November's Ottawa Lobbying Update #2
November's Ottawa Lobbying Update #2
last month's most lobbied public office holders and institutions, and who lobbied them
Each month, Queen Street Analytics publishes four reports on the government relations landscape in Ottawa, analyzing noteworthy patterns across (#1) the most lobbying-active sectors and organizations, (#2) the most lobbied government institutions and public officials (DPOHs), (#3) the most active lobby-firms and lobbyist-consultants, and (#4) the most lobbied-on and discussed subjects and keywords. Our approach is not journalistic. We use statistical and machine-learning enabled analytics to uncover patterns, trends, and opportunities, giving our subscribers an enhanced toolkit to navigate the government relations landscape.
Today, in November’s newsletter#2 we look at the public office holders and federal government institutions that saw unusual communications activity last month, and which sectors and organizations drove those communications.1
CliffsNotes version:
There were 2481 communication filings in September, which amounted to 2083 separate meetings once we clean up duplicate filings.
Only 18% of all meetings involved an MP. Remarkably, this is the exact opposite proportion to the lobby-filings reported in our U.S. sister-publication K Street Analytics, where 82% of last quarter’s lobby filings in Washington involved members of the House of Representatives, a reminder of the big differences in our two political systems.
Hannah Wilson at Finance Canada retains the top-spot on our list of the 25 most lobbied DPOHs for a second month running.
ISED, Finance Canada, and Environment and Climate Change (ECCC) topped the list of institutions with unusually high meetings activity in September.
Lobbying around the proposed amendments to Bill C-234 put Crop producers’ communications with the Senate on the top of the list of sector-institution pairs with unusual deviations in lobbying activity; with Pharma companies’ lobbying of Health Canada also high up the list.
We flag targeted lobbying campaigns as organization-institution pairs with unusually deviations in lobbying activity. Armatec Survivability’s lobbying of the Prime Minister’s Office was among nine such deviations we found in September.
1. Most Lobbied Civil Servants in September
Before diving into any analytics, we have to clean up duplicates filings. Duplicate filings arise by design (when multiple registered lobbyists attend the same meeting but are obliged to file separately) and unintentionally by human error. There were 2481 communication filings in September, which amounted to 2083 actual separate meetings. 13% involved a Minister or a Deputy Minister, and one meeting (with BlackBerry Limited) involved the Prime Minister. 18% of all meetings involved an MP, which is close to the monthly average for Ottawa, but struck us as remarkable this month because our Washington sister-publication K Street Analytics published its first by-department breakdown of lobbying in Washington in last week’s issue, and found the exact opposite proportion where exactly 18% of all U.S. lobby filings did not involve lobbying a member of the House of Representatives.
Moving on, Exhibit 1 starts with a look at September’s 25 most lobbied designated public office holders (DPOHs), with their number of meetings listed, as well as the institution they represent and title they hold. Readers can find the institutional abbreviations here.
The majority of the most lobbied DPOHs are at the mid-level of seniority (Policy Advisors and Senior Policy Advisors), with a few more senior ranks like Policy Directors, ADMs, and DMs sprinkled in, plus one MP, Vaughan-Woodbidge's Francesco Sorbara. For a comparison to last month’s top-DPOHs, see here:
Overall, Finance Canada DPOHs saw less traffic in September than they had in August, although Hannah Wilson retains the top overall-spot for a second month running. A quick look at Exhibit 2 (from LobbyIQ’s institutions-dashboard for Finance Canada) confirms a consistent upward trend in the number of meetings she takes. (LobbyIQ reports filings, not meetings, hence 37>33 in September.) Exhibit 2 also shows strong overall growth in meetings at FIN across all DPOHs, including Minister Freeland.
2. Communications by Government Institution
Zooming out, which government institutions saw unusual amounts of lobbying in September? To answer this question, we run a prediction model over aggregate filings at the institution-month (a panel of 160 monthly-frequency time-series), allowing for separate cyclical shifters for each institution.
Exhibit 3 displays all institutions with an absolute (i.e. positive or negative) deviation in lobbying relative to trend of 11+ in September. This is reported in the Excess column. Taking ISED as an example, this table reports that 105 unique DPOHs were involved in 251 separate meetings, with an average of 1.5 ISED DPOHs (380/251) attending each of these meetings. The Excess column implies that 251 meetings were 73 more meetings than predicted by the usual data patterns for ISED.
3. September’s Institution-Sector Outliers
Some of the instances of deviations from trend in lobbying seen in Exhibit 3 are likely to emanate from a single identifiable economic source, i.e. one sector. To break this down, we run a prediction model of lobbying on data aggregated to the institution-sector pair (roughly 1 million observations across 15 years of monthly data).
Exhibit 4 shows some instances where the excess lobbying of an institution that we see in Exhibit 3 can be explained by the communications from just one or two sectors. This is true for Health Canada for example where the Excess lobbying from Pharam and professional organizations explains all the deviation in Exhibit 3. Then there are cases where institution-sector pairs with excess lobbying map into an institution with overall excess lobbying, but don’t fully explain it. For example, excess lobbying of Finance Canada in the top-three rows of Exhibit 4 contributes to Finance Canada’s excess lobbying in Exhibit 3, but only accounts for a portion of it.
Finally, there is cases where an institution’s excess lobbying in Exhibit 3 cannot be associated with even a single specific sector. Such as is the case for ISED. And indeed, Exhibit 5, taken from LobbyIQ’s institutions-dashboard for ISED, shows that higher lobbying of ISED was pervasive across a wide swath of economic sectors so that no single sector stood out in its communication increases to ISED. This kind of broad-based increase in communication directed at an institution is usually indicative of a specific new policy initiate or new funding program under that institution’s purview.
4. September’s Institution-Organization Outliers
Every month, there are usually also a handful of specific organizations’ with highly targeted lobbying campaigns directed at one or two institutions. We identify those by aggregating meetings to the institution-organization pair (5+ million observations across 15 years of monthly data) and looking for outliers relative to our prediction model. Exhibit 6 displays nine outlier pairs that get flagged by this exercise in September. Two of these are associated with Armatec Survivability, which also featured in last week’s newsletter. Saskatchewan Polytechnic’s communications campaign was also already featured in last week’s newsletter, while crop-producing trade-associations’ increase in communications with the Senate were driven by campaigning around the proposed amendments to Bill C-234 in the Senate.
Next week, we will look at October’s noteworthy movements among Ottawa’s major lobby firms.
Lobbying communication filings need to be reported to the government by the 15th of the next month. Given this cadence, Queen Street Analytics’ first two newsletters in November treat September as the “last month”, while November’s remaining two newsletters treat October as the last month. Restated, the data landscape for September is analyzed in Octobers’s newsletters #3-#4 plus November’s newsletters #1-#2.