Alberta News and Views - January 22, 2007 - Issue 2

Comment:

I hear and read that Alberta will have a new lobbyist and contractor registry this spring.

My daddy always taught me that before you think you have got the horses secure in the barn, you got to shut and lock the door. He also taught me to never give the key to the lock on the hen house to the fox.

The fox and me have two very different ideas on the chickens fate tonight.

If Steady Eddie really wants to earn the respect of Albertan's, and show us he thinks we are not stupid, he needs to make sure the industry of lobbying that is fast becoming a growth industry in law firms, is not exempted by this law.

As someone who is a Registered Federal Government Lobbyist, I am often miffed that I must report my business to the federal government but because of that old lawyer/client privilege thing, lawyers do not have to.

I guess I could go work for a lawyer.

Ralph Klein may not be a lawyer, but his lobbying work will be allowed to disappear into the briefs of the law firm he works at, for Albertans to never know what he is actually doing.

Steady Eddie also needs to explain to us who in the caucus and cabinet of the past Conservative governments, of which he has been a member of, stopped the drafted recommendations for a lobbyist registry and longer cooling-off periods for government officials and politicians from the all-party committee headed by Tory Neil Brown , moving forward and becoming law. Are those same roadblocks now going to be profiting now that they have retired from this backward thinking?

Honest Ed needs to do right here, so he does not become known as Fast Eddy, the used policy car salesman.