‘Time to resurrect conversation about lobby registry’: Nenshi

Mayor Naheed Nenshi said Tuesday it may be time for city council to consider a lobbyist registry after concerns were raised about councillors circumventing disclosure rules around visitors to their offices. The concerns were raised in a session with council’s ethics adviser, Alice Woolley, who was in chambers Tuesday to present on proposed bylaw changes that will codify recent changes to council’s code of conduct.

Coun. Ward Sutherland told the ethics adviser that it had come to his attention that “some members” of council have insisted on conducting all of their meetings by phone to avoid a rule requiring councillors to document meetings at their office.

“So they don’t register a (visitor). They only have the conversation on the phone so they don’t have to register that visitor and they’re making that a practice,” Sutherland said.

“That’s actually a really big deal,” Nenshi replied.

“If people are trying to find ways around this by meeting outside of their office, or just not having meetings, then it’s probably time for us to resurrect the conversation about a lobbyist registry.”

Council’s existing visitor policy is not a formal lobbyist registry, which is rare among municipalities but does exist at other levels of government and in the City of Toronto, which elected to create one in 2007.

In Calgary, the mayor and councillors are required to track visitors to their offices using a sign-in sheet. The sheets do not include details about the subject of the meetings.

Councillors are technically not required to track outside meetings, but Woolley said Tuesday that the fact off-site meetings are not formally documented is just to avoid the “impracticality ” of councillors being required to track every person they speak to outside the office inaday.

Woolley also said council’s rule on tracking visitors isn’t about whether the meeting is in-person, by phone or by Skype.