An annual report released this week detailing the pricey, free trips members of Parliament accepted from lobby groups and outside entities in 2017 has again highlighted how two different regimes – one regulating the actions of members of Parliament and the other regulating lobbyists – are out of sync on the issue of sponsored travel.

The former allows MPs to accept that kind of freebie; the other gives mixed messaging to the groups sponsoring the trips who are lobbying – or are planning to lobby – the MPs in question.

While the rules governing lobbyists don’t address sponsored travel specifically, a guidance document on giving gifts issued in early 2016 cautions lobby groups against offering free or discounted tickets to “charitable or other events” to public office holders they are lobbying or will lobby.

A review of the 2017 report on sponsored travel and federal lobbying records by iPolitics determined that four of the organizations who offered MPs thousands of dollars-worth of free travel to international destinations that year actively lobbied some of the MPs who accepted those gifts before or after the trips occurred.

“The provision of such a ticket may reasonably be viewed as creating a sense of obligation on the part of a public office holder, and therefore risks creating a conflict of interest for the public office holder,” reads the 2016 guidance document, which was released by former lobbying commissioner Karen Shepherd.

The annual sponsored travel report, released Tuesday, revealed that MPs from all three major parties accepted 97 free trips to countries like Taiwan, Israel and Ethiopia last year – worth just over $622,000 – sponsored by a variety of organizations and groups connected to foreign governments.

Seven of the organizations behind those trips are registered to lobby the federal government (although one isn’t registered to lobby officials in the House of Commons). Those seven groups bankrolled 25 of the 97 free expeditions – worth $189,045.53, or 30 per cent, of the total value of all the sponsored trips accepted last year.

Four of them – the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), Diabetes Canada, Results Canada and the Canadian Foodgrains Bank – lobbied some of the MPs who they took on free trips at some point in the same year. Spokespeople for three of the groups told iPolitics they don’t feel they’re creating a conflict of interest by offering MPs free travel while lobbying them, emphasizing the trips’ educational nature and the fact MPs are permitted to accept them.

Under the conflict of interest code governing MPs, which the ethics commissioner oversees, it’s above board for a member of the Green Chamber to accept a sponsored trip to a foreign country so long as he or she reports the trip to the ethics commissioner within 60 days. While some of the reasons provided for these international expeditions – many of which incur steep airfare costs – are vague, MPs have claimed they help them further their knowledge about certain issues and inform their work.

Meanwhile, the Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct’s silence on the issue of sponsored travel leaves its various rules and guidelines on gift-giving open to interpretation.

In response to an interview request with Lobbying Commissioner Nancy Bélanger, who enforces the code of conduct for lobbyists, a spokesperson said the commissioner “won’t be giving interviews on this matter at this time.”

Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher filed a complaint about the lobbying rules’ ambiguity two years ago, asking the lobbying commissioner to declare that sponsored travel violates the lobbyists’ code. In the complaint, Conacher also challenged trips paid for by groups not listed in the lobby registry, including the Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association, and questioned whether they lobbied enough during those trips to warrant registration with the commissioner’s office. The watchdog has yet to issue a ruling.

“Hopefully the ruling will come sooner than later because we’ve waited now almost two years,” Conacher said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Lobbying rules fail to explicitly mention sponsored travel

Neither the rules in the Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct or any guidance document issued by the Office of the Lobbying Commissioner explicitly mention, permit or prohibit sponsored travel.

Given MPs are allowed to accept sponsored travel when it relates to their work, that may appear to give lobby groups the all-clear to hand out free trips. But Shepherd’s 2016 guidance document on rule 10 cautions lobbyists against offering officials they are lobbying or might lobby “tickets to charitable or other events” that are “at a reduced cost or no cost.” Given MPs are allowed to accept sponsored travel when it relates to their work, that may appear to give lobby groups the all-clear to hand out free trips. But Shepherd’s 2016 guidance document on rule 10 cautions lobbyists against offering officials they are lobbying or might lobby “tickets to charitable or other events” that are “at a reduced cost or no cost.”

However, rule six of the Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct states that a lobbyist “shall not propose or undertake any action” that would place a public office holder in a conflict of interest – regardless of whether that conflict is “real or apparent.” (Conacher’s complaint alleges sponsored travel violates rule six.)

Rule 10 of the code goes on to address gifts. It states that a lobbyist – in order to avoid “the creation of a sense of obligation” – should not “provide or promise a gift, favour, or other benefit to a public office holder, whom they are lobbying or will lobby, which the public office holder is not allowed to accept.”

Given MPs are allowed to accept sponsored travel when it relates to their work, that may appear to give lobby groups the all-clear to hand out free trips. But Shepherd’s 2016 guidance document on rule 10 cautions lobbyists against offering officials they are lobbying or might lobby “tickets to charitable or other events” that are “at a reduced cost or no cost.”

