This
right is one of the traditional rights in British-style
democracies. It should not to be confused with the right to
justice or the right to be judged by a court, traces of which
appear in the Magna Carta of 1215.
The
“right to petition Government for redress of grievances”,
included in the US Declaration of Independence is
also quite different form today’s lobbying. The
days of citizens effectively petitioning government for redress
of grievances have long come to a close.
Federal and provincial governments deal with vast numbers of complex economic and
political issues, affording limited time for direct constituency
contact, and spawning a legion of professional lobbying firms
and associations. These groups leverage the right of petition
with the power of economic resources or political networks to
catch the attention of officeholders. For generations now, the
traditional right of petition at the federal and provincial levels
has become largely the domain of professional lobbyists.
The
rise of the professional lobbyist has meant an incredible –
and potentially dangerous – concentration of power over
government within a small, elite cadre of people. This
concentration of power, in turn, means it is ever-so essential
for legislators and the public to know who is paying the
lobbyists, how much, to lobby whom, on what. Legislators need this
information to properly evaluate the political pressures to
which they are being subjected. The public needs this
information to evaluate the integrity of their legislators.
