The Ontario government has plans to "regulate the conduct of political staff of all three parties at events," the premier's office said Wednesday.

The Liberal government has already announced plans to ban MPPs, candidates, party leaders, nomination contestants and leadership contestants from attending political fundraising events — but that's not the end of it.

A premier's office spokeswoman issued a statement to QP Briefing Wednesday afternoon, saying the government also plans to "regulate the conduct of political staff of all three parties at events."

The statement came after Government House Leader and Attorney General Yasir Naqvi told reporters after Question Period Wednesday that he is not ruling out adding politicians’ chiefs of staff and policy advisers to the rapidly growing list of people who won’t be allowed to attend fundraising events under the new law.

He was responding to accusations made by Progressive Conservative MPP Randy Hillier in Question Period. Hillier alleged the Liberals recently held a “high-powered, big-money Liberal fundraiser,” where no ministers were present but the Premier’s Chief of Staff Andrew Bevan, and the Energy Minister’s chief of staff, Andrew Teliszewsky, and senior energy adviser, Matt Whittington, were.

“Apparently employees in the public service are now tasked to be the Liberal Party bagmen and intermediaries to enrich the Liberal Party and exchange influences,” said Hillier, in the legislature. “Will the Premier stop doing through the back door what she says is inappropriate to do through the front door?”

"Speaker, they refuse to stop even after being caught red-handed, even after being shamed into action by the media," he continued.

However, Hillier didn't say when the "recent" event took place. A PC party spokesperson later told QP Briefing that the event Hillier was referring to occurred within the last year — but before the Liberals proposed banning MPPs from fundraising events.

After question period, Hillier said the event he spoke about shows the law the Liberals are proposing won’t reform the system for the better.

“It just goes to show, whatever they say they’re going to do — plug one loophole — they’re immediately crafting up a new loophole to get around it,” he said “So all this BS by preventing cash-for-access by preventing all members from going to any event will, as we’ve said, allow for the empowerment of proxies and intermediaries and bagmen. And that’s what’s going on.”

According to spokesperson for the premier's office, the Liberal Party believes the event in question took place on Feb. 22, 2016, which would mean it's already been written about in the media.

"I understand, through the Ontario Liberal Party, that the event brought up by MPP Hillier took place on February 22nd, 2016, with MPP [then Minister of Energy Bob] Chiarelli in attendance," said Jennifer Beaudry in a statement. "This was well before Premier Wynne announced changes to how the Ontario Liberal Party would be conducting fundraising activities, on April 5th, 2016. Since then, Premier Wynne directed the Ontario Liberal Party to stop hosting small-scale private fundraisers where Ministers interacted with stakeholders of their portfolio."

"We will be bringing forward amendments during Second Reading that prohibit fundraising events for all MPPs, as well as regulate the conduct of political staff of all three parties at events. We look forward to tabling these details in the near future," Beaudry said.

Naqvi said work on the policy is ongoing — which appears clear, considering how its scope has changed. When he initially announced, on Aug. 29, that the government would legislate a ban on attending political fundraisers, he initially said it would apply to “MPPs.” When asked by the media that day if it would apply to candidates as well, he said he didn’t know.

On Sept. 13, he announced it would also apply to candidates, party leaders, nomination contestants and leadership contestants from attending political fundraising events — but didn't mention then that there would be some form of regulation of political staffers as well.

Even though the proposal appears to be changing, Naqvi said the government is doing its due diligence to make sure the law it eventually passes would stand up to legal challenge.

Premier Kathleen Wynne, asked Wednesday morning if she’s believes the bill will stand up in court, said she can’t control whether or not there is a legal challenge of the bill.

“We’re doing what we’re doing and making changes with the best advice we have and we’ll move forward with that, and if there are changes we’ll have to make we’ll make them,” she said. “We know that this is the way to modernize the system.”

The recent addition of nomination contestants to the proposed ban is a concern to Hillier as well.

Nomination contestants who don’t have a party's apparatus behind them won’t be able to successfully raise money for their campaigns, Hillier said.

“This will entrench the status quo,” he said. “What we see in politics in this province is what you will always see and there will be no means or vehicles for new parties, new blood, independents to have any viable option to enter into the public square and be elected.”

Wynne disagreed with that assessment.

“Holding events isn’t the only way politicians have raised money, for decades and decades,” she said. “There are other ways of raising money. And what we know is we’re going into a world where there’s much more direct engagement with people, as individuals, not necessarily at events, but people who become engaged in the party and make donations because of that.”

The text of the amendments will come in clause-by-clause consideration at second reading, according to Naqvi.

For Hillier, that's not soon enough.

"They’ve made the statements, but we don’t have any legal language to debate on or to assess or to evaluate, it’s just been their press releases. This has been a real, fundamental distortion of the system,” he said. “Nobody will have the chance to debate it, let alone examine it or scrutinize it. If there’s any part of skullduggery in this, that’s it.”

Liberals to regulate political staff’s conduct at fundraising events: premier’s office

Read this for free.