Honestly. It was an election promise. I meant nothing.

From the Globe and Mail today:

The Harper government broke its election promise yesterday to require ministers to record their contacts with lobbyists, instead ordering lobbyists to file monthly reports on their oral communication with federal officials.

Draft regulations published yesterday to accompany the government's Lobbying Act create a new public registry of contacts between lobbyists and senior government officials.

The registry will go further than the current system, under which lobbyists have to publicly disclose only who is paying them, which federal agencies they are targeting, and on which general files.

But the new registry will not require reports on e-mails or letters between senior government officials and lobbyists. It will keep tabs on only "oral and arranged communication."

From page 8 of the 2006 Conservative election platform document:

A Conservative government will: .... *Require ministers and senior government officials to record their contacts with lobbyists.

All of them.

Presumably there was a lobbyist who managed to lobby enough members of cabinet to go easy on the regulations being designed to curtail the lobbyists.

And the new regulations are only "one way".

The new regulations would not require lobbyists to report oral communications initiated by federal officials dealing with the development of policy, programs or legislation.

Then there's this little nugget.

In the last general election, the Conservative Party vowed to stop the back-and-forth between politics and lobbying, which it said was corrupting government.

That's right. And some of the politicians dealing with some lobbyists hadn't even moved out of 24 Sussex Drive when the "questionable activity" started.

As impolitical suggests, throw another promise on the barbie.