OTTAWA — Vaping and environmental regulations, green-economy programs and Canadian content requirements were among the major federal files last year that occupied the attention of companies and their government-relations professionals, The Logic’s analysis of lobbying data shows.

Lobbying activity typically drops in an election year, as politicians decamp from their Ottawa offices to meet the voters—their other main stakeholders—and public servants observe the take-no-decisions convention of the caretaker period. The federal lobbying commissioner’s registry received 22,766 monthly communication reports from organizations and their external consultants in 2021, down from 28,362 the previous year.

The Logic examined those filings to identify the companies, non-profits and industry associations that were most frequently in official Ottawa’s email inboxes and Zoom rooms, as well as the most-lobbied ministers, staffers and department executives. Here’s who was reaching out to whom.

Most active on Parliament Hill

Flavour filings: The Canadian Vaping Association (CVA) did the most lobbying, accounting for one in every 50 communication reports filed last year, as it argued against forthcoming regulations on the practice. In June 2021, Health Canada proposed restricting flavours to tobacco, mint and menthol, citing “a rapid increase in youth vaping.” Such a ban is “an existential threat to this technology,” CVA executive director Darryl Tempest said in an interview, claiming it would also drive more users to illicit sources.

The group represents about 300 independent retailers, manufacturers and distributors across the country. It argues policymakers need to give more consideration to adult users and make clear that brands can advertise the relative risks of vaping and combustible tobacco.     

Health Canada’s 2021–22 plan includes reviewing the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act, with a report due to Parliament by April 2023. That’s a major focus for the CVA, which Tempest estimates had “90 Zoom meetings with MPs” in the back half of 2021. Its registry numbers are boosted by the fact it disclosed the information packages it sent to elected officials. Tempest is planning a similar blitz this year, focusing on new Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos and members of the House health committee, through which any updated legislation must pass. 

The CVA is pushing Canada to adopt something closer to the U.K.’s approach to vaping regulation, which favours the practice as an alternative to cigarette smoking. Non-profits like Heart & Stroke, the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Lung Association have backed Health Canada’s flavour-ban and nicotine-limit proposals.     

LobbyU: The University of Saskatchewan tops all universities with its 144 federal lobbying contacts in 2021, and it’s not close: No. 2 is the University of Calgary, with 69.

“Over the past year, we had many discussions about the critical work being done at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO),” said USask’s associate vice-president of government relations, Sara Daniels, in a statement from its communications department.

The university’s major vaccine-research centre, called VIDO-InterVac, also did some lobbying under its own banner, coming in at No. 64 among the busiest lobbying entities by itself. It received $46 million in federal money for research and production early in the pandemic, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promoted its work on improving Canada’s vaccine capacity. 

Daniels added that the university is constantly working “to make sure elected officials and public servants are up to speed on USask projects of national and public importance,” and that its lobbying activity in 2021 was particularly boosted by introductory meetings for a new vice-president of research.

In the cloud and on the ground: Silicon Valley’s biggest firms have maintained an active presence in Ottawa in recent years, as federal policymakers have debated new privacy, content and competition rules. Foreign tech giants more than tripled their lobbying levels during the Liberal government’s first term, The Logic’s analysis at the time showed.

Seattle-based Amazon led the way, and last year was no different. The company’s Canadian subsidiaries filed more than twice as many communication reports as the next most prolific tech giant. Cloud division Amazon Web Services (AWS), accounted for 54 of the firm’s 129 lobbying communications. The increased government engagement is partly driven by the unit’s “growing footprint and investment in Canada,” said Nicole Foster, director of AWS Canada public policy. 

In November 2021, the company announced a new “region”—a geographic collection of data-centre clusters—in Calgary, estimating it would spend over $21 billion by 2037 on the project. In the lead-up, the firm met with senior officials at Western Economic Diversification Canada as well as Prairie-focused advisors to Liberal ministers and some Alberta Conservative MPs. 

“A lot of our customers that use data centres in Canada, specifically, are doing that for regulatory reasons,” Foster told The Logic, citing financial services, insurance, health care and government. The company’s location decisions could therefore be affected by rules like information residency requirements or mandated distances between data centres. “A lot of the rules we operate [under] were drafted before the internet existed,” Foster noted, so the company is keen to ensure “the policy context [supports] the innovation economy more broadly.”

AWS has also met with new federal chief information officer Catherine Luelo and Shared Services Canada president Paul Glover, who between them oversee the government’s own technology systems. “There is more understanding across government about [the] potential benefits [of] the cloud,” she said. But she cited continuing challenges such as legacy security concerns, lengthy timelines and tender requirements that don’t match what’s current in the market. 

Now trending: TikTok Canada was as active as some more established Big Tech players, making 36 contacts—three more than Netflix, and more than twice as many as Facebook/Meta’s 17.

“Since opening TikTok’s Canadian office in 2020, we have met regularly with MPs and staff from all parties to brief them on TikTok, answer their questions and show them how millions of Canadians use our platform to share their culture, talents and creativity,” its director of public policy and government affairs, Steve de Eyre, said in a written statement to The Logic.

TikTok Canada lobbied many elected officials in the spring, as a bill that would have brought streaming companies under the supervision of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission moved through the House of Commons, and then reached out to senators at the end of June when Bill C-10 went to the Red Chamber—where it ultimately died with the August election call.

“We also met with officials on how proposed changes to the Broadcasting Act could impact TikTok’s Canadian creator community,” the statement says. “Digital-first creators have used TikTok to find audiences and achieve success not just in Canada but globally, and it’s critical for their voices to be heard in this debate.”

