Transcript
So let me just start, uh, with some, um, acknowledgments and caveats. Uh, first of all, I should acknowledge that I’m speaking from the traditional territory of the Algonquin peoples of this area, uh, from downtown Ottawa. Um, and, uh, I want to acknowledge and just shout out, uh, the beginning of the day today. Um, although I’ve worked for government and for the state my whole career, I want to acknowledge the vital role that the not-for-profit and charitable sector plays in Canada, as it does in so many countries. And I hope you realize, um, no matter how, uh, frustrating or challenging your own struggles with your own organization with me may be on any given day, the collective weight and importance of the sector, uh, which I don’t think is always acknowledged.
You know some of the numbers. You know, I couldn’t find a lot on the not-for-profits who didn’t seek charitable status, but I know their importance in communities, having dealt with a lot of them. And then, when you think of 86,000 charities, 8,400 private foundations, 3,400 public foundations, over 92 billion dollars in assets, tens of thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of volunteers, 10 billion dollars in charitable giving every year, and I was, uh, interested to find that the charitable not-for-profit sector enjoys higher levels of trust among younger Canadians than do governments and politicians. So that’s, that’s quite an asset and quite an important role in the country. And my family and I have been affected by, and users and contributors to, a number of organizations over the years.
Um, I spent my entire career working for the state, um, much of it right at the intersection of partisan politics and the public service, and that is the focus of the book I wrote last year. So, for today’s proceedings, I can really only contribute one perspective: that’s being on the receiving end of advocacy, lobbying, and government relations efforts. I was a senior executive for a long time in a variety of roles, and as an assistant deputy minister, as a deputy minister, and as clerk, I met with a lot of groups. A lot of groups came through Ottawa, and I had opportunities to get out of Ottawa and meet them as well. Sometimes I was the primary target—people wanted a meeting with me—and sometimes I was accompanying a minister for a meeting, and in a few cases, the prime minister. A lot of these were commercial, uh, you know, for private sector entities, but, uh, a lot were in the not-for-profit and charitable sector, and certainly were involved in advocacy of various kinds.
Um, the caveat is, as I say in the book, I, I have no real insight into the world of opposition MPs. Uh, I don’t know too much about MPs, about backbenchers or senators, other than how they interact with ministers. My time, the last 20 years, has been spent mostly around ministers and other senior officials. In terms of language, I talk to students a lot in my role at Carleton, and I often try to get across the, the unpacking of government into its partisan political side and its non-partisan public service side, and, and that’s something which, which I hope I can shed some light on.
Um, I often struggle to find the right metaphor for how these two systems interact. People tend to sometimes shorthand the public service as if it was an independent order of government—it’s not. It’s part of the executive government, and it’s at the service of elected governments, but a lot of the behaviors and a lot of how it works, which I go into in the book, sort of come down to two nervous systems. The closest thing I can come to is, is a right brain, left brain—two hemispheres of a decision-making system in our democracy. And I spent a lot of time where those two come together, which is, by and large, the cabinet table. In Canada, our core software is Westminster parliamentary democracy in a federation, so we’re often misled because we consume so many American metaphors in American news or British or European in some cases. We really have a unique system in Canada—that combination of Westminster British parliamentary system and a federation with an entrenched Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a unique combination and explains a lot of what goes on.
The main thing that differentiates us from the Americans is, uh, we, we elect, uh, every few years, a team, and a lot of governing is about managing, leading, and, and the behaviors of a team environment. And so, when you, when we pick a team at the federal level in particular, but certainly in provinces—we’re seeing that in Ontario and Quebec this year—you’re picking a team who have a certain amount of common ways of looking at the world, ways of being, ways of seeing. At the federal level, we alternate, uh, between governments with very different starting points and preferences on the role of government in society, the role of government in the economy, and the role of the federal government in the federation. So we, we have ebbs and flows between governments with a more expansive view of what the federal government can and should be involved in, and a more restricted role that says leave things to local and provincial governments that are closer to communities. We have, we have governments that are quite willing to set up government programs and institutions and others that are, well, default to, um, that is really the last resort—they prefer to see things done by the private sector or the not-for-profit sector, and that kind of frames how they will see you and how they will hear you and hear your message.
