A Look Inside the Secret, Sordid Side of Lobbying

Lobbyists hate the perception they are political insiders cashing in on connections and using shadowy schemes to advance the interests of powerful clients.

Then along comes TC Energy’s former B.C. director of operations Liam Iliffe, who boasted that’s what he did as a lobbyist, with great success.

And the Narwhal, which received a leaked video of a presentation Iliffe did for TC managers.

TC Energy is a $50-billion Calgary-based corporation that owns pipelines and power plants, including the troubled Coastal GasLink pipeline to Kitimat, which has faced Indigenous opposition and a dismal environmental record.

And Iliffe is a semi-insider, appointed to a political job when John Horgan formed government in 2017 and playing a variety of roles in ministries and the Government Communications and Public Engagement office until 2022.

He was then soon hired by TC Energy to influence the B.C. government.

Not an unusual development. In January, the advocacy organization Dogwood reported “at least 136 people who formerly held office in the provincial government have traded in their public service careers to become paid lobbyists.”

The Narwhal and the National Post obtained videos of two internal presentations — “lunch and learns” — by TC Energy managers. (The Narwhal’s extensive coverage is worth reading.)

By far the most damaging was Iliffe’s March talk to staff in TC Energy’s Toronto, Calgary and Ottawa offices.

What people got along with their lunch was a lesson in dirty tricks and undue influence, especially in getting the B.C. government to enrich TC Energy.

Iliffe boasted of his success in shaping government policy.

He said his team had drafted entire briefing notes on issues for public sector managers, which were given to a politician as if produced by the public service.

“You have a lot of... public servants who are overworked, underpaid, and sometimes they just want the job done for them,” he told attendees.

“We’ve been given opportunities to write entire briefing notes for ministers and premiers and prime ministers. And it gets stuck on government letterhead and put into an envelope into a briefing package that goes to that elected figure. There’s nothing more powerful than that,” he explained.

Iliffe also described how TC Energy gamed political events. His TC team planted employees to ask scripted questions to make it appear an issue was important to the public, he said. And they had “guerrilla tactics” to ensure their question was asked ahead of questions from other, legitimate participants.

And he outlined how TC Energy managed media.

“We have had opportunities to shape stories, place stories, develop positive stories and in some instances, as a corporation, shut stories down, negative stories that were either not true or really, really, really harmed us in some way that was irreparable,” Iliffe told the internal company group.

TC Energy’s strategies include “third-party campaigns” that conceal the company’s involvement, he said, and campaigns to mute opposition voices “because we have an extraordinary and growing team that really focuses on opposition research.”

He claimed particular success in changing B.C. Premier David Eby’s attitudes toward LNG expansion, including a scheme to enlist Canadian ambassadors to push the company’s viewpoints when the government did a trade mission in Asia in 2023.

“We know that premiers, when they go to countries, have dinner with ambassadors. That’s one-on-one period of time that an ambassador can deliver our message,” he said.

It worked, he said, with Eby, who had been an LNG skeptic because of its emissions, and who became much more pro-industry after the tour.

All those were revealed by the National Post and the Narwhal.

What happened after the video leaked

Iliffe quit TC Energy after the Narwhal asked questions about the leaked video.

He said in a statement that some of the things in his presentation never happened — without listing which ones, or explaining why he made them up.

Patrick Muttart, TC Energy senior vice-president of external relations, said many of Iliffe’s claims were untrue or exaggerated. But he also wouldn’t say which ones were accurate and which false.

Nor would he be specific about which of the activities the corporation would use in future. (Muttart’s career path is interesting. He went from government relations consulting to former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper’s office, and his job before TC Energy — for almost 10 years — was with tobacco giant Philip Morris International. Valuable experience in a reviled industry for a senior oil and gas executive.)

The B.C. government also denied Iliffe’s boasts, including the claim TC Energy wrote briefing notes for ministry staff. Attorney General Niki Sharma has asked lobbyist registrar Michael Harvey to investigate whether any rules were broken.

No one called him out

As someone who has reported on B.C.’s political scene for more than 20 years, I’d guess Iliffe’s claims were exaggerated. And I’ve met many lobbyists, or government relations consultants as they prefer, who were doing their job within ethical boundaries.

But it’s notable that no one in the TC Energy meeting called Iliffe out on his claims, or even asked about the ethics of these activities.

And that neither he nor TC Energy execs will say what specifically they believe was made up and what was real.

Most notably, Iliffe’s main specific claim is backed up by the record.

Iliffe told the company group that TC Energy “dramatically” influenced B.C.’s carbon tax changes announced in February 2023.

The changes would cut its carbon tax bill in half, he boasted.

Those changes came into effect this April.

And Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives senior economist Marc Lee noted last week that they have slashed the carbon tax bill for the oil and gas industry.

Just as Iliffe said they would.