January's Key Lobbying Issues in Ottawa
January's Key Lobbying Issues in Ottawa
The Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, Industrial Relations Board Regulations, University Infrastructure, and Emission Vehicle Supply Chains
This week we focus on the key issues that stood out in January’s lobbying communications.
The CliffsNotes version:
The Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, Industrial Relations Board Regulations, University Infrastructure, and Emission Vehicle Supply Chains were among the 25 issues that saw the biggest rise in salience in January’s lobby-reports, relative to the previous twelve months.
Cluster analysis reveals a number of clusters in extracted key issues, including for example University Infrastructure + Universities Arrangements + Excellence Research Chairs Program
Some clusters, including the above, emerged because a group of issues became more salient for the same sectors.
Other issue clusters, including Environmental Protection Legislation + Climate Change Policies, were grouped because they became salient in the lobbying of the same government institutions, albeit from different sectors.
0. Note on Methodology
When we discus issues, we use LobbyIQ’s data on monthly key-phrases. The way these work is that LobbyIQ takes all the registrations that generated communications in a given month and collates these by the sector/industry of the organization that lobbied, and also separately by the institution that was lobbied. This collation generates a little over 300 text-corpuses per month (for roughly 150 sectors and 160 government institutions). For each of these corpuses, a machine-learning algorithm extracts the key-phrases that characterize the corpus, based on how unusual and how central certain phrases were. The resulting lists of key-phrases tell us what each month’s critical lobbying-issues are for each sector and each institution.
Theoretically, a single phrase could show up as central (a “key issue”) in all 300+ text-corpuses in a month. However, the algorithm identifies phrases that are unusual in the context of the overall body of text (i.e. relative to past months in the same sector or institution) so that it weights negatively against ever-present phrases, because there is no new information in those. (For example, in any given month the algorithm is biased against calling “dairy production” central to the lobbying of “dairy producers” because “dairy production” is ever-present in dairy producers’ registration texts.)
Variation in these lists captures 3 types of shifts:
within a sector, the list of organizations (registrations) that actively lobby varies from month to month, generating variation in key-issues within sector over time
Within organizations (or registrations), the focus of lobbying can change, resulting in updated text-descriptions in the registrations, again creating variation in key-issues within sector over time
the sectors and organizations that a government institution gets lobbied by vary month-to-month, generating variation in key-issues within institution over time
1. Issues on the Rise and on the Ebb
To determine which issues are on the rise in Ottawa overall, we start with counting up all sectors and institutions for which an issue was a central key-issue in a given month. This count has a theoretical max of 300, but in practice these numbers are far smaller because the algorithm looks for novel and unusual phrases. As a result, being central in 6 sectors and/or institutions in one month will almost always put a phrase into the month’s top-10 of most salient key issues.
We then ask which issues are “on the rise,” by estimating a trend model over the data for the last 14 months, and asking which issues have become more salient in the last two months (January and February) relative to their trailing twelve month (TTM) baseline.
Exhibit 1 shows the top-25 emerging issues in December and January, with their average count across the two month in the Number-column, their TTM average (November 2022 to November 2023) in the Avg-column, and the modeled deviation from trend in the Excess-column.
For example, the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act (second row on the Exhibit) was a key-issue for an average of 6 sectors and institutions in January and December, 4.1 higher than the average over the previous twelve months.
Other rising key issues included Social Development Canada, Industrial Relations Board Regulations, Funding Opportunities, Revenue Agency, Charities Legislative Framework, University Infrastructure, Energy Regulator Act, Beverages Industry, Major Investment Project, Environmental Protection Legislation, Training Benefit, Climate Change Policies, Incremental Fisheries Agreement, Union Innovation Training Program, Emission Vehicle Supply Chain, Regional Innovation Ecosystem, Federal Innovation Initiatives, Indigenous Services Canada, Management Consulting Profession, Trade Agreements, Digital Government Priorities, Excellence Research Chairs Program, Package Nutrition Labelling Requirement, and Universities Arrangements.