“It’s an open question as to why rule 10 has this exception … and the relationship between (rule 10) and rule six,” Conacher said.

Shepherd’s guidance document said gifts are acceptable when they are “expressions of courtesy, protocol or hospitality provided when a public office holder is carrying out job-related duties.” It cites only a few examples, including “refreshments/meals served at an event” at which a public office holder is playing a role, and free tickets to a public event – such as “a community event or charitable fundraiser” held in an MP’s riding.

Further muddying the waters: the conflict of interest code doesn’t treat sponsored travel as a gift but the guidance document on rule 10 in the lobbyists’ code says the commissioner’s definition of ‘gift’ includes “anything of value, given for free or at a reduced rate, when there is no obligation to repay.” In a statement last March, Shepherd did not directly answer a question about whether she considers sponsored travel, specifically, to be a gift.

Four groups sponsored travel and lobbied same MPs in 2017

Four of the seven lobby groups that sponsored trips for MPs last year actively lobbied some of those same members before or after the junkets – and, in a few cases, their staff as well.

CIJA lobbied five of the 13 MPs it took to Israel last year at a cost of $151,214.68: Liberal MP Anju Dhillon; NDP MP Cheryl Hardcastle; Conservative MP Rachael Harder; Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell and Liberal MP Deb Schulte.

Diabetes Canada submitted communication reports naming NDP MP Christine Moore and Liberal MP Sonia Sidhu before or after spending $5,858.65 to send them to a global diabetes forum in Rome in October and November, respectively.

Canada Foodgrains Bank lobbied Liberal MP Francis Drouin and Tory MP Bev Shipley after taking them to Nicaragua to show them the “effects of Canadian aid in agriculture” in January 2017. (The organization also paid for NDP MP Cheryl Hardcastle to go to Nicaragua. The three trips collectively cost $9,943.44)

And Results Canada lobbied Liberal MP Pam Damoff and Tory MP Matt Jeneroux after flying them, respectively, to Washington D.C. in April and Ethiopia in August.

Asked why they sponsor trips to MPs when lobbying guidelines caution against gifting event tickets for free, spokespeople for CIJA, Diabetes Canada and the Canadian Foodgrains Bank told iPolitics they don’t feel there’s an issue with what they’re doing. Results Canada did not respond to a request for comment.

“When we take MPs on a learning tour, it’s very much a learning tour. We work them pretty hard,” said Jim Cornelius, executive director of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. “They stay in modest accommodations, we do not provide for spousal accompaniment. The whole point is for them to see programs on the ground and what’s being done with Canadian aid dollars. We’re never lobbying them around funding for us … we’re very much looking at the overall aid program and trying to build support for the overall aid program.”

Cornelius said his organization would “welcome” additional guidance notes on the issue of sponsored travel, provided they don’t “prevent or stop things that would be very helpful to the education of MPs.”

Diabetes Canada’s vice-president of government relations, Russell Williams, noted in a phone interview the organization invited three MPs of different political stripes – all of whom sit on the all-party diabetes caucus – to the forum in Italy and is comfortable with having sponsored two of them last year.

“It was education, it was information sharing and we thought this would be a proper thing to support from a Canadian leadership perspective … In this case we really think the exercise was really, really helpful for what the all-party diabetes caucus is trying to do,” Williams said, adding he thinks he will follow up with the lobbying commissioner’s office “for sure.”

CIJA’s director of government relations, David Cooper, pointed specifically to the exception in the House of Commons conflict of interest code that permits sponsored trips.

“That is why sponsored travel – most especially of the fact-finding/educational type undertaken by domestically funded groups like CIJA – is not included in the guidance document issued by the Lobbying Commissioner,” he wrote in an email.

Exception for sponsored travel in ethics rules needs to go, Conacher says

In addition his qualms with the lobbying rules, Conacher has also long decried the Commons conflict of interest code for prohibiting, in one section, any gifts “that might reasonably be seen to have been given to influence the Member in the exercise of a duty or function of his or her office” – yet permitting MPs to accept expensive, sponsored travel in another section.

“You cannot believe in those two rules unless you’re a hypocrite,” said Conacher, arguing that MPs should take out the exception for sponsored travel altogether.

Former ethics commissioner Mary Dawson had also proposed tightening the rules around sponsored travel in the conflict of interest code, suggesting MPs implement an “acceptability test” for paid trips – something that exists already for other gifts and benefits.

In a phone interview Tuesday, Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion said the parallelism between the two sections in the conflict of interest code is “obviously striking” – but stopped short of saying the rules should be changed, saying that’s up to parliamentarians to decide.

“Whether you receive a $10,000 trip or a $10,000 watch, it’s still $10,000,” Dion, adding that unlike a material gift, a trip is not something an MP gets to “keep” and there is “work” involved.

“I don’t fully understand yet the place of those sponsored travels in our present parliamentary system, so it’s a bit early for me to make any pronouncement.”