So, that’s the sort of starting point. So, I’ll move on and, and, uh, and, and encourage you to think of the team, um, that’s there, and it, uh, as kind of an array of people who are, at the same time, decision-makers and influencers. There are spheres in which they have a, a degree of decision-making power—maybe a minister within his or her particular department—but there are also influencers. And the, the thing about government is that decision-making is pretty widely distributed. The images that you get from a lot of political journalists and academics of a very centralized, top-down kind of culture driven by the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister’s Office, is really misleading. There’s no question the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance are the most important people in the team, and they do have such particular prerogatives and roles, but there are many other nodes of influence on them and on each other.
So, let me start, uh, talking about the elected, you know. So, um, my, my message to you is don’t forget about them and don’t ignore any of them. The tropes that are out there—that, uh, you know, MPs, uh, are nobodies, that, you know, that the people are, I’ve heard or read, you know, that they’re sheep or sheeple or that they’re drones like of the Star Wars Emperor—these are completely wrong. They all are relevant to the group that gets to make decisions, uh, the governing team. Depending on majority or minority, it will be somewhere between 120 to 200 people of the same, same stripe, um, and of those, maybe 30 to 40 will get to be ministers. I think we’re around 37, 38 now. It is a rarefied community, um, one in a million, literally—there’s 38 million Canadians, one in a million gets to sit at the cabinet table, and of all of us walking around, um, there are only about 400 living Canadians who’ve ever been a cabinet minister at the federal level, and half of those, it was for a very brief period of time. So, um, it is, it is a, it is a real privilege to be at the table and, and to, um, and to be in those roles.
In my experience, I’ve seen a lot of it. I’ve attended over 300 cabinet meetings or cabinet committee meetings. Every minister, regardless of portfolio or seniority, at least has the potential to matter—has the potential to speak up and nudge a discussion, to add ambition, to add caution, to add support, to give arguments, not to do, you know, why you should or shouldn’t do things, that have a preference. So, the idea that ministers are kind of some, you know, group, a focus group for the Prime Minister, is, is just wrong. Um, each minister is a human being, and each of them is unique. Uh, they really are, uh, you know, quite, quite, quite different. Um, as human beings, they have different learning styles, different work styles, different character traits, and so on, and we could go on and on about the psychology of politicians, but I would say that, you know, from the point of view of receiving advocacy, they will have at least four ways that they, they hear you or see you—lenses, so to speak.
The obvious one that people tend to focus on is their portfolio—they have been given a suite of responsibilities by the Prime Minister. You can read it on the internet, and read their mandate letter and instructions, and that’s probably why you got to meet them. And they, you know, the, the powers and authorities and responsibilities they have within their specific portfolio will probably be the primary lens within, within which they hear you and see you. But as I said, um, the other lens that’s always there and running in the background is their political team—they’re red, they’re blue, they’re orange, they’re green. Um, that affects how they hear things and, and how they, how they perceive things, uh, going in.
The one that is understated and undervalued, I think, is geography. We have geography-based politics, and every minister is from somewhere. They grew up somewhere, they work somewhere, they live somewhere, they have to get elected somewhere. They need to convince about 30,000 of their fellow citizens to send them back to Parliament, and a lot of the discussion that happens in the group settings, whether it’s the caucus or the cabinet, is really, um, driven by the regional realities and dynamics within the country. And as I say in the book, I sat through a conversation at the Trudeau cabinet, and I literally could have closed my eyes, and the same conversation had happened about 25 years earlier at the Mulroney cabinet—Quebec ministers had a certain take, Western ministers had a certain take, Toronto ministers had a certain take. So, geography explains a lot of, a lot of how things are perceived and decided in the federal system.
And the other one that’s, that’s not, not appreciated a lot, uh, I think, um, unless you really are involved in trying to set up specific, sort of, interactions, is that they all carry around a portfolio of personal and life experience. Uh, and it does matter, you know, if they’re trained lawyers or trained economists, or they work in the private sector, or they run a women’s shelter in a community. That life experience affects, uh, how they interpret the world, and they draw on previous life experience and personal experience in the way that they interpret and make decisions. So, one of my pieces of advice is do your homework and see if you can connect with more than one dimension. Always read their bios, Google them, pay attention to language preference. There’s been a drift to do things in English only in Ottawa, which I think you should keep in mind whether the minister or the official that you’re working with is, is a francophone. And if you can make some use of French, it’s a sign of respect as much as anything. And don’t ignore that they live in a world of constant multitasking, where they, from the day they start to the day they leave, they’re overcommitted. They have too many things to do, too many places to go, too many people to meet, too many things to read. They’re short of time, short of sleep, have imperfect information, and are being asked to make, you know, myriads of small and big decisions. So, getting a slice of their attention and focus really does require some effort, and you have to kind of fight for that attention, um, deficit. Uh, you know, that is the world of, uh, certainly the politicians, a lot of senior officials as well.
