Former Liberal Premier on New List of New Brunswick Lobbyists
Former New Brunswick premier Shawn Graham is one of more than 50 people who have signed up as lobbyists for private companies and organizations in the new registry made available to the public on Canada Day.
Graham is registered to lobby the provincial government on behalf of Fornebu Lumber Company Inc., Molson Coors, CP Homes and AKD International.
The former representative for the riding of Kent isn’t the only former MLA and prominent Liberal in the new registry. Doug Tyler, a minister in the cabinets of Frank McKenna and Camille Theriault, is signed up to lobby for Moosehead Breweries and Inversa Systems.
There are also many people registered to lobby on behalf of energy interests in the province, notably TransCanada Pipelines and Emera.
TransCanada Pipelines is hoping to build the Energy East Pipeline through the province to Saint John. Emera is proposing to build a transmission line that will carry clean energy by underwater cable from Saint John to Massachusetts.
The registry is skeletal at this stage, with little context about the lobbying activities being undertaken. There is a bulleted list of general activities, like aboriginal affairs, energy, and employment and training in the case of Emera representative Lise Merrithew. But the space for a short written summary of activities is incomplete, which is the also the case for the entries by Graham and Tyler.
It’s also an incomplete list of registered lobbyists because the Office of the Integrity Commissioner has extended the deadline from July 1 to October 1.
“As our office is still in the process of improving the system to make it more easily accessible and meaningful, I will not be enforcing the statutory deadline of July 1 for lobbyists to file a return,” Integrity Commissioner Alexandre Deschênes said in a release late last week.
“In the meantime, however, we will continue to work with the lobbyists who are experiencing difficulties. Our focus at this early stage of the registry system is to get lobbyists to file their returns prior to Oct. 1.”