Freedom of information: While policymakers are typically keen to highlight support for domestic startups and scale-ups, such firms tend to have less of a presence on Parliament Hill. Montreal-based fintech firm Flinks was an exception last year, communicating with federal officials 28 times as it pushes for the federal government to adopt an open banking framework. “What we’re seeking is data portability,” COO Dominique Samson told The Logic. Flinks develops APIs that connect different financial-services products. The firm is lobbying for rules that will let consumers share their information with any provider they choose, rather than being limited to options set by their current bank or an industry consortium. 

In August 2021, Finance Canada released the final report of its advisory committee, which recommended a phased approach to implementing open banking, starting in January 2023. During the summer election campaign, the Liberals promised to meet that timeline. Samson said the next step is the appointment of an open banking lead. 

Last year, Flinks representatives met with senior public servants at Finance Canada, which oversees the open banking file. They were also in contact with advisors in Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s office, Liberal and Conservative MPs and NDP staff. “Open banking is not just a one simple bolt-on element that you add to the financial system as it exists,” according to Samson. “Most likely, it’s going to require some form of legislation.” The company is trying to “build political support across party lines,” he said.  

In August 2021, National Bank acquired a majority stake in Flinks, but Samson said the fintech firm will continue to stake out its own policy positions. “These regulations that we’re asking for are going to directly set the boundaries of our business models,” he noted.

Stolen signals: Pelmorex contacted federal officials 19 times in 2021, according to The Logic’s tally. The company has multiple roles: it operates The Weather Network, supplies data to corporate customers and runs the national public alerting system that blasts warnings to televisions, radios and cellphones. The company has advocated to the government for many years about satellite-signal theft—receiving and decoding satellite transmissions without paying for them—and that was part of its work in 2021.

“We can confirm that we previously engaged with government officials last year regarding satellite-signal theft to educate designated public office holders on our work as a weather and climate content and data company,” said Kurt Eby, Pelmorex’s director of regulatory, government and affiliate relations, by email. It also had meetings to teach government figures about the national alert system, but isn’t lobbying for anything in particular, he said.

Money talk: Many of the other established Canadian tech companies and innovation-economy scale-ups that lobbied the most last year are recipients of significant public funding or contracts. 

In August 2021, the federal government announced it would lend Telesat $790 million and take a $650-million equity stake in the firm, capital to help it build its Lightspeed constellation of low Earth orbit satellites. The Ottawa-based aerospace company was by far the most frequent domestic innovation-economy lobbyist, communicating with ISED deputy minister Simon Kennedy on an at-least-monthly basis in the lead-up to the announcement. The firm also lobbied senior officials and staffers in the Prime Minister’s Office as well as at Finance Canada and other departments and agencies. 

The federal flagship Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) has backed several of the other companies that were most communicative last year, including BlackBerry, Stemcell Technologies and AbCellera. Past recipients have told The Logic that program officials encourage applicants to log themselves in the lobbyists’ registry. 

Most lobbied

Industry ministers are regularly at or near the top of lobbyists’ lists, and Champagne had the most contacts of any federal official in 2021, according to the registry. The Quebec MP, appointed in mid-January, oversees some of the Liberal government’s biggest business-support measures such as the SIF’s $8-billion Net Zero Accelerator. He’s also charged with shepherding key legislative files, including updates to the country’s consumer-privacy and investment laws. 

Companies that reported communicating with Champagne included the Big Three Detroit automakers and at least nine pharmaceutical multinationals, as the Liberal government sought Canadian manufacturing commitments from both industries. He also heard from each of the country’s three largest telecoms—which collectively reported 289 contacts—as well as some challengers. And he spoke with scale-ups like Xanadu, the Toronto quantum-computer maker, and Montreal space firm NorthStar.

His department was similarly popular, with Kennedy coming a close second for communication reports and four others responsible for key ISED sectors among the 10 most lobbied public servants last year.

Transformation talk: The Liberal government has long professed its commitment to combating climate change and the growth of the green economy, and businesses were keen to engage on those issues last year. The natural-resources and environment departments were respectively the second and third most lobbied in 2021, and B.C. MP Jonathan Wilkinson, who swapped the latter portfolio for the former in October, trailed only Champagne among ministers.

“Carbon pricing set the rules of the game and [was] the triggering event that allowed for the expansion of the Canadian clean technology economy,” said Travis Allan, vice-president of public affairs for Quebec City-based AddÉnergie. Other policies, such as a forthcoming clean-fuel standard and proposed requirements that automakers sell set shares of zero-emissions vehicles, may be “less well known,” he acknowledged. But they have “a huge impact on our ability to achieve our international climate commitments and also the pacing and cost at which that happens.”

AddÉnergie makes EV chargers and operates a network of stations across the U.S. and Canada. The company has called for the federal government to continue EV purchasing incentives and keep funding plug-in infrastructure, while pushing it to adopt a sales mandate and electrify its own fleet, Allan told The Logic.

The firm is also concerned about the “risks for Canadian cleantech companies in the face of enhanced protectionism in some of our major markets.” Last year, company representatives met several times with advisors to Trade Minister Mary Ng, who is leading Canada’s opposition to President Joe Biden’s plan for zero-emissions-car rebates that favour U.S.-made models.

“The only way you can decarbonize the transportation system is through really good policy,” said Allan, noting that factors such as individual driving decisions, EV availability and the price of fuel and electricity all affect emissions-reduction plans. Ministers and staff have “shown a very high degree of willingness” to discuss cleantech issues with industry, he said. The firm also met with MPs from all major parties last year.