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 4, which deals with the disclosure of information about the subject matter of 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 3, 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 registration and complete Step 4, click "Incomplete."

This will take you to the "Organization Summary" page. Scroll down to the fourth section, "Information about Subject Matter."

Open this section by clicking "Edit Information about Subject Matter" at the bottom right.

Before we complete this section, we should review some definitions.

The Lobbying Act defines the subject matter of lobbying activities as:

Communicating with public office holders with respect to the following :

• the development of legislative proposals;
• the introduction, passage, defeat or amendment of any Bill or resolution;
• the making or amendment of any regulation;
• the development or amendment of any policy or program;
• the awarding of any grant, contribution or other financial benefit.

Disclosure of information about these activities is done in two steps. First, you must set out the subject matter of these activities. You will be presented with a list from which to select the subject or subjects that best describe your activities.

The next step is to provide additional details for each of the subject matters you selected. For the purposes of our demonstration, let us assume that the subject of the lobbying activities is a government policy.

Each detail must include the following information:

• the name of the policy;
• a description of the provisions of the policy that are of particular interest to your organization;
• one or more categories describing the nature of the subjects as the case may be.;

Note that these categories are directly linked to the above definitions of lobbying activities, namely:

• legislative proposal, Bill or resolution;
• regulation;
• policy or program;
• grant, contribution or other financial benefit.

Your lobbying activity may pertain to a policy, program or statute that does not currently exist but is being proposed. If that is the case, provide details in your description.

Let us illustrate this by completing the section for "The Textile Producers Union."

For the purposes of our demonstration, four subject matters will be selected: International Trade, Environment, Infrastructure, and Intellectual Property.

Select these subject matters, one at a time, from the dropdown menu, then click "Add to List." Note that every time you click this link, the page is refreshed and the new subject matter is displayed in the "Subject Matter Added" panel. Note also that these subject matters no longer appear on the master list.

If you make a mistake, select the item from the "Subject Matter Added" list and click "Remove Selected." The system will move the item back to the master list.

The next step is to provide details. Enter at least one detail to describe the subject matters you selected; you can enter one or more details for each of your subjects.

For the purpose of our demonstration, we will enter three details for our four subject matters.

The first detail pertains to two subject matters: "Environment" and "Infrastructure." Enter the following in the details panel: "Bill C-30, Clean Air Act, financial incentives for manufacturers to reduce pollutant emissions. Specifically, include infrastructure funds."

You will note that the text first indicates the bill in question, then specifies the measures that are of interest to the organization.

Select "Legislative proposal, bill or resolution" and "Grants, contributions and other financial benefits".

You have now entered the mandatory name and description and made certain there is a logical connection with the previously selected subject matters. You may go ahead and click "Add Another Detail."

The page will refresh with a list of details at the bottom.

The second detail pertains to modification of a federal program, the Canadian Textiles Program (CANtex).

Enter: Evaluation criteria for the Canadian Textiles Program (CANtex).

In this case, even though the program is a funding program, the objective is not to obtain financial assistance. The organization wants to change the program itself. For that reason, only "Policies or Program" should be selected.

Our third and final example is the subject matter "International Trade."

Enter: "The Textile Producers Union is seeking the federal government's support in negotiations with Brazil to export its defence products."

This is an example in which the objective is not to change an existing or create a new policy, program, regulation, etc., but to obtain political support, which involves a political decision. In this case, the most appropriate category would be "Policies or Program."

If you find any errors, you can correct the data by selecting the information to be corrected and clicking "Edit Selected." This will move the information on your list back to the "Details regarding the identified Subject Matter of Lobbying Activity" panel so that you can correct it.

In our example, we remove a repeated word from the last entry we added.

If you have to add more than one detail, you have to save regularly so that you do not lose your information. Then click 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 4 by clicking "Edit Information about Subject Matter" in order to continue. This will ensure that your information is properly saved.

After a final check, you can save your information by clicking "Save" or "Save and Continue."

If you select "Save and Continue", the system will save your information and go straight to the next step so that you can enter information about disclosure.

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 will take you to the "Organization Summary" page, where you can check the information you just entered.

If you find any errors, simply click "Edit Information about Subject Matter" 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 Registration Dashboard."

This concludes the tutorial. This was the fourth of five steps in the process of completing a new In-house Organization) registration. The next step, "Step 5 of 5: Information about Communication", pertains to the disclosure of information about the government institutions with which you will be communicating and the communication techniques you will be using.

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.