Roberto Rocha

Explore the data: Who lobbies cabinet members the most

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Since the Trudeau Liberals came to power, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), a coalition of over 2,000 local governments, communicated with cabinet members 175 times. It had the ear of all kinds of senior ministers, from labour, to heritage, to foreign affairs, all the way to the prime minister.

Of the roughly 6,470 lobbying groups active since late 2015, it was among the 1,340 that met with the country’s most senior politicians, and in the top 2.6 per cent of lobbyists who met with them at least 50 times.

It’s an in-group that includes energy giants like Imperial Oil and Suncor Energy, made-in-Canada business heavyweights like Bell and Bombardier and some of the country’s largest agricultural and business associations.

These are among the findings of an analysis by the IJF that reveals, for the first time, who gets access to the highest levels of the Canadian government.

“These organizations have access to the core executive. And that's quite something in our parliamentary system, because that's where power is centralized, around the prime minister and the cabinet, especially in a majority government,” said Maxime Boucher, a researcher at the Centre on Governance of the University of Ottawa who studies lobbying in government.


What lobbying the cabinet gets you

Lobbying is a regular part of the democratic process, a way for public interest groups and businesses to inform lawmakers about the impacts of new policies, push for new ones, and, in some cases, to ask the government for money.

The vast majority of lobbying happens with lower-level bureaucrats in various government agencies, where policies are discussed in technical detail. The lobby groups that make it to the cabinet level have broader discussions that can involve multiple departments and touch on issues that potentially affect more Canadians.

Interactive: Explore the top cabinet lobbyists yourself [https://investigative-journalism-foundation.ghost.io/explore-who-lobbies-cabinet-members-the-most]

For example, the FCM meets with ministers to talk about climate change, housing affordability, homelessness and infrastructure funding, among other issues.

“Because of the breadth of our membership, FCM has the credibility as the leading voice of municipalities at the national level to inform the design of policies that will benefit Canadians,” said Steven Woodhead, the federation’s senior director of communications.

Other groups, like Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME), one of Canada’s oldest and largest trade associations, prefer to target a single department and have their views trickle out from there.

“We always had good relations with the minister of economic development. The general industrial strategy is usually handled from that office,” said Dennis Darby, president and CEO of  CME, which represents over 2,500 companies.

It’s the third most active lobby group in the Trudeau cabinet.

“We often rely on that minister to influence the finance minister, to communicate to the cabinet what we need in terms of tax policy,” said Darby. “We also prefer to talk to them directly, not through the media. It’s not as productive.”

Former Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Singh Bains speaks to reporters following a cabinet meeting in Ottawa in 2017. Bains was the most lobbied minister since the Liberals took power in 2015. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

Lobbyists are mandated by law to report all communications with public officials along with a brief summary of their goals. But, they do not have to report the details of the conversations or the outcome of their efforts. This makes it hard to know if a lobbying campaign is successful. It relies on the lobby group’s own forthrightness.

CME, for example, claimed victory in influencing USMCA, the trade agreement that replaced NAFTA. The industry group lobbied for closer coordination among Canadian, U.S. and Mexican manufacturers. This resulted in the “competitiveness” chapter [https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/agreements/FTA/USMCA/Text/26_Competitiveness.pdf] of the USMCA, CME said, which encourages continent-wide cooperation to keep production in North America.

Unifor, the country’s largest private-sector union, says it was successful in increasing the federal minimum wage as well as “a child care agreement, COVID relief benefits, EI enhancements, federal paid sick leave and the upcoming anti-scab legislation [https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/federal-ndp-unions-happy-liberals-will-include-strikes-in-anti-scab-law-1.5838846],” according to Erin Harrison, a spokesperson for Unifor.

The union met with the cabinet 121 times, making it the second most active lobby group.


Corporations get the most face-time with cabinet, unions the least

Unifor’s success is exceptional because it’s a union, and these have the least chance to meet the prime minister, a 2018 study [https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Who+you+know+in+the+PMO%3A+Lobbying+the+Prime+Minister%27s+Office+in...-a0562236746] by Boucher found. Corporations and trade associations, which are also the most common type of lobby groups, are more likely to make it to the top levels of government.

In fact, Unifor was barely in the top 40 lobbying groups during the Harper government. It ramped up efforts in early 2016, shortly after the Liberals took over, and went on a spree in March 2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, when millions of jobs were at risk of being cut.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shakes hands with Unifor President Jerry Dias, left, after speaking to the union's convention in 2016. Unifor is the second most active lobby group at the cabinet level. (The Canadian Press/Justin Tang)

“Unifor stepped up our lobbying efforts to ensure that workers were able to rely on government support during a very difficult time,” said Harrison. “We advocated for our members in hard-hit sectors, and continue to do so as needed.”

The union sees its heavy lobbying strategy as a counterbalance to corporate lobbying, Harrison added.

“Politicians must be given the opportunity to understand the labour movement’s views,” she said.


