“These are not exceptions. These are regularly occurring violations of the Prime Minister’s own promises and commitments to get rid of the reality or the appearance of cash for access,” Conservative MP Peter Kent said.
“When a lobbyist can get up and close and [have] face time over a cocktail with a minister or the prime minister or a powerful decision-maker in the PMO, that is access that the ordinary citizen with an interest in public policy would not have.”
Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch and an adjunct professor of political science and law at the University of Ottawa, said the Liberal Party’s two sets of rules depending on whether or not a lobbyist has donated the maximum allowed amounts to “cash for access” to government officials and violates the Prime Minister’s own code of conduct for cabinet ministers.
No comments:
Post a Comment