The GR Year in Review #4: institutions and office holders
The GR Year in Review #4: institutions and office holders
Which institutions/agencies and office holders drove government communications in 2023?
Welcome to Queen Street Analytics’ final“Year in Review” issue. In today’s issue, we look at 2023’s the most lobbied agencies/institutions and public office holders (DPOHs). Next week, we resume our regular rhythm of looking at the previous month’s lobbying activity, starting with January’s busiest sectors and organizations.
CliffsNotes version:
The biggest year-on-year changes in lobbying among government institutions were among National Defence (DND), and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC).
The DPOHs who took the most meetings in 2023 were Ben Chin at the PMO (300 filings), Hannah Wilson at FIN (251 filings), Simon Kennedy at ISED (240 filings), Christophe Cinqmars-Viau at FIN (239 filings), Michael Brewster of ECCC (234 filings), and Bud Sambasivam of FIN (232 filings).
Outside of the top-six, some of the biggest increases in year-on-year meeting volume (from 2022 to 2023) came for Blake Oliver at FIN, Thomas Gagne at DND, Jeff Labonte at NRCan, Shristi Radhakrishnan at ISED, and Alison Porter at AAFC.
Some of the biggest 2022-to-2023 decreases in communications came for Eamonn Mcguinty at ECCC, Fiona Simons at NRCan, Kurtis Layden at ECCC, and Sandenga Yeba at HC.
1. Agencies/Institutions
A quick way to get a cursory look at the most lobbying active organizations of 2023 is to peruse LobbyIQ's “big picture” dashboard. Our Exhibit 1 shows a snapshot of the institutions-exhibit on that dashboard. Sorting on 12-month averages (12M Avg) we get a quick view of the 25 most lobbying-active sectors of 2023. At the top of the list (ignoring the House of Commons which is always top), we see ISED, FIN, ECCC, NRCan and the Senate.
How does this compare to 2022? Setting the big-picture dashboard back by a year using the Wayback Machine (the green button), we can answer this question very quickly (Exhibit 2). As would probably be expected by most readers, there is not a lot of variation among the top-six, expect that ECCC was lobbied more than FIN in 2022.
Is there more variation when we look at institutions outside the top-six? Let’s have a look at Exhibit 3.
Without the House and Senate (ranked 1 and 6 in Exhibits 1 and 2). we see the next most lobbied institutions are: Global Affairs Canada (GAC), Prime Minister's Office (PMO), Health Canada (HC), Transport Canada (TC), Canadian Heritage (PCH), Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), Privy Council Office (PCO), Infrastructure Canada (INFC), Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC), National Defence (DND), Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), Public Safety Canada (PS), Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan), Treasury Board Of Canada Secretariat (TBS), Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev), Justice Canada (JC), the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC).
Among the top-25, the overarching picture is still one of tremendous stability year-on-year. The only really noticeable changes are that 2023 saw more lobbying of National Defence (DND), and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC), which oversees large federal environmental assessment processes, especially related to energy and nuclear.
2. Public Office Holders
Next, we take a look at the most lobbied public office holders (DPOHs) of 2023. Again, a quick look can be gleaned from LobbyIQ's “big picture” dashboard, under the DPOH exhibit. Exhibit 4 shows a snapshot of the DPOH-exhibit on that dashboard, with the top-six most lobbied DPOHs in the pie-chart listed as: Ben Chin at the PMO (300 filings), Hannah Wilson at FIN (251 filings), Simon Kennedy at ISED (240 filings), Christophe Cinqmars-Viau at FIN (239 filings), Michael Brewster of ECCC (234 filings), Bud Sambasivam of FIN (232 filings).
Exhibit 5 shows the top-25 DPOHs of 2023, compared to their meeting-rank in 2022. (The numbers are slightly lower than in LobbyIQs’ Exhibit 4, because our table reports unique meetings rather than unique filings.)
Exhibit 5 also allows us to see who the biggest year-on-year movers were. Among the most lobbied DPOHs, some really stand out in this regard, including:
FIN’s Christophe Cinqmars-Viau went from 256th most lobbied DPOH in 2022, to third in 2023
FIN’s Hannah Wilson went from 84th most lobbied DPOH in 2022, to second in 2023
Other DPOHs with major increases in meeting volumes were NRCan’s Jeff Labonte, ECCC’s Joshua Swift, FIN’s Blake Oliver, and DND’s Thomas Gagne.
Exhibit 6 gives an even clearer view of the DPOHs with the biggest year-on-year increases in meeting volume, by sorting on this explicitly. The top-25 biggest movers are:
Christophe Cinqmars-Viau (FIN), Hannah Wilson (FIN), Blake Oliver (FIN), Thomas Gagne (DND), Ben Chin (PMO), Jeff Labonte (NRCan), Shristi Radhakrishnan (ISED), Alison Porter (AAFC), Bud Sambasivam (FIN), Joshua Swift (ECCC), Sean Mitchell (ECCC), Eric Dagenais (ISED), Arun Thangaraj (TC), Leslie Church (FIN), Galen Richardson (FIN), Samuel Millar (FIN), Julien Brazeau (FIN), Alexander Craney (ESDC), Miodrag Jovanovic (FIN), Kyle Fox (NRCan), Alex Craney (ESDC), Erin O'Brien (NRCan), Nina Lothian (ECCC), Vida Ebadi (PMO), Micah Richardson (INFC), and Kyle Harrietta (NRCan)
Lastly, Exhibit 7 looks at the same question from the opposite angle: who were the 25 DPOHs with the biggest communication volumes in 2022 and where did they rank in 2023? The list reads as follows:
Eamonn Mcguinty, Michael Brewster, Simon Kennedy, Kevin Deagle, Fiona Simons, Francois-Philippe Champagne, Kurtis Layden, Peter Opdam, John Moffet, Bianca Hossain, Paul Halucha, Matthew Gray, Brian Mackay, Anson Duran, Marie-Claude Bibeau, Steven Guilbeault, Nipun Vats, Jaxson Khan, Ian Foucher, Dominic Cormier, Nina Lothian, Jonathan Wilkinson, Ben Chin, Sandenga Yeba, and Abed Harb.
This concludes today’s issue. In our next issue, we will resume our regular rhythm of looking at the previous month’s lobbying activity, starting with January’s busiest sectors and organizations.