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 Organization registration. It describes Step 5 of 5: Information about Communication.

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

You will recall that after we entered the information in Step 4, we decided to pause our session. Because we did that, 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 5, click "Incomplete."

This will take you to the "Organization Summary" page. Scroll down to the fifth section, "Information about Communication."

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

From the list, select all government institutions with which you have already communicated or with which you intend to communicate. For each institution selected, click "Add to List." The page will refresh and the government institution selected will appear in a list in the "Chosen Government Institutions" box. You must indicate at least one institution.

For the purposes of our demonstration, "The Textile Producers Union" will communicate with four government institutions: "Industry Canada", "Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada", "The Canadian International Development Agency" and "The Canadian International Trade Tribunal."

If the government institution with which you are communicating does not appear in the dropdown list, use the "Other government institution" field. Click "Add to List" to include it in the list.

You may enter an unlimited number of institutions. However, do not include institutions with which you "might" communicate. Include only institutions with which you will definitely or probably be communicating.

You may update the list of institutions at any time.

It is very important that the institutions selected are consistent with the subject matter and details provided in Step 4. If they are not, additional information may be required, which could slow approval of your disclosure.

To delete an institution from the list of government institutions chosen, select the institution and click "Remove Selected."

Once the list of government institutions has been completed, you will be asked to identify the communication techniques used in your lobbying activities.

You may select one or more of the following communication techniques: written communication, oral communication and grass-roots communication.

Written and oral communication includes emails, letters, telephone conversations, meetings, etc.

Grass-roots communication is a technique that aims to encourage members of the public or of an organization to contact public office holders directly, mainly via media and publicity. It results in a significant number of letters, faxes, e-mails and telephone calls to public office holders and public demonstrations.

Because this is the last step in entering data to create an organization registration, there is no "Save and Continue" button like there was in the previous steps. You must therefore save your information or cancel it.

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.

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

Note that there is now a button which appears at the bottom right corner of the page: "Certify and Submit". It appears only when all sections have been completed.

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

You will note that because all sections of the registration have been completed, the link beside "Pending Registration" will have changed from "Incomplete" to "Requires Certification."

At this point, the remaining steps are certifying the registration and submitting it officially to the Commissioner of Lobbying. These steps are explained in the tutorial called "Certification and Submission of Return."

This concludes the tutorial for the fifth and final step in creating a new In-house Organization registration.

To access other tutorials or view the previous steps in creating a new In-house 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.