Exhibit 2 shows the flipside of Exhibit 1, i.e. the 25 issues that were declining the most in relative salience during December and January, relative to the trailing twelve months from November 2022 to November 2023.
For example, discussions related to the Food Inspection Agency were a key-issue for an average of 6 sectors and institutions in January and December, down 2.18 from an average of 8.55 in the previous twelve months.
Other issues that have been losing salience in the last two months include Natural Resources Canada, Agricultural Partnership, Housing Strategy, Broadcasting Act, Aviation Maintenance Council, Environmental Protection Act, Retail Payments Oversight Framework, Pest Control Products Regulations, Infrastructure Funding, Nuclear Safety Control Act, Mortgage Housing Corporation, Agricultural Policy Framework, Trade Policy, Deposit Insurance Corporation, Free Trade Agreement, Marine Transportation Sector, Emissions Reduction Plan, Veterans Affairs Canada, European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, Government Contracts, Provincial Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions Policies, Supportive Housing, Sustainable Development Technologies Canada, and the Impact Assessment Act.
2. Issue Clusters
How do these rising and declining issues relate to one other, and can they be grouped into issue clusters?
This type of question can be answered with cluster analysis, a technique that is often used in polling and surveying data. When we apply cluster analysis to the lobbying issues, we find that some of the key issues is Exhibit 1 are indeed clustered together:
University Infrastructure + Universities Arrangements + Excellence Research Chairs Program
Regional Innovation Ecosystem + Management Consulting Profession
Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act + Charities Legislative Framework
Environmental Protection Legislation + Climate Change Policies
Social Development Canada + Major Investment Project
Funding Opportunities + Incremental Fisheries Agreement
The remaining issues in Exhibit 1 are standalone issues, not clustered with others.
Clusters are created either because issues are driven by a shared set of sectors or a shared set of institutions or both. In the next section we look directly at what these shared sets are.
3. Rising Issues by Sector and Institutions
Exhibit 3 shows for each rising issue the sectors from which the rise in salience occurred. Exhibit 3 also shows some issue-clusters, being driven by a shared set of sectors.
For example, issue-cluster #3 in the cluster-analysis above (= Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act + Charities Legislative Framework) is visible in Exhibit 3 because both issues became salient together in the E-NGO sector over the last two months, with their lobbying-count rising from an average of 0 to 14 for Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, and from an average of 0 to 10 for Charities Legislative Framework. This can also be seen on LobbyIQ’s Environmental NGO dashboard where Exhibit 4 shows the two issues jointly emerging as key issues in December and January.
We can therefore say that cluster #3 is reflecting changing lobbying priorities in the E-NGO sector.
By contrast, issue-cluster #4 (= Environmental Protection Legislation + Climate Change Policies) is not driven by the same sectors in Exhibit 3, with the first issue driven by the Pipelines and LNG sector, and the second by petroleum refiners and chemical manufacturers. This implies cluster #4 had to get grouped based on a shared set of institutions that were lobbied on these two issues.
Exhibit 5 lets us inspect his, showing the institutions-equivalent to Exhibit 3.
In Exhibit 5, we can see that issue-cluster #3 (Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act + Charities Legislative Framework) was not grouped based on institutions lobbied, because lobbying on the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act was increasing at IAAC and AAFC, while lobbying on Charities Legislative Framework was increasing at ECC, the PMO and FIN.
By contrast, cluster #4 (Environmental Protection Legislation + Climate Change Policies) was grouped based on the fact that these two issues became jointly more prevalent in lobbying Transport Canada (TC) in recent months. This can be seen directly on LobbyIQ’s Transport Canada (TC) dashboard where the two issues jointly emerged in January.
This concludes our last issue covering January’s lobbying data in Ottawa. In next week’s issue, we report on February’s most lobbying-active sectors and organizations in Ottawa.