As I said, they’re both, you know, deciders and influencers. Um, I don’t think people understand if they haven’t been involved in it how much of their time in a, you know, a seven-day week they spend in group settings. They, they attend weekly caucuses, usually on Wednesdays, of their, of their particular party caucus. Uh, there’s usually a regional caucus—all the MPs from British Columbia or from Quebec get together at least once a week. There are myriad of cabinet committees and task forces. They do get together as all of cabinet usually once a week when the house is sitting—it’s about 30 meetings a year. And in all of those group settings, any one of them might make a timely and important intervention or a nudge along the way. So, I guess one of my other messages is it’s worth cultivating relationships with people. The person that you see as the minister of X may move on to be the minister of Y and have less to do with you, but they’re still in the room, and they carry forward in their memory banks all the previous experiences and encounters that they ever had, and their impressions, uh, you know, that they formed, you know, even years ago can, can affect how they interpret and how they participate in discussions going forward. So, cultivating relationships, um, is it’s a, there’s a real art, of course, in trying to figure out, you know, rising stars and falling comets and so on. And there are government relations people that specialize in that, but the human relationships, you know, with, with individuals are worth cultivating as a sort of patient capital.
Um, I think one of the ways of thinking about advocacy is they’re going to be in the room; you’re not. Can you give them facts, arguments, anecdotes, nuggets that they can then draw upon and deploy into the conversation? And if you make their job easier, then you’re, you have a higher chance of being successful. Most ministers have fairly limited ability to do something entirely by themselves, and most issues are cross-cutting, whether it’s climate change or, or indigenous reconciliation, or the future of work, you know, as technology moves through and so on. They cut across many departments, and so generally ministers either work in groups and/or clusters, or they have to sell their proposals into the cabinet process and get a group decision, or into the budget process, especially if they’re looking for tax or regulator tax changes or any new, net new funding. So, they have to become advocates within the system. Can you give them the tools to be more effective advocates on your behalf?
The small point about the budget, which over the last 10 or 15 years has settled into a kind of annual event that is the main resource allocator: um, it’s not that decisions can’t be made any day or any, any time of year, but the last three prime ministers have settled in on the budget basically as the most important resource allocator. My advice is the best time to influence a budget outcome is in the autumn, uh, somewhere between October and Christmas when it’s still formative. If you come in at the last minute, in January or February, it’s probably already largely set, and you’re trying to nudge something which is pretty much on its way to delivery. So, interventions around the budget are usually most effective in, in the autumn before Christmas.
I would, uh, encourage you to pay attention to who are the people that any minister interacts with a lot. And, you know, near the top of the list would be their own parliamentary secretary, whose job is to help him or her get stuff through Parliament and manage their relationships with parliamentary committees. Who’s the chair of the relevant House or Senate committees that they deal with the most? There’s usually two, maybe three, that the minister has a lot of dealings with. And who’s the opposition critic? And it says, you know, let you in on a secret: a lot of ministers cultivate positive relationships with their opposition critics and try to see where they can do business and, and make, make trades with each other. And those are the kind of people that can really get into the attention span of the minister most easily. Ministers often are quite happy to see a private member’s bill or question or a motion in the house or a senator’s bill, uh, and come forward. You may think that, you know, oh, this is kind of jamming or putting the minister on the spot—they actually, in many cases, can turn and use this as evidence for their own advocacy to say, “See, I’m under pressure, there are people that care about this, and we need to do something.” So, there are ministers who are quite good at using colleagues’ private members’ bills as a way of moving issues forward.
