Who you know in the PMO: Lobbying the Prime Minister's Office in Canada

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between lobbying organizations, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), and other central agencies of the Canadian government. First, an overall examination of the Canadian lobbying registry shows that the PMO is one of the most lobbied institutions of the executive branch. Second, a statistical model evaluates the effect of organizational (such as the interest type and policy sector) and other strategic factors on the volume of communication between lobbying organizations and the PMO. This inquiry concludes that strategic choices related to the amount of lobbying activities and the scope of lobbying campaigns have the most consistent impact on the access to top‐level policymakers. In the end, the results support the claim that lobbying should be understood as a social, self‐reinforcing process unfolding over the medium‐ and long‐term.

Consultant Lobbyists and Public Officials: Selling Policy Expertise or Personal Connections in Canada?

“…In addition, the institutional traits of parliamentary systems such as first minister's high degree of power (Cooper, 2017;Savoie, 1999), the fusion of executive and legislative branches and a high level of party discipline, also likely impact the relationship between lobbyists and the government. This partly explains why lobbyists in parliamentary systems are known to focus their efforts on executive branch members such as ministers and elite bureaucrats (Boucher, 2015(Boucher, , 2018Thomas, 2004;Vining et al, 2005). The nature of governing in parliamentary countries is less complex and fragmented than the American political system.…”

Canada's Lobbying Industry: Business and Public Interest Advocacy from Harper to Trudeau

“…We also separate business councils from industry associations, as the former are of particular interest to power elite studies, as expressions of class-wide interests. While our choices differ slightly from other Canadian research (for example, Boucher [2015Boucher [ , 2018), they do not preclude consideration of broad patterns of continuity and change in the field.…”

“…Looking at 2008-2013, Boucher finds that business interests account for 64 per cent of total lobbying contacts and nearly 70 per cent of contacts with the PMO. Boucher (2018) reports that just under a quarter of total lobbying contacts over this period are made by consultant lobbyists-lobbyists employed by a third-party agency or firm, hired by the company or organization to lobby on its behalf-and that 61 per cent of contacts performed by consultants represent business interests, an imbalance he attributes to the inability of NGO and public interest organizations to afford consultant lobbyists. This line of research is advanced by Boucher and Cooper (2019), who examine the role and activity of consultant lobbyists and revolving-door relations in Canada's lobby industry.…”

Lopsided lobbying? Regulatory opportunism and the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying

“…1 Though new, the Office's registrant and monthly communication datasets have been used in previous scholarly works (see Boucher 2018;Cooper and Boucher 2018;Hopkins, Klüver and Pickup 2019). 2 As written, the "significant duties" floor enables lobbyists to skip registering with the OCL.…”