Do Parliamentary Roles Affect Lobbying Activities? Evidence from the Canadian House of Commons

ABSTRACTIn parliamentary systems, private members (i.e. backbenchers) with formal titles and roles can affect the institutional system in which politicians, civil servants and interest groups are embedded. Packing legislative institutions with backbenchers who act as agents of the government but who are not in Cabinet puts certain Members of Parliament in a privileged position with the core executive. We hypothesize that influential positions in Canada’s House of Commons, notably a parliamentary secretary tasked with supporting a minister or a chair of a parliamentary committee, bring increased external pressure from interest group lobbyists. We test these assumptions with data on communications between MPs and interest group lobbyists gathered from the federal Registry of Lobbyists and open data lists found on the website of the Parliament of Canada. Our results show that a parliamentary secretary position or a seat on a standard committee exposes MPs to higher lobbying volumes.Keywords: Parliamentary secretaryparliamentary committeebackbencherlobbyingexecutive branch Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. The Salaries Act specifies the number of parliamentary secretaries (sec. 46.2 Parliament of Canada Act, Citation2019). Under Justin Trudeau, the number is synonymous with the number of Cabinet ministers, excluding ministers without portfolios.2. Figures obtained online for cabinet (https://pm.gc.ca/en/cabinet), parliamentary secretaries (https://pm.gc.ca/en/parliamentary-secretaries) and committee members (https://www.ourcommons.ca/Committees/en/List) on March 5, 2022.3. We exclude committee of the whole which is the entire membership of the legislature minus the Speaker.4. see 106(2) in House of Commons 2021.5. As stated on the website of the Office of Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada: “The Lobbyists Registration Regulations prescribe the types of communications that must be reported in a monthly report as ‘oral and arranged communications excluding oral and arranged communications initiated by public office holders related to the development of policy, programs or legislation.’ In-house and consultant lobbyists must report all oral and arranged communications relating to financial benefits, even when initiated by a public officer holder. Likewise, consultant lobbyists must report oral and arranged communications relating to a contract regardless of who initiated the communication.” For more details on lobbying disclosure rules: https://lobbycanada.gc.ca/en/rules/the-lobbying-act/advice-and-interpretation-lobbying-act/communicating-with-designated-public-office-holders/.6. We do not control for MPs who served during prorogation, which shuts down committee work.