"It's not something I've really turned my mind to, to be honest with you."
That was what Energy, Mines and Petroleum Minister Blair Lekstrom said when asked whether there should be a policy restricting political aides from lobbying the government after leaving it.
The issue came up again last week, when Lekstrom's ministerial assistant Natalie Poole-Moffat resigned to become a senior government relations advisor with Apache Corp. - a major oil and gas firm with a 51 percent stake in a proposed liquefied natural gas export terminal near Kitimat.
Such prohibitions have been in place in Ottawa since 2006, when the Harper administration mandated public office holders couldn't become lobbyists until they had been out of government for five years.
But Victoria hasn't followed the federal government's lead, with some ministers arranging ad hoc restrictions for their departing employees.
For example, Poole-Moffat has agreed to have no professional contact with Lekstrom or the ministry of energy, mines and petroleum resources for a period of one year.
But New Democrat critic John Horgan said the Campbell administration needs to do better than that.
"There seems to be a growing consensus that there needs to be distance between political staffers and the ministries they work in as they go out the door. And if you can have a gentleman's agreement, why can't you have a policy?"
In fact, Horgan introduced legislation in 2007 that would have prevented ministerial advisors from attempting to win contracts or benefits on behalf of others during the 24 months following their departure from government.
But the government wasn't supportive of that bill, seeming to have "no interest in constraining their appointees."
Game time
As a lead opponent of the province's push toward independent power production, it would be hard to accuse the Western Canada Wilderness Committee of being soft on the government.
And, according to the committee's national campaign director Joe Foy, that could explain why it wasn't among the environmental groups who were offered free 2010 Winter Olympic tickets by the government.
In a prepared statement, Environment Minister Barry Penner confirmed a number of those groups were contacted about attending the Games - although he wasn't specific about which ones.
Not all of them could accept the invitation, having "previously arranged plans to attend to."
As for those that did, the minister stated they were "well known and respected groups who contribute on a regular basis to forwarding our environmental agenda."
But it seems the Western Canada Wilderness Committee didn't fit the bill.
And that suites Foy just fine because even if the government had offered the committee Olympic tickets, they would have been rejected.
In an interview with Public Eye, Foy said he and his colleagues have found it "pretty darn hard to meet the suckers...On issues such as endangered species, forestry or rivers we're basically just shut out. The point being: Why would you take gifts from a government that treated you like that?"
As for the fact other groups were offered tickets, Foy quipped it's reflective of a "debate in the environmental movement about how much do you engage industry and allow them to use you as a smokescreen for their evil ways and how much do you always bitch and whine and not be constructive - that would be us."
"But I believe the way our system is setup, we're not supposed to do all things," he continued. "And if you don't have rabble-rousers and shit disturbers somewhere, the whole thing is in trouble. So I'm kind of glad we weren't offered tickets."
Sean Holman is editor of the online provincial political news journal Public Eye (publiceyeonline.com). He can be reached at [email protected].
