Federal Court upholds lobbying watchdog’s ruling that cleared two former Freeland aides

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The Federal Court has upheld a ruling by the Lobbying Commissioner that cleared two former political aides of Chrystia Freeland of breaching lobbying rules.

Justice Angela Furlanetto concluded that Nancy Bélanger’s March, 2020, finding was not unreasonable. It had been challenged in court by Democracy Watch, an Ottawa-based advocacy organization.

The commissioner’s investigation was based in part on a 2017 report by The Globe and Mail about the creation of a high-tech lobby group called the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI). The group continues to be led by Benjamin Bergen, who worked as an executive assistant to Ms. Freeland when she was an opposition MP. She is now Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.

Mr. Bergen and Dana O’Born were co-campaign managers of Ms. Freeland’s 2015 election campaign. Ms. O’Born was the CCI’s director of policy and is now vice-president of strategy and advocacy. They were also both executive members of Ms. Freeland’s electoral district association for periods in 2016 and 2017 while they were registered to lobby the federal government on behalf of CCI.

The council is chaired by former BlackBerry Ltd. chief executive officer Jim Balsillie.

In 2017, the council sent a membership drive letter to clean technology companies promising that their CEOs would get monthly meetings with then-Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s chief of staff in exchange for a $10,000-a-year membership fee. Ms. McKenna’s office described the pitch as “neither accurate nor appropriate,” and the council agreed to revise the letter’s wording.

The Lobbying Commissioner’s 2020 report into the activities of Mr. Bergen and Ms. O’Born concluded that both had complied with a five-year cooling-off period during which they were not to lobby Ms. Freeland or her staff in light of their past political work.

The report noted that they did, however, have interactions with David Lametti and his staff when he was parliamentary secretary to Ms. Freeland and she was the minister of international trade. Mr. Lametti is now the Minister of Justice.

The commissioner concluded that while parliamentary secretaries are not considered ministerial staff for the purposes of lobbying rules, the code should be changed.

That change is included in the new Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct, which will take effect July 1, replacing the previous code, from 2015. The new code defines parliamentary secretaries and their staff as associates of a public office holder.

The length of cooling-off periods has also been shortened in some cases. The new rules set a 24-month cooling-off period for a lobbyist who has worked as a campaign manager or served on the electoral district association of a public office holder.

The commissioner’s 2020 ruling also said that while CCI reported lobbying contacts with public servants at Global Affairs on trade-related topics in 2016 while Ms. Freeland was the minister, considering those employees staff in an elected official’s office “would be incompatible with the professional ethos of the federal public service as non-partisan and impartial.”

In her decision released Tuesday, Justice Furlanetto rejected Democracy Watch’s concerns regarding the commissioner’s findings.

“In my view, the approach taken by the Commissioner was not unreasonable. The reasons set out a rational chain of analysis in arriving at the conclusions reached,” she wrote.

Mr. Bergen and Ms. O’Born both provided statements Friday to The Globe welcoming the findings of the Federal Court and the Lobbying Commissioner.

“I have always worked with great integrity to support the growth of Canada’s innovation sector, and now with these allegations behind us, I am squarely focused on the work ahead of us to support all innovators in their pursuits to scale up globally,” Ms. O’Born said.

Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher said his organization will appeal the ruling. He said allowing people with political ties to lobby the departments of ministers they helped politically leaves a “huge loophole” in the rules.