VANCOUVER — Amazon is hiring a dedicated lobbyist in Canada to work on “digital policy issues” as the federal government moves to increase Big Tech regulation.

The new hire will be based in Ottawa and “support Amazon’s public policy and government relations activities in Canada on digital policy issues,” according to a job posting. They “will support the development and execution of Amazon’s public policy and advocacy priorities on a number of digital policy issues at the federal, provincial and municipal levels.”

Amazon declined to answer The Logic’s questions about the move, but head of workplace communications Dave Bauer sent a statement saying: “Our public policy team is focused on ensuring we are advocating on issues that are important to our customers, our employees and policymakers.”

The tech titan already has an active lobbying presence in Ottawa, using both in-house staff and consultants, for three divisions: Amazon Corporate, Amazon Canada Fulfillment Services and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Last year, Amazon’s registered lobbyists filed the most communications reports—129, or more than double that of second-place company Google—of any big tech firm, The Logic found. A 2019 analysis by The Logic found Amazon increased its lobbying more than any other tech firm in the four years after the Liberals took power in 2015. 

Amazon has mostly focused its efforts on expanding its warehouses and securing government contracts. In the first four years after the Liberals’ election, Amazon lobbied to work with government to facilitate online selling and delivering to consumers and toward “ensuring the availability of a high-skilled tech workforce.” Its fulfillment subsidiary, meanwhile, lobbied local MPs near where it had built new warehouses.

In the last year, it has focused on pursuing government contracts for AWS and influencing “policy direction related to cloud-based services,” according to its communications reports. Amazon maintained its focus on “ensuring the availability of a high-skilled tech workforce” and also attempted to “ease the process of selling goods and services online and delivering them to consumers.” It has mostly lobbied members of the House of Commons, followed by officials at Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED).

The company has also had some interaction with Canadian Heritage. Amazon’s in-house lobbyists have communicated with various officials in the department over the past year, according to its monthly reports. The list includes Ron Ahluwalia, director of policy, on the topic of arts and culture in late March; Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez about broadcasting in mid-February; and Matthew Gray, a policy advisor, also on broadcasting in late January.

Rodriguez tabled two pieces of legislation to regulate tech firms this year. In April, he tabled Bill C-18, designed to make digital platforms pay news publishers for links posted to their sites, following Australia’s lead. In February, he tabled Bill C-11, which would put streaming services—such as Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime—under the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s purview. C-11 passed the House of Commons last week and is being considered by the Senate.

Some streaming giants have opposed C-11. YouTube encouraged creators to advocate to “fix” the bill, which the company said could result in Canadian content being recommended less to viewers and Canadian creators making less money on the platform.

“Government is the biggest single variable in anybody’s business,” said Bill Fox, a fellow of the Clayton H. Riddell Graduate Program in Political Management at Carleton University. He was the communications director for former prime minister Brian Mulroney as well as a senior executive at Bell, CN and Bombardier. The government can impact a business directly through legislation, regulation or taxation, he said, as well as indirectly through, for example, unintended consequences of government actions. That’s why he believes government communication needs to “be an integral component part of your overall corporate strategy.”

The digital-policy focus adds coverage of a previous possible blind spot for Amazon’s lobbying efforts.

“In a perfect world, yeah, they would have had somebody doing this before,” said Fox. “But better now than not.” Too often, he said, firms rely on the reactive so-called “red-phone approach,” where they don’t pay attention until an announcement and then jump on the phone for the first time to voice their concerns. That typically doesn’t work to resolve any issues perceived by the company, and creates a situation where they are on “send” mode more than “receive.”

Fox finds a proactive approach more useful. Companies need to engage early on to understand the government’s public-policy objectives and the political landscape, he said.

“I think what they’re trying to do is get past the … red-phone approach.”