I think one of the other topics I’ll just sort of go on and hopefully get to some conversation is what kinds of pitches seem to work better. Um, and, and, you know, if I’m telling you something you already know, then, then hopefully I’m confirming you’re on the right track. Look for alignment with their stated goals and priorities. There’s always something you can connect to. It doesn’t matter if they’re red or blue or what state, you know, what, what their sort of platform is. They’re generally all looking for, uh, versions of security and prosperity and influence in the world, and they do want to get stuff done. You can find some theme in their platform, the speech in the throne, the mandate letters that you can connect to. So do the homework, don’t go into a meeting cold—everything’s on the internet. Look up the department’s last, you know, plan that’s tabled up on in the spring or their results, and, and understand a little bit what the breadth of their agenda is and how many things the minister may be juggling.
Um, another thing, you know, I would say is you will often be presenting them with problems that you’re advocating around, and there may be dire statistics and numbers and cases that may work well for fundraising campaigns. But with politicians, um, and senior officials, I would say, yes, those are worth presenting, and sometimes they can shock people into paying attention, but what works most effectively in the political realm is getting them excited about something. Show them something that works, or is promising, or is exciting, or has been done somewhere else, or, or has emerged, and challenge them to imagine if we could do more—can we scale it up? You know, this is proven to be making a difference in lives and communities—can we do it on a bigger scale? Those are the kind of arguments that people are most receptive to. And they are humans—they have egos and they are generally stressed out a lot of the time. Small gestures of feedback and thank yous and signs of appreciation, you know, go a very, very long way with them.
The other point, which I guess is very obvious, is try to be as clear as you possibly can be: what are you there to ask them for? And if you’re not there, if you’re there simply for awareness, uh, say so, and that’s fine, because they want to accumulate knowledge and experience. But if you’re after a specific action, whether it’s tax or regulatory or funding, be clear—not just of a “Oh, something must be done, Minister.” They’re not very responsive to that, uh, compared to “Here’s a specific thing that we think you should pursue.” Don’t assume they’re unreceptive. I think a lot of people naively think, “Well, if they’re red or they’re blue, that, you know, they’re not going to be as receptive to what we have to say.” Um, I’ve often found that ministers and governments want to counter-program—they want to prove that they’re more inclusive, they want to steal from arguments away from the opposition, they want to provide proof points that they’re engaged in an area. So, you’ll often find that, to your surprise, that, you know, the, the, the political tribe in power is quite receptive to doing some counter-programming, um, and to reach out to, uh, to embrace the cause or, or a project that you’re interested in.
Um, in terms of technique, uh, you know, we’re happy to take questions. I’ve certainly seen plenty of lobby days and coming to Ottawa—very convenient, and there’s a place for that. But I would say that site visits and getting, getting politicians out of Ottawa into your community is very powerful. And don’t miss any opportunity to invite them to visits, to events, to do tours, open doors, make it clear they’re welcome anytime, and not just when you have an ask of them. Get them to bring their families if you can, if it’s relevant—they don’t get to spend a lot of time with their, with their kids and their, and their spouses and partners. So, if there’s an event or a tour which is fun or interesting, tell them to bring their kids along, and they will, they will appreciate that a great deal.
Um, the main question a minister’s political chief of staff will ask himself, herself, or others before and after a meeting with you is, “Who else am I going to be hearing from about this?” So, um, think about who your allies are and where your base of support is, and where their kind of leverage points, and, and, and how you’re going to enlist them as well. And where can you, you know, get involved in common cause? People are very, very rarely going to meet you cold. You’re not going to walk in, you know, with them unprepared. Even for the smallest of meetings, they will get some kind of note or verbal briefing, uh, often two—one from the public service and another from their political staff. They will have, you know, even as harried for time as they are, they will start with a Google search of you and your organization, your bio, so pay attention to what’s on your site, what’s on your social media feeds, the tone, the language. If you have nice backgrounders and infographics and stuff that, uh, or, or video feeds, um, you know, make sure that you, you groom it and are attentive to it. They all work and spend their lives on the phones. Uh, they’ll be looking you up, and if you have easily digestible, viewable material that they can access, that’s going to make their job easier and give you a better chance that whatever note or verbal briefing they give the minister or senior official is going to carry your message.
