Is Your Senior Officer Lobbying?

In-house Lobbyists: when listing your lobbying employees, you must also list the senior officer if he or she is lobbying.

The registrations for in-house lobbyists are always created and submitted in the name of the entity and the entity’s senior officer, i.e. the CEO of the entity, not the most senior officer responsible for managing the lobbying activities, such as the Vice President or Director of Government Relations. This applies even if the senior officer is not involved in any lobbying activity.

And what if the senior officer is also lobbying? The registration must include that individual’s name and title in the list of active lobbyists. It isn’t sufficient just to have the registration in the senior officer’s name – they need to be identified as being a lobbyist, too.

When creating a new initial registration on behalf of a consultant lobbyist, a primary contact can save time by making a copy of an associated consultant lobbyist's existing registration. When using this feature, here are a couple of things to remember:

• The ‘Copy Registration’ feature is only available to primary contacts who have been designated to manage multiple registrations for associated consultant lobbyists;
• The ‘Copy Registration’ feature only works when creating an initial registration and the registration you are copying is already published on the registry.

If you are using the ‘Copy Registration’ feature to create a new registration, remember to review all the fields in the registration. Don’t forget to add the lobbying commencement date (the date the consultant lobbyist first communicated with an Ontario public office holder on behalf of the client) and check the section listing former public offices held for accuracy, as this information may be different for each lobbyist.

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