Dear Heather and Jennifer ..

 Thanks very much for the speedy reply Friday afternoon. I know well how swamped things are this time of year.

 I can take little solace from your answer, however.

 You admit that Amanda’s speech for  Sun Life (grandfathered in) would NOT be allowed now, under the new policy – which means that you do explicitly admit that Sun Life (in the exact words of the policy) “makes a significant effort to lobby or otherwise influence public policy.”

 Yet you recently APPROVED  paid speaking events  for Morningstar Mutual Funds, a prominent private law firm, the Investment Portfolio Managers Association of Canada, a consortium of companies involved in large scale infrastructure (soft and hard) development and the Chamber of Commerce (a national organization of private businesses.)

 If you think that these kinds of individual firms and industry associations (as divorced from Sun Life, “an insurance company”?) do not  “make significant efforts to lobby or otherwise influence public policy” for the direct economic benefit of the individual firms or their members  …..

 Then you are either blissfully unaware – or worse, willfully blind – to the day-to-day workings of an economic and political system that I reported on for CBC for 27 years.

 But with that final word, I do wish you and the CBC, my home for all those years, all the best in 2015.

 Sincerely,

Frank Koller