In mid-July, Adam Bolek, a former top lobbyist for Telus and OpenText, travelled to Calgary for one of his first assignments as Binance’s new Canadian government-affairs lead: eating pancakes with members of the local community at the company’s Stampede breakfast event, complete with door prizes and live country music.

The friendly approach it’s taking in Alberta stands out for a company that was all but chased out of Ontario just a few months ago after the province’s securities regulators cracked down on cryptocurrency exchanges operating without proper registration. Since then, however, Binance has been busy deepening its ties out West, where it has found a more permissive regulatory regime—and a provincial government eager to work with it.

Under the United Conservative Party government, Alberta has taken steps to attract crypto companies to the province, pitching itself as a more business-friendly jurisdiction for startups to set up shop. And Binance is going along for the ride. The exchange is planning to scale up its presence in the region in collaboration with government officials, Binance Canada CEO Lawrence Truong told The Logic. It has already set up its Canadian headquarters in Calgary.

“Binance is working with the government to develop programs to add high-quality jobs to the Alberta and Canadian workforce,” Truong said, “and we hope to be able to discuss this in more detail in the coming months.”

Hiring the Ottawa-based Bolek is part of the company’s push. With his background working for major Canadian companies, his job will be to help Binance gain credibility among government officials at a time when regulators and lawmakers around the world are exploring how to rein in the space. He joins Truong and Darren Gross, two former officials with the Alberta Securities Commission (ASC) who have taken up senior roles at Binance overseeing the exchange’s Canada operations.

Binance plans to continue expanding its security and compliance staff in Canada, especially in the “short to medium term,” Truong said. “Public policy is very important to Binance, and we are growing that team globally as we speak in key markets, Canada being one of them,” Truong said.

Incorporated in the Cayman Islands, Binance is a polarizing presence in many jurisdictions, notorious for prioritizing expansion over compliance as it grew to become one of the world’s largest crypto platforms. The Dutch central bank fined the exchange more than €3 million this week for offering services in the Netherlands without obtaining the proper permissions, the latest in a long list of actions that regulators around the world have taken against it.

The Ontario Securities Commission went after cryptocurrency platforms in March 2021, cracking down on unregistered exchanges operating in the province, which included Binance; it gave the platforms three weeks to get into compliance or face enforcement action. That June, Binance announced it would exit Ontario completely, asking users living there to close their positions before Dec. 31, 2021.

But as the end of that year approached, Binance signalled its intention to remain in Canada, incorporating three corporate entities based in Calgary and registering as a money-services business with federal regulators, which it said allowed it to continue operating in Ontario. In response, the OSC issued a statement on Dec. 30 notifying investors that Binance did not have permission to operate in the province; in March 2022, the company made a legally binding commitment to the OSC to withdraw its services from Ontario until further notice.

Besides Binance, other crypto companies have explored setting up operations in Alberta amid the United Conservative Party’s push to attract their business. Matthew Burgoyne, a partner at Osler in Calgary who co-leads the firm’s crypto practice, said he’s seen interest from U.S. companies who want to establish subsidiaries in Alberta. The province is an attractive destination for crypto companies, Burgoyne said, thanks to its affordability, friendlier regulatory environment and low corporate taxes.

But Alberta has another key advantage over other provinces: the crypto sector has the government’s ear at the highest level. Earlier this month, for example, Kenney attended a private lunch at Centini in downtown Calgary with about 20 industry representatives from companies like Binance and GuildOne, said Burgoyne, who also attended.

Kenney took notes on the issues attendees raised and seemed interested in learning more about the industry, Burgoyne added. “To have that kind of audience with the premier—that just doesn’t happen as far as I know in other provinces,” he said.

A spokesperson for Kenney’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment before The Logic’s deadline.

Asked for details about what types of programs the government is developing with Binance, a spokesperson for Alberta Innovation Minister Doug Schweitzer deferred to the ASC for comment.

The ASC didn’t say whether Binance had officially registered in Alberta. As of April, Binance was not registered with any agency in Canada, an ASC spokesperson told The Logic that month. Asked this week whether it had done so since then, ASC spokesperson Hilary McMeekin said the agency didn’t comment on specific registration applications.

The agency has grown its staff focused on registration in light of continued interest from crypto companies, McMeekin added. “We continue to work with our CSA [Canadian Securities Administrators] colleagues to ensure, to the extent possible, there is a harmonized regime to deal with crypto-trading platforms in Canada.”

It’s unclear how much Binance intends to coordinate with other Canadian crypto companies on its lobbying. The crypto exchange hasn’t been in touch with the Canadian Web3 Council, an industry group founded this year by a handful of large players, according to executive director Morva Rohani. Wealthsimple, one of the council’s most prominent members, has publicly criticized the proliferation of unregistered crypto exchanges in Canada.

So far, Rohani said, “Binance hasn’t shown the commitment to working with regulators we’d expect” from the council’s members. “In order to be able to build productive relationships with regulators in Canada, you have to have productive relationships with all regulators in Canada,” she added.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the attribution of quotes to Binance Canada CEO Lawrence Truong.