After barely three months of operation, Toronto's lobbyist registry requires some fine-tuning, but there is no need to suspend its website, as one city councillor has suggested.
The registry monitors lobbyists seeking to influence decision-making in Canada's largest city. The backbone of the service is its website, where lobbyists register online and where the public can see who is lobbying whom.
Simply because the rules under which this agency operates are being modified is no reason for the web presence to vanish, even temporarily. Yet a suspension of online public searches and registrations is being urged by Councillor Sandra Bussin.
There are, indeed, some legitimate concerns about the registry, including the requirement that lobbyists list in advance everyone they might approach.
Some lobbyists, unsure of their plans, simply list all city councillors as potential targets. In Bussin's case, the agency's website lists 173 people who have registered as lobbyists intending to contact her, but she has talked with only two, and they were constituents. Bussin is understandably upset because, as council's speaker, she strives to keep lobbyist contacts to a minimum.
Obviously, there is little value in listing potential contacts that never materialize. But Bussin's suggested response – shutting down the agency's web operations – goes too far. Until the new rules are in place, she is calling for a return to "more traditional methodology," such as having the public and lobbyists either telephone or appear in person at city hall to obtain information. That is not how one communicates in the 21st century.
Some teething pains should be expected given that this is the first lobbyist registry in Canada operated and administered by a municipality. And action is being taken. Lobbyist registrar Marilyn Abraham is in the process of changing the rules, including lifting the requirement to list potential contacts. Her recommendations are expected to go to the executive committee, and subsequently city council, in June.
With improvements on the way, it would be unwise to hamstring this registry by suspending its website.
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