UPDATED: This Month in Now Mandatorily Disclosed Lobbying - Who says Stephen Harper isn’t approachable?
Not Jayson Myers of the Alliance of Manufacturers and Exporters Canada, that’s for sure. Why, just last month, he was able to set up a meeting with the Prime Minister himself, along with the then freshly shuffled ministers of International Trade and Public Works to discuss business opportunities with – France? really? – as well as manufacturing competitiveness, industrial benefits in federal procurement and support for Canadian exporters.
So far, that’s the only contact that the PM has had with a registered lobbyist since the communications log database went live over at the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying, which was, of course, created by the Conservatives’ boy-those-early-days-of-minority-government-were-fun Federal Accountability Act.
Other listings for PMO officials:
- The Canada-Israel Committee has been in touch with then-policy director Mark Cameron to talk about ‘the PM’s proposed trip to Israel’, as well as the government’s response to the Israel-Lebanon prisoner exchange, and “international relations” in general
- In another filing, Cameron is listed as having met with TransCanada Corporation executive Harold Kvisle on the environment and energy.
- Energy, in fact, appears to have been the hot issue for lobbying PMO over the last month: Policy advisor Jasmine Ignieski met with the Canadian Nuclear Association to discuss IAEA safeguards, and also spoke with StrategyCorp’s Leslie Noble, who represents EnergySolutions LLC, and Petro-Canada’s Ronald Brenneman reports a meeting with the PM’s legislative assistant Bruce Carson.
- Ontario regional desk … guy Aaron Scheewe – part of Jenni Byrne’s issues-managing army of light has been buttonholed by Capital Hill Group president David Angus on two separate occasions. On July 10th, the two got together to chat about government procurement from the point of view of Lockheed Martin Canada; the next day, they were talking infrastructure – with Angus there on behalf of two clients Hamilton Health Sciences and the Royal Conservatory of Music, as well as funding for Toronto’s Ronald McDonald House.
- Finally, and disappointingly from a GiornoWatcher’s perspective, it appears that not a single lobbyist has been in contact with the PM’s new chief of staff – at least, not according to the communications logs filed to date. C’mon, people, he’s really not that scary.
UPDATE: Press gallery colleague and fellow database nerd David Akin uncovers a second meeting between the PM and Buzz Hargrove, of all people, to discuss aboriginal affairs, and – at last – evidence that someone, at least, has met with Guy Giorno: John Furlong, to be precise, director of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.