Key Liberal quits over email
It’s a story that will likely leave some long-time Liberal strategists wondering if they’d been transported back in time, to the dark days that preceded the party’s decade-long exile from the corridors of power.
On Wednesday evening, the Liberal party’s national campaign co-chair Dan Gagnier announced he was stepping down from his role following revelations that he’d sent a detailed email to people behind the Energy East pipeline with advice on how and when to lobby a new government.
The email included, somewhat awkwardly for Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, advice on how the energy company could go about lobbying a minority government led by Trudeau.
Earlier in the day, when the Canadian Press first broke the story, the Liberals stood by Gagnier, saying he did not break any ethical standards.
Despite that, it appears the optics were bad enough that Gagnier’s tenure with the party was to come to a quick end — just four days before Canadians head to the polls to elect a new government.
In a statement announcing his departure on Wednesday night, Gagnier said that “in order to avoid becoming a distraction to the campaign” he would be taking “a step back” from his campaign responsibilities.
For their part, the Liberals said Gagnier made his decision in the best interests of the party and they respect his decision.
In the email Gagnier sent on Monday, he told five people at TransCanada Corp. to target the right people in a new government as quickly as possible so they can help shape either Liberal or NDP decisions on a national energy strategy. Such a lobbying effort would be needed to ensure the planned “in-service” dates of projects like Energy East aren’t put at risk, the email said.
Gagnier also predicted that a Liberal or New Democrat government would likely reduce the size of cabinet to about 25 ministers, which would make the finance minister a critical lobbying target.
The Liberals initially defended Gagnier by saying he was an unpaid volunteer who does not advise either Trudeau or the campaign on energy issues.
As for his advice to TransCanada, it had “nothing to do with his volunteer role on the campaign,” the Liberals said earlier on Wednesday. And in a defence of the email’s content, the party said the information stemmed from Gagnier’s “years of experience in public service, and is based on publicly available information describing possible scenarios that any new government may face.”
It’s worth noting that Gagnier himself is not a registered lobbyist, although his name does appear in now-archived filings from the Energy Policy Institute of Canada, the non-profit business association he previously ran.
If he were a lobbyist, his email would likely have been considered a clear breach of the guidelines laid out by the federal lobbying commissioner before the writ dropped. Those guidelines advised lobbyists to avoid engaging in any electioneering activities — on the hustings or in the war room — that could potentially create a conflict-of-interest-inwaiting when they eventually go back to their day jobs.
It also encouraged them to take into account the potential future needs of clients when trying to decide if a particular electoral activity could cause problems down the line.
For a registered lobbyist — which again, Gagnier is not — to provide strategic, if speculative advice on the post-Oct. 19 political landscape while simultaneously co-calling the shots on a campaign would almost certainly be seen as conduct that would raise questions — and eyebrows — if his or her party were to wind up in power.
There are no similar prohibitions on political multitasking by those who provide on-demand insight to private companies hoping to get a foot in the door with the federal government, of course, which means that the Liberals are technically correct when they claim that no ethical rules were broken, for the simple reason that no such rules exist.
However, considering the history of the Liberal party and the ethical quagmires that ultimately consumed the Chrétien-Martin era, one presumes that the Liberal brain trust realized that a defence that boiled down to: “It looks bad, but we technically didn’t do anything wrong” might not play well with voters.
As for Trudeau, there’s no reason to assume he was aware that Gagnier was giving his contacts at TransCanada a few suggestions on how to get off to a good start with a newly installed government.
Of course, he’s well aware of it now.
At the very least, he should acknowledge the potential for conflict of interest — whether real or apparent doesn’t matter at this point — while making it crystal clear that neither the company behind the Energy East proposal nor any other lobbyist will enjoy exclusive access to his still-theoretical PMO.
If he doesn’t — and if this latest story reminds voters thinking of returning to the Liberal fold of a party that was once mired by scandal — he may not have to worry about moving into 24 Sussex after all.
The Liberal brain trust realized that a defence that boiled down to: ‘It looks bad, but we technically didn’t do anything wrong’ might not play well with voters.