The staffers, the political staff—there’s about 2,000 of them in Ottawa—they operate their own networks, their own parallel nervous system. Make it easy for them to do their job—they’re generally even more harried and overstretched than their bosses, and they work in a different kind of reward and incentive system. They think announcements, events, messages, communications—they certainly look for the political differentiation with the, the people that want to throw them out. And they generally work in a very, very short, just-in-time kind of world—they’re rarely thinking more than, you know, a few days or a few weeks ahead. The public servants that you meet—they have more of a due diligence role, different sphere of the same brain. They will be looking for fit with their agenda and their plans—how does this fit into existing programs or tools, or do we have to change the program design or the regulations? They worry about costs, legal risks, operational issues, implementation issues that, you know, that make them appear more cautious. But in fact, they’re just doing their job of due diligence and trying to avoid implementation problems. They can make saying yes seem more difficult, but they also have a very good grasp in many cases of the importance of sometimes a very small tweak to a regulation or program design, eligibility criteria or whatever, can have a big impact. They work often in the world of delivery, and they understand these arguments much better than, uh, usually the partisan political staff do. And they’re, they generally look longer term, um, you know, and are not terribly impressed by partisan arguments, so, so don’t, don’t waste your time making them.
Um, recognize that whether you’re meeting with the staffers of public servants, they will hear from everybody else—your competitors, or, or people that oppose what you’re trying to do, or have a different kind of case. So, I, you know, make your case with confidence, but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t get involved in trashing or dissing the competition. And I would say, you know, persistence and repetition pay off—go back year after year, time after time, and you will find that politics is, is nonlinear and volatile, and a door that seemed closed can suddenly open, and somebody will phone you and say, “That thing we talked about—could you send me something on it?” So always be in that state of kind of readiness. Don’t overfocus in government relations on partisan politics, the horse race, and short-term politics. I think of it as a difference between weather and climate—the weather changes every day, the polls change every day, and it can make your mood bad, it can make your mood better, but it’s not the longer play in terms of the political strategies that the governments are playing out. They ride out the day-to-day and, and have their eye fixed on, on the next electoral window.
Um, so I think those are the, the main things I wanted to get across in terms of how governments, politicians, and senior public servants think. This idea that we’re sort of a very polarized, fragmenting country with a wobbly federation, and, you know, it’s just nonsense. It’s, uh, it’s where the media and social media goes, but there’s an enormous amount of common ground and consensus in Canada. There are a lot of things Canadians agree on, a lot of common aspirations by the people we choose to elect us. Very few things get reversed from one government to another—they tend to build on and move forward. And so, governing is a sort of constant, continuous improvement—the quest to take programs, laws, regulations, services, um, which were good in their time, and make them even better and more fit for purpose in new times with new challenges, and it’s an ongoing thing and you’re never done. And that’s the world of government, and I’m sure it’s the world of a lot of your organizations as well.
So, Panini, I think I will stop there, and, uh, hopefully I haven’t run on too long, and invite any sort of feedback or questions that people have. If anyone wants to put their questions in the Q&A or—yeah, I’ve got the chat room open as well. So, and, and while people do consider, uh, some questions for Michael, just want to say that was fascinating to me to hear from the, uh, from someone with your background and your experience doing what you’ve done for so long.
I myself have a question, and I’d like to start off. But, and I have a few, so, but one thing I would like to say: that stat that you mentioned, one in a million get to sit at the cabinet table—that really was fascinating to me. That speaks about sort of how privileged you can, or it is, to become a member of the cabinet and sort of the influence that you have. But what I want to ask you about is, how do charities and non-profits balance this—the political and the non-political? So, I mean, I think that you’re right. There’s a lot of people out there that think, “Oh, we need to play up to the liberal ideology, the conservative ideology.” What would you say to that, and what’s a good strategy to manage the partisan/nonpartisan, the political/non-political? Can you add to that?
Yeah, no, it’s an excellent question. Um, you know, I can only give you my perspective. Um, I would say don’t overinvest in the partisan. You know, you need to understand the dynamics, you need to understand, uh, you know, um, that their mood and their behaviors are going to be different if they’re 15 points behind in the polls and feel they’re doomed, or, you know, if they’re 10 points ahead and feeling confident. Um, you know, in that sense, you would put your own organization at risk if you are seen to be, you know, partisan in that sense. So I would, I would protect your brand as non-partisan, and every chance you get to say, “We have local people from both, you know, both stripes involved in our organization,” generally works better.
