Another example of an industry meeting with government officials under the guise of COVID economic recovery planning was uncovered by Northwest Territories MLA Kevin O'Reilly. O'Reilly obtained the partial meeting minutes of a special crisis working group that the Northwest Territories Ministry of Industry, Tourism, and Investment (ITI) Department had with mining industry executives. What O'Reilly discovered in the highly redacted meeting minutes was that the industry representatives were lobbying government officials on matters of self interest, such as getting access to land set aside for land claim negotiations with First Nations—far beyond the stated rationale for the meetings, which was discussing the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of the exempt parts of the meetings, which O'Reilly is appealing, were claimed by ITI to be "advice" to the government from mining industry representatives. N.W.T. lacks lobbying legislation, so such secret lobbying normally goes on unrecorded and unregulated, but such outright lobbying advice shows who bosses who. As O'Reilly wrote to me on Aug. 4, 2021: “I, too, found it quite peculiar that the Minister made an offer to review the meeting summaries redactions in our House in response to my questions. I did send her a personal email that encouraged her to fully disclose everything in those meeting summaries but did not receive a reply. Of course, I am still waiting to see how my request for a review of those redactions plays out.” As reported by The Breach and Global News, who were given a leak of records, the oil and gas industry's trade association, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) in early 2020 sought to set up a COVID-19 Market Crisis Joint Working Group with NRCan for emergency recovery. But for whose recovery? CAPP's March to May 2020 exchanges, that I then went through access to information to confirm, reveal that CAPP asked NRCan to suspend or lower restrictions applying to the oil and gas industry. CAPP's idea was to “defer, suspend, or waive near-term, low-risk regulatory obligations in support of the public health response”; “defer … implementation of policy and regulations that are important”; and to prioritize “100 immediate deductibility for oil and gas capital investments...”. The inside leak of CAPP positions in April 2020 outed their demands, forcing them to post most of their full exchanges. In all likelihood, NRCan would have otherwise partly redacted CAPP's lobbying positions under access legislation had the industry not posted much of the data. Not only was NRCan presented with CAPP's multi-positions via the working group, but lobbyists were also at work almost daily at NRCan and other federal agencies, as lobby registrar records show, pressing for their positions to prolong their industry and projects. Attempting to hide the true purposes of secretive corporate-government interchanges is not new and rarely surfaces through leaks—that can be done by an inside whistleblower or when a government thinks it is in its interest to leak. But the Ontario government went to great lengths to try and hide special industry meetings they had with the car insurance lobby. Minutes from meetings the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) had in 2012 to 2014 with the Ontario Ministry of Finance and with the regulator, the Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO), were highly redacted. But what was billed as crisis meetings to lower auto premiums, records reveal, was more about IBC successfully pressuring the Ontario finance minister and the premier for customized auto insurance reforms that meant less coverage and, in many cases, higher auto premiums. But it took a two-and-half-year battle and appeals to the Ontario Information Commissioner to get those lobbying records in 2017. The arguments from Finance and FSCO to hide their IBC-government interactions records sound familiar. They claimed such meetings were protected as “policy advice,” since IBC was there as their “consultant” policy advisers, “retained” by them as a kind of “expert panel,” and added that such meetings held cabinet confidences because the IBC-generated auto insurance reform package was subsequently discussed at numerous cabinet meetings. Back in 2016, I argued that “widening the Cabinet exemption in the manner proposed to independent third party stakeholder records (IBC) would set a dangerous unwarranted precedent” and that the ministry, FSCO, and cabinet “utilizing the records of relevant stakeholders does not then make their views or their records government controlled, or give them a seat at the Cabinet table, or imply they have inside knowledge of Cabinet deliberations,” and “that such exemption claims made a mockery of Ontario's democratic and conflict of interest system as stakeholder positions and views are not official policy advice within the government or paid by the government or the minister or premier for their positions and views.” Fortunately, in 2017, the Information Commissioner of Ontario agreed that the Ontario Finance Ministry and FSCO arguments were without foundation and ordered the records released. The stakes are high in these high-level industry meetings with top officials where much pressure is exerted, usually with results favourable to those powerful industries. In the IBC case, high car insurance premiums paid by then-9.5 million car owners in a market dominated by several large car insurance companies kept profits high. SNC-Lavalin wants nothing more than a hearing for its “clean” technology advancement and added millions for refurbishing work at Canada's aging nuclear reactors. Canadian mining interests also want concessions for their industry and expansion, including on lands claimed by Indigenous people, with as little regulation as possible. In CAPP's case, the ask is nothing short of continuing concessions to oil and gas interests and prolonging fossil fuel exploitation. During COVID times, these special interests and major employers can blatantly lobby for their own well-being under the cover of COVID economic recovery behind closed doors, hoping their meetings will be kept secret. It's not a new tactic—that was used well before the pandemic hit—for groups going in to disguise their efforts as being in the public interest just so long as they get listened to and receive concessions. What these examples show is with weak access-to-information laws, weak or non-existent lobbying laws, and without some investigative reporting, big corporate interests can walk right in and get preferential meetings that they claim are for the public's benefit, never to be revealed. But it's time to end such secretive, too cozy, and one-sided industry-government relationships that keep the public in the dark. Ken Rubin is an investigative researcher reachable at kenrubin.ca The Hill Times