What lobbyists lobby about

The most favoured topics with cabinet-level lobbyists include international trade, industrial issues, economic development and the environment, according to lobbying data.

Suncor Energy, for example, one of the most active corporations lobbying the cabinet, regularly talks to the minister of natural resources and the minister of environment about fossil fuel subsidies, Indigenous rights and the transition to renewable energy.

The IJF analyzed lobbyists’ stated goals and found three topics that were mentioned by multiple organizations.


Climate change

A pressing issue with huge potential impacts, climate change attracts the widest swath of lobby groups, from energy companies to charities to universities to activist groups.

 * Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers - wants “international recognition of Canada's progress in reducing global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions” and a nationwide emissions offset system without usage limits.
 * Canadian Canola Growers Association - wants the Clean Fuel Regulations [https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/managing-pollution/energy-production/fuel-regulations/clean-fuel-regulations.html], which require fuels to pollute less, to incentivize the use of canola-based biofuels.
 * Canadian Federation of Agriculture - advocates for permitting the hunting of farm pests even if they are protected species.
 * Canadian Medical Association - advocates for a national climate plan addressing climate change’s health impacts.
 * MDA - MDA, a space technology company, promotes using satellites [https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/mda-releases-first-details-of-its-next-generation-commercial-earth-observation-mission-884720042.html] to measure changes in the environment, like melting sea ice [https://twitter.com/MDA_space/status/1146862904530165760].


Temporary foreign workers

Companies and trade groups suffering from a long-running labour shortage lobbied for less stringent rules on hiring foreign workers. Other groups, like unions and professional associations, lobbied for laws to prevent the exploitation of foreign labourers and to protect their current members.

 * Alberta Municipalities - sought a regional variation [https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/municipalities-want-an-alberta-temporary-foreign-worker-program] of the federal program to make it easier and quicker to hire foreign staff.
 * Banff & Lake Louise Hospitality Association - lobbied to allow foreign workers to stay in Canada longer.
 * Unifor - lobbied to reassess the foreign worker program to emphasize “rights and protections for migrant workers and access to the Canadian immigration process.”
 * Canadian Construction Association- supported expediting temporary workers applications’ for permanent residency, which can normally take more than one year.
 * Canadian Labour Congress - wants the government to “aggressively” enforce the law, defend workers’ rights and encourage more permanent immigration in place of temporary migration.
 * Canadian Meat Council - lobbied to reduce the $1,000 fee companies must pay for each foreign worker hired and increase the cap [https://globalnews.ca/news/8218846/meat-packers-foreign-workers-labour-crisis/] on foreign workers in packing plants from 10 to 30 per cent of staff.


Food safety

In 2019, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency enacted the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations, a battery of new rules on everything from food labelling to inter-provincial trade to organic food. This spurred a bevy of lobbying efforts.

 * Canadian Federation of Agriculture - lobbied the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for money to help members buy equipment to comply with new labelling rules.
 * Canadian Produce Marketing Association- lobbied for the acceptance of “recognized, science-based reviews” on nanotechnology, irradiation and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
 * Canadian Health Food Association- lobbied to make it mandatory to label genetically modified foods.
 * Dairy Processors Assoc. of Canada - sought clarity on rules about highlighting ingredients on food labels. The rules forbid minor ingredients from being promoted as a main component.


Explore the data yourself

See who the top cabinet lobbyists are, who they lobbied, and how often they lobbied with our interactive dashboard [https://investigative-journalism-foundation.ghost.io/explore-who-lobbies-cabinet-members-the-most].


How we did this this story

To identify lobbying organizations that communicated with cabinet members, the IJF looked at all communication reports [https://investigative-journalism-foundation.ghost.io/lobby-reports] filed by lobbying groups between November 2015 and July 2022, and isolated those that included any ministers, including the prime minister, the presidents of the treasury board and of the Privy Council.

To do this, the IJF searched the titles of officials who participated in lobbying communications for the terms “minister”, “prime minister”, “deputy prime minister”, and “president”, and their French equivalents. We excluded titles that contain the words “advisor”, “assistant”, “chief”, “staff”, “state”, and “parliament”, and their French equivalents.

Lobbyists are responsible for inputting information about lobbying activities and there’s no consistency in how official titles and departments are recorded. Our approach captured most records with cabinet members, but possibly not all.

Names of officials are also not standardized in the lobbyist registry. For example, Minister of International Development Harjit S. Sajjan appears in the data as “Harjit Singh Sajjan”, “Harjitt S Sajjan” and “Harjit Sin Sajjan.” A technique called fuzzy matching was used to standardize names against an official list of names and roles [https://lop.parl.ca/sites/ParlInfo/default/en_CA/Federal/areasResponsibility] from the Library of Parliament.

The same list was used to standardize department names by associating ministers with their departments at the time of lobbying.

To identify the most lobbied topics in the registry records, the IJF used software that classifies texts based on common words and phrases.

Unions, farmers and oil firms: who lobbies cabinet members the most

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