OTTAWA—One of Washington’s most influential lobbying firms made thousands of dollars in political contributions to key U.S. lawmakers last year as it worked on behalf of the Alberta government to drum up congressional support for the Keystone XL pipeline, documents reveal.

Chronicling meetings and luncheons between lobbyists and congressional staffers, the U.S. government records offer a glimpse into Alberta’s efforts to promote a project that is facing a growing number of hurdles across the border.

If built, the pipeline would carry oil from Alberta to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. A key part of the plan to expand exports of Canada’s growing petroleum production, Keystone has been heavily promoted by the Harper government and Alberta. The pipeline’s fate has become a major factor in Canada-U.S. relations and has huge significance for future environmental and economic developments in Canada.

Kelly Bingel, a well-connected lobbyist with Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti Inc. in Washington, D.C., met with members of the staff of 20 U.S. senators between March and May 2013 to “better articulate the benefit of Alberta’s energy resource development,” according to documents filed with the U.S. Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Five of those meetings, the documents show, occurred around the same time that Bingel handed over political contributions to those five senators’ campaign committees.

Among the donations was a $3,761 contribution from Bingel to Sen. Kay Hagan, a North Carolina Democrat, on March 25, 10 days after Bingel and Hagan’s legislative assistant met for lunch to discuss the oilsands. Another contribution, amounting to $1,074, was filed by Bingel on the same day to Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado. Bingel and senior Udall staffers subsequently held a meeting on April 2.

According to the documents, Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti argued that Alberta had made significant strides in cutting its carbon emissions, and that reducing U.S. dependence on Saudi and Venezuelan oil would further U.S. foreign policy.

The donations were the largest the two senators received from Bingel since they assumed office.

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In another instance, Montana Democrat Max Baucus, then chair of the Senate finance committee, collected $2,149 in donations from Bingel on March 25. Nine days later, on April 4, Baucus’ legislative assistant met with Bingel. The previous donation Baucus received from Bingel dates back to January 2007.

Two other senators received contributions within a month of meeting a lobbyist from the firm.

Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti received $74,000 from Alberta over the duration of the contract, which ran from March through June 2013, according to Foreign Agents Registration Act records. In that period, the firm made a total of $17,000 in contributions to senators it reported in U.S. government documents that it had met on behalf of the province. Those contributions were part of a total of $77,086 in political contributions Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti made to U.S. lawmakers during that period.

There is no evidence that money donated by Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti came directly from the government of Alberta. The lobbyists were working on behalf of other clients throughout the same period. Bingel declined to comment on the nature of her meetings, citing the company’s policy on client privacy.

The government relations firm’s contributions were only part of the millions of dollars the oil and gas industry spends to make its views known in Congress. Since it was first proposed in 2005, the much-disputed Keystone pipeline has generated an extensive lobbying campaign in Washington.

A key moment came in the vote on HR3, a bill in the House of Representatives that would have allowed Congress to approve the northern sections of Keystone without authorization from the White House. According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, members of the House who voted to approve the legislation each garnered an average of $61,312 in donations from mostly Canadian and U.S. energy companies during the 2012 election cycle. HR3 passed in the House, but was blocked by partisan gridlock in the U.S. Senate.

While not illegal, such contributions, consumer advocates say, underscore the cosy relationship between lobbyists and members of Congress on Capitol Hill.

“It’s both highly unethical and business as usual,” Craig Holman, the government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, a public advocacy group based in Washington, told the Star. “There are a couple of influence peddling tools that K Street lobbyists can afford employing, and one of them is making campaign contributions and bundling contributions to those who they are trying to influence.”

Holman said he is working with the American Bar Association on a piece of legislation that would, if passed, ban lobbyists from contributing to electoral funds. The practice is unethical, he said.

“When you’re handing out campaign contributions to those who you are trying to influence, it is, in my opinion, identical to bribery. You are literally handling out a fistful of cash to someone you’re asking a favour from,” Holman said. “Lobbyists don’t usually do so based on parties or even ideologies. They’re not trying to support their own political causes. They want to buy influence.”

The growth of lobbying in Washington has given rise to concerns that interest groups have too much influence, with critics saying the law governing lobbying for domestic interests — the Lobbying Disclosure Act — needs to be strengthened. Those lobbying for foreign companies or governments are required to provide information on their activities under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

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Neither of the laws governs the timing of political contributions.

“As an appearance matter, you want to leave a little distance between a contribution and a meeting so it doesn’t look like a quid pro quo,” Kenneth Gross, a specialist on election law and a former lawyer for the U.S. Federal Election Commission, told the Star. “But in order for it to be illegal, the government would have to prove an actual quid pro quo took place . . . that some official action was taken by the congressmen for that contribution.”

Such a high standard of proof is difficult to meet, Gross said.

He recalled only one incident where the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent watchdog agency, investigated the timing of a campaign donation. But the case, which had nothing to do with Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti, was later dismissed after it was referred to the House Committee on Ethics, a panel composed of an equal number of members of Congress from both sides of the aisle.

“A whole bunch of contributions came in from political action committees that week (of a vote),” Gross said. “After a lot of examination and investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics, they referred the members to the ethics committee, which they do if they think there is an elevated chance of a violation. Then after the ethics committee looked at those referrals, they ended up dismissing it.”

“After all was said and done, a lot more was said than done,” he said.

The hiring of Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti was part of a wider effort by Alberta to sway Congress on the oilsands. Between 2010 and 2013, the province spent $1.1 million to lobby lawmakers on Capitol Hill, according to data from the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan U.S. organization advocating for a more open and accountable government.

Alberta has an office in Washington, but its limited staff occasionally needs help in navigating the U.S. capital, said Cal Dallas, Alberta’s international and intergovernmental affairs relations minister.

“Obviously, we think it’s important or we wouldn’t do it. It involves expenditure of taxpayer funds. Really, what it reflects is a pretty unique political atmosphere in Washington and from time to time, depending on the circumstances — and obviously the Keystone project is critically important to Alberta’s future — we make decisions around supports that we feel that would be beneficial to support our efforts,” he said.

“Whether that’s in the context of media strategies or media access or whether it’s event organization or opportunities or it’s specifically support developing briefings and assisting with accessing meeting opportunities, we do use outside firms,” Dallas told the Star.

The minister said he was not aware that lobbyists hired by his government were providing campaign funds to members of Congress. But the practice, he said, is not surprising, given the way Washington operates.

“I don’t monitor that, and quite frankly, I expect pretty much everybody engaged in that business there is engaged in those types of activities, but it’s not something we monitor,” he said.

“It’s their practice and their rules,” Dallas added. “It’s a unique political atmosphere there in Washington, and it’s certainly different than our political process here. It’s a very complex process where you have 600 legislators in one environment constantly being accessed on a variety of issues, and the nature of their political scenario is that they are in a continuous mode of election-related scenarios that involve fundraising and that type of thing.”

Alberta currently has no contracts with lobbyists in the U.S. capital, Dallas said.

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