Um, there, you know, there’s no question that, uh, there may be a little bit more receptivity from one side or another, depending on what you’re doing, but in my experience, um, both red and blue governments are very open to community-based solutions and things being done not by hiring public servants and delivering government programs, but by, uh, you know, by people working in, in communities. And so, those kind of partnerships and leverage things have been of great interest, you know, to the Harper government and to the Trudeau government for, you know, slightly different reasons. Um, I would focus not so much on sort of the, you know, red or blue kind of politics, but, um, you know, what’s important to them. There’s no question that if you’re involved in environmental advocacy, you know, a government that got elected on a clear mandate of net zero and doing something about climate is going to be more receptive than the other one that is, you know, more skeptical and more beholden to the oil and gas industry. It’s going to depend on the issue, but a lot of issues are going to be relative. You know, you want to make a difference in Indigenous reconciliation, and you have a pathway to help, you know, young Indigenous people who live in urban centers—that’s not a red or a blue issue; both of them will be interested in that. Um, some of them will see that as empowering people and, you know, getting away from dependency on government, and some of them will just see it as effective community, you know, partnership. So, like, strip away some of the political language and focus on outcomes.
Um, I would say if you end up being seen as, you know, hostile, uh, you know, it’ll be harder to get a meeting, and it’ll be harder to get, you know, what you’re advocating for, uh, for a period of time. But, you know, sometimes you may have to be patient and wait for a change, you know, a change of, uh, government. But if you’re persistent, um, you know, I, I think the more successful organizations find a way to talk to, uh, governments of either stripe and connect with, you know, what they’re trying to accomplish.
Thank you, that, that’s fascinating to me. There are some questions in the Q&A. Can you see them, Michael, or do you want me…?
If they’re in the chat room, I can.
Yeah, yeah, so, I mean, as you pull that up, the first one: Any advice for advocacy in the minority Parliament due to short lengths?
I’m not convinced that they have a lot shorter lens. Uh, it’s one of these simplistic tropes that you need a majority to do big things, but the most impactful government in Canadian history, in my view, was a minority government. It was the Pearson government, which was a minority. It’s even before my time, uh, that brought us Medicare, that brought us the flag, that brought us, you know, a whole range of social policy reforms were done by a minority government, which are now considered hugely, hugely important. So, sometimes minority governments have a sense of urgency of “We better get stuff done because, you know, we’ll be facing the voters in two years’ time, three years’ time, or any day now,” and they can be very focused. Uh, whereas a minority, a big majority government is always at risk of getting kind of lazy and complacent, like, “We got loads of time,” and that, you know, the danger of majority governments, red or blue, is they kind of run out of energy and momentum. So, uh, I don’t think it’s as simple as that—you can get a lot done with minority governments. You have to be realistic. If it requires legislation, where am I going to get 170 votes for it, and where are the other parties? And, you know, in a minority setting, lobbying all the parties makes sense. Uh, you know, in a majority setting, you can focus most of your, you know, energy on locking the government party, sure, you know, fair enough, but there’s plenty of things governments do that don’t need to go to Parliament right away. They have billions of dollars of existing programs, they can make regulatory changes, they can change compliance policies, they can do a lot of stuff without having to, you know, put their, their life at risk in a parliamentary vote.
Fascinating, thank you. Uh, there, there are more questions, and we have more time, so we are going to, uh, pepper you with some more. Would there be a difference in how you engage backbench MPs versus a minister? How would you, how would you approach that?
I would, you know, what I tried to say is it’s never, there’s no wasted contact because that backbencher may be with the minister, you know, at some group meeting or setting, or ministers go out and do things with MPs. Uh, they all have a roster of duties to go out to events and communities, nomination meetings, political events, fundraisers, and so on. So, and most, uh, ministers have a kind of suite of five or ten MPs that they’re supposed to, kind of, you know, help out, especially from their region. So, it, it can help. You know, they may be having a beer after a community meeting and say, “Well, I met this guy last week from so and so, and he told me this amazing story.” So, you know, they’re not wasted contacts, um, in that sense. I think that, you know, with a minister, you probably got the meeting because he or she has a very specific program or authority that you’re trying to nudge. With an MP, it’s a bit more general, but, but in terms of awareness and knowledge and, you know, understanding the kind of impact your organization does, you know, every, every contact can be worthwhile. And, of course, you’re gonna have to make choices. The bigger organizations have more resources and can hit more targets, so smaller organizations may have to be more selective, I understand that. But, uh, you know, every encounter has at least some potential.
