Ottawa's most lobbied MPs, office holders, and institutions in February
Ottawa's most lobbied MPs, office holders, and institutions in February
Francesco Sorbara, Ryan Turnbull, Dave Epp, Gérard Deltell, Kody Blois, Andrew Bevan, Ben Chin, Ian Foucher, Hannah Wilson, Paul Halucha, and lobbying by the Performing Arts
Today, we look at the MPs, public office holders and government institutions that had the most communications with registered lobbyists in February.
Teaser Notes:
February was a busy month across the board, with around 4,000 communication filings in total
The top-five MPs who had the most communications with lobbyists in February were Francesco Sorbara (L), Ryan Turnbull (L), Dave Epp (C), Gérard Deltell (C), and Kody Blois (L)
The top-five public office holders who had the most communications with lobbyists in February were Andrew Bevan (FIN), Ben Chin (PMO), Ian Foucher (ISED), Hannah Wilson (FIN), and Paul Halucha (PCO)
February’s biggest institution-outliers regarding lobby communications were Finance Canada and the Prime Minister’s Office with 103 and 76 more meetings than predicted by historical patterns
The Performing Arts sector stood out among several sectors that drove elevated lobbying at specific institutions
For a comparison to the last issue on the same topic, see here:
1. February’s Most Lobbied MPs
Exhibit 1 lists the 25 MPs with the highest number of lobby meetings in February. The exhibit also lists their average number of meetings over the trailing twelve month (TTM, January ‘23 to January ‘24), as well as their party, riding, and the committees they sit on. Exhibit 2 shows this elevated lobbying activity more visually, using LobbyIQ’s Agriculture (AGRI) committee as an illustrative example, where the top-four MPs (with histograms on top) are all listed on Exhibit 1.
2. February’s Most Lobbied Public Office Holders
Exhibit 3 lists the 25 public office holders with the number of lobby meetings in February. The exhibit also lists their average of meetings over the trailing twelve month (TTM, January ‘23 to January ‘24), as well as their title, and the institutions they represent (institutional abbreviations listed here).
Exhibit 4 shows this elevated lobbying activity more visually, using LobbyIQ’s dashboard for Finance Canada as an illustrative example, where the top-four DPOHs (with histograms on top) are all listed on Exhibit 3. (LobbyIQ’s numbers report the number of filings while Exhibit 3 lists the number of unique meetings, i.e. 68>53 for Andrew Bevan.)
3. Meetings by Government Institution
Zooming out one level, which government institutions saw unusual amounts of lobbying in February?
To break this down, we run a trend-cycle prediction model over all filings aggregated at the institution-month (a panel of 160 monthly-frequency institution time-series that allows for separate monthly shifters for each institution). This generates monthly institution-level predictions of how many meetings to expect based on the patterns over the last five years
Exhibit 5 shows the biggest outliers in terms of deviation from prediction (the second number in the Meet_Exc column, e.g. 300 meetings at ISED were 57 more than predicted). ISED, Finance Canada, the PMO, NRCan and ECCC stand out here, as well as ESDC, Health Canada, the Privy Council, and Immigration, Refugees, Citizenship (IRCC). The last column shows the number of unique DPOHs involved in the meetings, with a substantial spread across institutions.
Exhibit 6 shows this elevated lobbying activity more visually, using LobbyIQ’s dashboard for Finance Canada as an illustrative example. (Again, LobbyIQ’s numbers report the number of filings rather than the number of unique meetings reported in Exhibit 5, e.g. 350>275.)
4. Traffic from Specific Sectors
To what extent were any institution’s excess meetings in February driven by specific sectors?
To break this down, we run our trend-cycle prediction model over all filings aggregated at the institution-sector month (a panel of several thousand monthly-frequency time-series that allows for separate monthly shifters for each institution-sector pair) to generate monthly institution-sector level predictions of how many meetings to expect based on the patterns over the last five years.
Exhibit 7 shows that several sectors had elevated communication levels across more than one institution. For example, the Universities sector had elevated communication-levels with the Senate and PrairiesCan. The standout-sector in Exhibit 7 is the Performing Arts, which had elevated communications with Finance Canada, the Prime Minister’s Office, Prairies Can and the Intergovernmental Affairs Secretariat (IGA). Much of the Performing Arts lobbying was driven by this week’s announcement of $32 million in supporting funding for Canada’s Music Fund.
Exhibit 8 shows this more visually, using LobbyIQ’s dashboard for the Performing Arts.
This concludes today’s issue on February’s most lobbied MPs, public office holders, and institutions.
Next week, we will look at Ottawa’s busiest lobby-firms and consultants in February.