Making That “Fun fact,” offers Pascal Ryffel, director of government relations with Alberta Counsel at the onset of our interview, “The term lobbying actually comes from 19th century England, when people used to literally go and stand in the lobby of parliament to talk to MPs and try to convince them to do something.” Over the years, the term lobbying conjured up images of backroom deals with bags of cash handed over by special interests (usually corporate) in exchange for favourable political decisions. For organizations like IBAA, advocacy is the preferred term to describe its efforts to influence government decision making—it evokes the notion of championing positive change. “I think also advocacy has a little bit more of a grassroots aspect to it that people don’t necessarily think of when they use the term lobbying,” says Ryffel, who has been advising IBAA on its advocacy strategy since 2017. Call it what you want, representing the collective interests of its members and the clients they serve to government is at the very core of what IBAA does. I recently sat down (virtually) with Ryffel to gain some insights into the why and how of advocacy.
Why is advocacy important to an association like IBAA and its members? There’s a lot of information out there, and the political decision makers in any level of government are bombarded by information all the time, with millions of stakeholders vying for their attention. It’s easy to assume when you’re within an organization that decision makers know who you are, the issues that you’re working on and your policy priorities, because in theory, they’re paid to deal with these issues, so they should know about them. But as a matter of fact, usually decision makers probably know virtually nothing about the policy areas that are really, really important to you. Advocacy is really about making sure that the decision makers have the best possible information about your association and your issues. On top of that, not only do you want to provide information to decision makers about your policy areas, but you want to make sure that you can insert your own narrative 18 The Alberta Broker October-November 2021
