Welcome to the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying's Online Assistance. This tutorial has been designed as part of the educational program and awareness efforts by the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying.

This is one of seven tutorials dealing with the creation of a new consultant lobbyist registration. It describes Step 1, which deals with information about the lobbyist.

Go to the ocl website's homepage at www.ocl-cal.gc.ca. Click "I have a user account" at the top right.

If you do not have a user account, you will need to create one. To learn how, consult the tutorial called "Creating a user account."

If you have an account, enter your username and password and click "Login"

You are now at the "Registrant Dashboard", which allows you to manage your registration and communication reports.

We are now ready to create a consultant lobbyist registration. Under the “New Activities” tab, click the "Consultant" link.

This will take you to the first of seven steps that must be completed in order to register lobbying activities.

Note that in the "Registrant" section, the registrant's name, mailing address and e-mail address have been retrieved from the previously created account.

Under the Lobbying Act, former public office holders are required to identify themselves and disclose details of the positions they held in the Government of Canada.

Former public office holders must therefore select "Yes" when asked "At any time has this lobbyist held public offices within the federal government?" and must provide details of each position held in the Government of Canada.

For the purpose of this example, the registrant was employed by the Government of Canada. The registrant must therefore select "Yes" then click "Add/Edit Public Office Position Details"

This will take you to the "Public Offices Held" page. You will be required to provide the following information about the position: position title, name of the federal government institution, branch or unit, start date, and date which the registrant was no longer employed by the Government of Canada.

You will also be required to indicate whether the position was a designated public office held on or after July 2, 2008. If you select "Yes", you will be required to enter the date of the last day that the designated public office was held and to indicate by a checkmark in the appropriate box, if it was held through an employment exchange program.

Visit our website for more information on designated public office holders.

In this case, Mr. Dumoulin was never a designated public office holder (DPOH). Select "No" and click "Add to list."

The page will refresh, and you will note that a list of public offices has been created at the bottom.

Because Mr. Dumoulin held only one position in the Government of Canada, click "Continue."

We are now back at "Step 1 of 7: Information about Lobbyist." When you scroll down to the next section, you will notice that the list of designated public offices has been integrated into the "Summary of Public Offices Held" section.

The "Transition Team Member" Membership section pertains to individuals who were part of a Prime Minister's transition team on or after January 24, 2006.

These lobbyists must answer "Yes" to the question "Were you identified by the Prime Minister as having carried out the functions of a transition team member on January 24, 2006 or at any time after that date?" They must also indicate the period in which they were a transition team member.

Because Mr. Dumoulin was never a member of a Prime Minister's transition team, we leave the selection to "No."

Finally, if the consultant lobbyist requested and received from the Commissioner of Lobbying an exemption from the five-year prohibition on lobbying, you must enter the exemption number in the appropriate box.

The five-year prohibition on lobbying applies to all designated public office holders (DPOH) as defined in the Act and all members of a Prime Minister's transition team.

For more information, consult the information documents provided on this page. Simply click the title, and the selected document will open in a new window.

You have now completed the data entry for the first step in creating a new registration, "Step 1 of 7: Information about Lobbyist"

To save your information, click "Save" or "Save and Continue."

Clicking the "Cancel" button will delete all the information you entered and take you back to the Registrant Dashboard.

For the purpose of this demonstration, select "Save." This takes you to the "Consultant Lobbyist Summary" page, where you can check the information you just entered.

If you find any errors, simply click "Edit Information about Lobbyists" to go back and make corrections.

Note that the system marks completed sections with a green check in the "Status" column on the left. Incomplete sections are marked with an empty icon.

We want to pause our session at this point, so we go back to the Registration Dashboard by clicking "Return to Registrant Dashboard."

This concludes the tutorial. This was the first of seven steps in the process of completing a new consultant lobbyist registration. The next step, "Step 2 of 7: Information about Client", will deal with the disclosure of information about the client.

To access other tutorials or view the next steps in creating a new consultant lobbyist registration, use the navigation bar at the top of the page.

If you have any comments or questions about this tutorial, please contact us by phone at 613-957-2760 or by e-mail at QuestionsLobbying@ocl-cal.gc.ca. You can also visit our website at www.ocl-cal.gc.ca.