So has anyone actually seen
the email from Gagnier to Transcanada? Because...wow, I take back anything I even said about the optics being bad. It's a civics lesson. It's about as scandalous as a high school class that teaches you how government functions. Anyone saying it's evidence of "business interests" having a backdoor to the Liberal Party is, quite frankly, an idiot.
At the risk of derailing the thread on this issue again I want to point out the problematic part of this letter and why some voters might be troubled. This letter may well be totally benign, but I do think it can be interpreted in a negative way depending on your reading of it. This is why it's unsurprising to see Gagnier forced to resign and the media start to
focus on this issue.
We can basically ignore everything in the letter except these last paragraphs:
An energy strategy for Canada is on the radar and we need a spear carrier for those in the industry who are part of the solution going forward rather than refusing to grasp the implications of a changing global reality.
The last point is critical as Federal leadership and a discussion with Premiers will take place early. This is where we can play and help them get things right.
There's a few interpretations of this depending on what "we" means and who the "spear carrier" is.
Gagnier could simply be saying that TransCanada will need to be aggressive in deploying their registered lobbyists at the right time. Ok. There's nothing wrong with lobbying the government in general. A bit weird that he feels he needs to talk with his partners about this during a campaign but ok.
Alternatively, he could be saying, "The Liberals are going to win this thing and you guys will need someone that knows this new government to help organize you guys. I'm your man. I can help you."
This second interpretation is troubling because Gagnier seems to be saying that he is interested in actively helping them in the future, but his close work with the Liberal party creates a potential conflict of interest. If a registered lobbyist for example worked in on a political campaign at this high of a level, they'd be barred from lobbying the government for 5 years.
This article goes into some detail on lobbying rules and quotes some guidance from the commissioner of lobbying on this issue:
"Lobbyists who perform these political activities should recognize that undertaking such activities will mean that they cannot lobby that individual once elected, nor his or her staff," Shepherd says.
In the case of lobbyists who work on regional or national campaigns, she says they should not lobby the party leader or the leader's staff or any other public office holder who may reasonably feel a sense of obligation as a result of the lobbyist's campaign involvement.
Of course Gagnier is not a registered lobbyist so I have no idea what this means for him. It may be nothing at all, or maybe he could be potentially fined for unregistered lobbying. I'm not going to dig into this issue further, but I do know that the optics and timing of this will unsettle some voters even if Gagnier technically broke no laws.
So how is this different from Brad Lavigne on the NDP, who was also a lobbyist associated with the oil industry? Well in that case:
* Lavigne had resigned from his job before the campaign started.
* There is no evidence that Lavigne is in contact with his prior employer.
In contrast Gagnier is seemingly still closely associated with his employers while working on the campaign. That is a clear distinction.
Trudeau did the right thing by kicking Gagnier from the campaign. The Liberals have made a lot of promises that they're a different party and they're going to have high standards of ethics and accountability. I want to believe they have changed, but until they prove that with their actions in government I think they need to be kept on a short leash with a minority mandate.
Not everyone is going to feel strongly about this issue, but there is a segment of the population that doesn't like to see coziness between government and business that won't like this. Maybe this is an "everyone does it" situation for insiders in Ottawa and cynical political followers, but not for average Canadians. This is a negative for the Liberal campaign for this to suddenly appear and unsurprisingly given their position in the polls the NDP have latched onto it with a
new campaign ad. Given the time left in the campaign and the nicheness of this issue I don't think this'll have that big of an effect. There is just no time left in this campaign to really talk about this issue all that much.