And that’s a nice sort of segue into another question: that it, you know, uh, it can be difficult to secure a meeting with the minister’s office, and so, moving, uh, your issue up the priority list, how is that? Is it, uh, you know, we often talk in government relations about needing champions for your cause in government. How important is having a champion, uh, that can maybe take something up with the minister or the minister’s staff?
Uh, if you can get one, I’ve seen it be pretty, pretty effective. Uh, you know, and often the way that a backbench MP decides to make a difference—they may or may not ever have ambition of making it to cabinet. Some of them, you know, hunger for promotion and want to, you know, find their way into the cabinet table, but, you know, they know the numbers as well, like they have a one-in-ten chance. And in a gender-balanced, uh, cabinet, you know, you may even have longer odds that, you know, if you’re, if you, if, if you’re from Toronto… and some of it’s geography—I mean, to be blunt about the politics of it—uh, if you’re the only member from your, uh, you know, your, um, team from New Brunswick, you probably make cabinet. If there are 30 of you from Toronto and the Prime Minister can only pick six or seven, your odds are longer, right? So, part of it is about the political reality, but a lot of people come, they got into politics because they cared about something, they were motivated by an issue—it could be impaired driving, it could be, you know, family violence, it could be the environment. And then they came because they thought, “Hey, if I’m an MP, I can make a bigger difference.” So, they will pursue those issues and become champions of them, and they will do what they can by participating in committees, you know, filing motions, private members’ bills, speaking up, that, you know. And I, I think, um, it’s a long way back to your answer that if they’re, you know, if you can find a couple of MPs or a senator—and senators have a bit more patience and persistence—a lot of senators decide, “I’m going to do something about mental health,” or “I’m going to do something about wilderness conservation,” or whatever, they can be very effective.
But that’s an interesting, uh, point about the senators as well. How, uh, if you’re not influencing or trying to influence legislation, how important, then, is it to engage with senators?
I think they’re undervalued or underestimated. You know, they can be a bit of a cautioning break on government; they can also, you know, a Senate committee that gets rolling on a topic can do a study and put out a report. Any parliamentary committee, whether it’s a House or Senate committee, can, has a tool to require the government to respond to a report. Um, you know, I’m not going to say 100% of them, you know, hit their mark or are effective, but they, they create pressure. So, you know, if you can get a House or Senate committee to do a few, you know, weeks or months of hearings on a topic, table a report, and trigger the mechanism that requires a government response, then somebody in government is going to have to think and listen and do the response. And even if they give you the little brush-off of, “You know, that’s a good report; we’re thinking hard about it,” they didn’t have to think about it, and they did have to say, you know, “Okay, this is some pressure here—is there something we can do, you know, that will, that will ease some of the pressure?”
So, okay, great. Yeah, and so, I guess, maybe, uh, one last question, if you don’t mind. Uh, this comes from, you know, the chats and what I’ve been seeing on the chat, but also from my own, uh, experience. And really, what… do any pitches, any advocacy campaigns, uh, stand out to you from your career? Do you, do you remember ones that may have been impactful or maybe the opposite, the ones that may have fallen flat on their face? I’d be… I think everyone would be interested to hear your, uh, any thoughts you have on that.
Yeah, I, I have trouble thinking of specific examples. Um, I, you know, to go back to our encounters at Inspire, I think that Roberta was very effective just through sheer, you know, repetition, determination, building relationships, and I think ultimately had some success, uh, you know, over a period of time. Uh, it wasn’t so much a campaign as just the, you know, the way she went about it stands out in my mind. And, uh, you know, there are other organizations that have done that. I, I have to discount it because, you know, I, I, I only saw the sort of early days of, uh, people living in the world of social media campaigns, and I may be misleading your audience. I, I can’t really judge the impact of Twitter campaigns and social media campaigns and so on. My, my sense of it is they create a lot of noise, and they create a lot of, you know, um, heat, but people don’t really pay much attention to them.
