Government funding "non government organizations" is essentially the action of criminal organizations more resembling a conspiracy than lobbying. Virtually all NGOs are engaged in attempting to influence governments and those that take government funding should not qualify for tax exempt status and the approval of each individual organizational funding should come from parliament. Wearing them out this way might keep them from their normal legislating activities resulting in the ratchetting up of the leviathan state.
David: When you talk about the growth of lobbying you can be mislead by the statistics. The growth does not actually measure the increase in the volume of lobbying, it reflects LRA regulations changes that require more people to register who spend most of their working day doing other things besides lobbying. Most of these people are not full- time or even part-time lobbyists.
Your point on the Pembina Institute in relevant. Government departments funds groups who then can also lobby them on some issues. This used to be more common but it still occurs.
An interesting question is where do you go to get funding if you are a non-profit think tank. Some groups are well supported by business interests but other do not have the access to those sources because the public policy issues they champion do not attract business funding. Often Government becomes a place they can get funding for research projects. Government can also look for outside expertise from academia but professors also rely on government funding. Think tanks and Policy Institutes need funding to survive. Many of them will not attract enough funding from corporations or individuals to survive, so they go where they can. Is that good or bad?
Just for the devilment of it, I will answer in the negative, that is, that all of these activities should not occur. Therefore, assume that they don't happen. The consequent question that occurs to me is that, after we "agree" to such a ban, all of the various public servants will have more time to publicly serve us (hah!), what will be the consequence? Better / worse policy? Better / worse "service" [apologies to the many truly dedicated public servants, but how is it possible for public "service" as a whole to be worse in this country?].
Clearly, said public servants would not understand nearly as well what the various lobbyists and their clients believe is good public policy (a debatable point, but, just say ...) so would we have a better result if we banned lobbying entirely or perhaps banned lobbying only the public service and said only politicians should be lobbied? Is that a good thing? Otherwise?
My point is that you raise provocative questions (at least implicitly you do) so what reasonable lines of thought might one draw from those provocations?
You'd have to ask people inside government that question.
But I'm not sure that we would necessarily always *want* to prevent the practice. I understand that there are times when organizations are funded by government to perform tasks that government can't do as well. And some of those organizations develop unique expertise in the process that could be helpful for policy makers. That knowledge transfer could theoretically work through lobbying.
However, I'm pretty sure that there are also cases where the system is abused. Those should be shut down.
Government funding "non government organizations" is essentially the action of criminal organizations more resembling a conspiracy than lobbying. Virtually all NGOs are engaged in attempting to influence governments and those that take government funding should not qualify for tax exempt status and the approval of each individual organizational funding should come from parliament. Wearing them out this way might keep them from their normal legislating activities resulting in the ratchetting up of the leviathan state.
David: When you talk about the growth of lobbying you can be mislead by the statistics. The growth does not actually measure the increase in the volume of lobbying, it reflects LRA regulations changes that require more people to register who spend most of their working day doing other things besides lobbying. Most of these people are not full- time or even part-time lobbyists.
Your point on the Pembina Institute in relevant. Government departments funds groups who then can also lobby them on some issues. This used to be more common but it still occurs.
An interesting question is where do you go to get funding if you are a non-profit think tank. Some groups are well supported by business interests but other do not have the access to those sources because the public policy issues they champion do not attract business funding. Often Government becomes a place they can get funding for research projects. Government can also look for outside expertise from academia but professors also rely on government funding. Think tanks and Policy Institutes need funding to survive. Many of them will not attract enough funding from corporations or individuals to survive, so they go where they can. Is that good or bad?
David, you raise some interesting questions.
Just for the devilment of it, I will answer in the negative, that is, that all of these activities should not occur. Therefore, assume that they don't happen. The consequent question that occurs to me is that, after we "agree" to such a ban, all of the various public servants will have more time to publicly serve us (hah!), what will be the consequence? Better / worse policy? Better / worse "service" [apologies to the many truly dedicated public servants, but how is it possible for public "service" as a whole to be worse in this country?].
Clearly, said public servants would not understand nearly as well what the various lobbyists and their clients believe is good public policy (a debatable point, but, just say ...) so would we have a better result if we banned lobbying entirely or perhaps banned lobbying only the public service and said only politicians should be lobbied? Is that a good thing? Otherwise?
My point is that you raise provocative questions (at least implicitly you do) so what reasonable lines of thought might one draw from those provocations?
Inquiring minds, as one might say.
It would definitely be worth spending some time gaming possible solutions to the problems. But they don't pay me enough for that just yet. :)
Lobbyist salaries can be paid by donors and not directly with tax dollars ( and I realize donors get tax breaks).
Can we no make sure that the organizations that lobby the government cannot use subsidies to pay lobbyists?
You'd have to ask people inside government that question.
But I'm not sure that we would necessarily always *want* to prevent the practice. I understand that there are times when organizations are funded by government to perform tasks that government can't do as well. And some of those organizations develop unique expertise in the process that could be helpful for policy makers. That knowledge transfer could theoretically work through lobbying.
However, I'm pretty sure that there are also cases where the system is abused. Those should be shut down.
So we paid $83k per Pembina employee to lobby the government that paid our money to them? WTF?
And Peminba is far from the only example of that kind of revolving door.