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 five tutorials dealing with the creation of a new in-house lobbyist (organization) registration. It describes Step 2, which deals with the disclosure of information about employees of the organization who carry out lobbying activities.

Begin by logging into the registration system and going to the Registrant Dashboard.

You will recall that after we entered the information in Step 1, we decided to pause our session. Because of this, when you look under the "Current Activities" tab, you will see a link beside "Pending Registration" indicating that the registration is incomplete.

To open the return and proceed to Step 2, click "Incomplete."

This will take you to the "Organization Summary" page. Scroll down to the second section, "Organizational Lobbyists."

Open this section by clicking "Edit Organizational Lobbyists" at the bottom right.

First, we begin by determining whether your organization has employees who should be registered under the Lobbying Act. The Officer Responsible for Filing (or Registrant), who is the most senior paid employee of the organization, must file a disclosure when one or more of its employees communicate with public office holders on behalf of the organization, and those duties constitute a significant part of the duties of one employee or would constitute a significant part of the duties of one employee if they were performed by only one employee. The threshold is 20% or more of those duties. In that case, the Registrant is required by the Lobbying Act to disclose information related to all employees of the organization, including himself or herself, who carry out any Lobbying Activities on behalf of the organization. These employees must be listed in this section as in-house lobbyists (organization).

For the purposes of our demonstration, the most senior officer in the organization, Robert Boutin, carries out lobbying activities, as do two of the organization's employees, John Garret and Suzanne Nguyen.

In the case of multiple additions, it is important to save regularly for technical reasons. Use the "Save" button at the bottom of the page. This will take you back to the "Organization Summary" page. You will then have to return to Step 2 by clicking "Edit Organizational Lobbyists" in order to continue. This will ensure that your data has been saved.

Because the most senior officer (and also the officer responsible) engages in lobbying, click "Add Responsible Officer as Lobbyist." This will take you to the "Add/Edit Information about Responsible Officer" page.

Note that fields marked with an asterisk (*) are mandatory. If you leave them blank, the information cannot be saved.

Note also that the responsible officer's name and title were taken from the account profile the officer created and from the information entered in Step 1.

The officer responsible for filing the disclosure (i.e. the most senior paid employee) is also required by the Lobbying Act to provide the prescribed information concerning the public offices and the designated public offices previously held by organizational lobbyists with the federal government.

As M. Boutin has never held any public offices, click "No" when asked the question, "Has the Responsible Officer ever been a federal public office holder?" and select "No" again in response 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?

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Continue."

This takes you back to "Step 2 of 5: Organizational Lobbyists". Note that there is now one item on the list of organizational lobbyists.

We can now enter information about other Organizational Lobbyists.

Click the "Add Lobbyist" button above and to the left of the list.

This takes you back to the "Edit Organizational Lobbyists" page.

You must enter the employee's name and title.

Let us begin with the information about John Garret.

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.

In our case, Mr. Garrett was never a public office holder. Select "No" from the dropdown list and leave the "Public Offices Held" panel blank. Go to the next section.

This section, "Transition Team Member", 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.

Once again, select "No" because Mr. Garrett was never a member of a Prime Minister's transition team.

Finally, if the Organizational 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 as defined in the Act, including those who held a position designated by regulations and equivalent positions, as well as all members of a Prime Minister's transition team, as designated in paragraph 2(3) of the Act.

Unlike exemptions, exclusions automatically apply to certain groups of designated public office holders. Former designated public office holders who participated in an employment exchange program are excluded from the five-year prohibition on lobbying.

We leave this section blank because Mr. Garrett never held office in the Government of Canada.

Now that all of the required information has been entered, click "Continue" to go back to "Step 2 of 5: Organizational Lobbyists."

The process is the same for the second Organizational Lobbyist. Unlike Mr. Garrett, Ms. Nguyen is a former Government of Canada employee. Information about her government position will therefore have to be provided: position title, department or agency, branch or unit, start date, and date of separation from the Government of Canada.

Because Ms. Nguyen was not a designated office holder, select "No" to the question "Was this designated public office held on or after July 2, 2008?" and click the "Add to List" button.

Then scroll to the next section "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?"

Finally, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Continue" to be brought back to the "Step 2 of 5: Organizational Lobbyists" page.

You have now finished entering data for Step 2 in the process of creating a new return.

To save your information, click save or save and continue.

If you select "Save and Continue", the system will save your information and take you directly to the next step so that you may enter information about government funding.

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

For the purposes of our demonstration, select "Save." This takes you to the "Organization Summary" page, where you can check the information you just entered.

Note that the "Organizational Lobbyists" section gives you access to information about previous positions held by lobbyists in the federal government. Clicking "Yes" takes you to "Public offices held: Suzanne Nguyen", which lists all of the positions held.

To go back to the Summary, click "Back" in the bottom left of the screen.

If you find any errors, simply click "Edit Organizational 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.

At this point, we want to pause our session and go back to the Registration Dashboard. Click on "Return to Registration Dashboard."

This concludes the tutorial. This was the second of five steps in the process of completing a new In-house Organization's registration. The next step, "Step 3 of 5: Information about government funding", is used to disclose information about funds received from any Canadian Government or foreign government during the organization's last completed fiscal year.

To access other tutorials or view the next steps in creating a new in-house lobbyist (organization) 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 email at QuestionsLobbying@ocl-cal.gc.ca. You can also visit our website at

www.ocl-cal.gc.ca.