And to go to the question about polling and research and public opinion—they’re worth doing, you know. Um, because there used to be a kind of a rule of thumb, uh, you know, that if somebody is motivated enough to write a letter or to sign a petition, there are probably 10 other people out there that are also concerned or reachable on the issue but just, you know, didn’t, didn’t have the energy or the time to do it. Um, I think if you can get deeper polling—not about sort of, uh, just the sort of up-and-down sort of stuff, but longer trends that people care about something or they, you know, they want something to be done about, about, you know, water on Indigenous reserves, or, you know, school dropout rates, or, or, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever your cause is. Um, I think if you can, you can usually find some kind of public opinion evidence that people care about it, and for sure, elected politicians will respond to that. I’m not going to argue that, you know, bringing the petition is determinative, but if you have, if there’s nobody out there all, you know, repeating your message or reinforcing your message, you will tend to drop down in the, uh, you know, in the competition for, for attention. So, I, I guess I would say some version of necessary but not sufficient, right?
Okay, all right, thank you very much. There is one last question, I believe, and I think we do have, uh, a couple of minutes, but to what extent do you, and I hope I’m reading this correctly, to what extent do you see the advocacy chill of the early 2010s still having an impact in this sector? Is there any sort of leftover, uh, is there anything that happened perhaps in the last decade around advocacy that we’re still having to deal with as non-profit leaders and organizations? Um, or is it just really a matter of hitting the pavement, getting your message, uh, you know, tight, and, and meeting with the people that you have to meet? Are there any legacy issues about dealing with government these days?
I’m not sure in the sense I left government three years ago. Uh, what I understand of the issue is there was always an interpretive issue because we have a tax, you know, a tax measure around charitable giving. Somebody’s going to have to define the boundaries of what’s, you know, what’s permissible and not permissible. If we got rid of the charitable deduction, then CRA would have nothing to do, and that is an alternative model. But if you want the tax, you know, the tax advantage, then somebody’s going to define what is permissible, what’s not. My understanding of the issue is it had to do with where are the boundaries between advocacy and partisanship, and, you know, we, we need to probably… that’s never going to be entirely black and white, and there will be cases, you know, where it’s interpreted, you know, in a way that makes people unhappy. But I think, my understanding—you correct me—is they, they redrew the boundary lines in a way to be more permissive of more kinds of cause-based advocacy, you know. And if you want to donate to partisan parties, there’s a tax deduction for that too, and just give some money to team red or team blue. And that goes to making sure your advocacy doesn’t feel partisan. There is a worry in my mind about going down the American route, which is an awful lot of really raw political advocacy around gun control or abortion rights or any number of issues is disguised, you know, run through foundations, not-for-profits, you know, that there’s dark money from, from, you know, billionaires in the States, which they pretend is charitable, and they’re really just pushing the personal agenda of that billionaire. So there are reasons the state has to be careful about what’s permissible and not permissible, and we don’t want to inadvertently open the door to a lot of, you know, basically blowing a hole in the spending limits on political parties by allowing, you know, create some sort of entity, call it a charity or foundation, and it’s essentially, you know, a way of getting around party spending limits. So, you know, it’s, it’s another example of how the fine-tuning and the details of wording matters, and, and I think, you know, people in the sector, some of the speakers that you are, um, you know, that you’re involved with, uh, you have to do a lot of professional development and outreach and inform people and provide tools. You know, CRA can only do so much, so, uh, conferences like this, and, you know, professional development… every community I can think of does professional development and learning activities for its members and its participants, whether they’re in the telecom industry or agriculture or whatever. And, uh, you know, thinking of yourself as a sector and doing professional development and learning activities is a useful investment.
Yeah, that’s great. Well, thank you so much, Michael. That was fascinating to me. I think your commitment to public service, uh, is really evident by you doing a smaller event like this. I mean, there’s so many non-profits out there that are doing great work, but it’s always, uh, amazing to hear from someone with your experience. We do appreciate it. We, uh, invite you to stick around if you can as an attendee—we can switch you over to attendee mode if you’re able to. But thank you so much, Michael. It was really just fascinating to hear from your perspective, uh, and, uh, and again, uh, Michael’s book is available for anyone who wants a deeper dive into some of the things that he said, uh, and I would encourage everyone to check that out. Thank you so much, Michael. We really do thank you.