Canada’s lobbying commissioner and the RCMP have failed to act on more than 32,000 violations of the Lobbying Act, the government watchdog Democracy Watch says.
More than 5,000 of these violations were ones that Lobbying Commissioner Nancy Bélanger deemed significant, says Duff Conacher, Democracy Watch’s co-founder.
“99.99% of lobbyists who violate the law are let off in secret,” he said.
“Why do you even have the law?”
The 32,000 violations occurred between January 2018 and April 2026 and relate to lobbyists filing incomplete or inaccurate registrations with the commission.
Under the Lobbying Act, lobbyists are required to register their activities and certain communications with senior public officials.
Lobbyists who commit minor offences under the act, such as failing to follow registration requirements, can be fined up to $50,000 or jailed for up to six months. However, for lobbyists to be charged and convicted, the commissioner must refer a violation to the RCMP.
Conacher says the commissioner’s failure to crack down on these violations risks fostering a sense of impunity among lobbyists.
“Compare this to parking illegally anywhere in Canada,” Conacher said. “You have a higher chance of getting caught.”
Bélanger herself told a May 7 parliamentary committee that enabling her office to impose fines directly could deter violations.
“If we changed the act so that I could impose administrative monetary penalties, so that I could deal with the issues right away, it would take less time, and people would understand how the regime works,” she told the committee.
“If we were to impose more penalties, I might not have 2,000 late files,” she added.
Bélanger’s office reinforced this point in a statement to Canadian Affairs.
“Commissioner Bélanger continues to advocate for amendments to the Lobbying Act that would introduce a broader range of sanctions, including administrative monetary penalties,” Manon Dion, the office’s manager of communications services, said in an emailed statement.
Dion did not address Democracy Watch’s characterization that 32,000 violations had gone unenforced.
Unpunished
Conacher says Bélanger’s office already has the ability to discipline lobbyists who contravene the Lobbying Act.
He referenced Bélanger’s predecessor, Karen Shepherd, who in 2017 barred lobbyist Jamie Carroll from lobbying for nine months. Carroll had been charged by the RCMP in 2014 and convicted in 2016 of failing to register certain lobbying activities. He was also fined $20,000.
Under the act, the commissioner is only able to ban lobbying by individuals who have been convicted of violating the act. The commissioner is also able to publicize offences once someone has been convicted.
Christopher Cotton, a professor of economics and lobbying researcher at Queen’s University, agrees that the act’s enforcement provisions should be strengthened.
“[W]hen the perceived penalty for nearly every violation is very low, compliance depends on goodwill and trust,” he said in an email to Canadian Affairs.
“Fines scaled to how late and how repeated the violation is, with names published, may help change that.”
In April, Canadian Affairs reported that Bélanger had referred just 19 potential breaches of the act to the RCMP in her then eight-year tenure. In 13 of those cases, the RCMP had referred the matter back to her office without laying charges, while the others were at various stages of investigation.
Re-appointment
Lobbying commissioners are eligible to be appointed for two seven-year terms. Bélanger was first appointed as commissioner in 2017 by then prime minister Justin Trudeau. Trudeau renewed her position in 2024.
Conacher says the lobbying commissioner’s re-appointment is dependent on their ability to please the appointing party, which is naturally implicated in parliamentary lobbying activities.
Limiting the commissioner to just one term would address this issue, says Cotton.
“A renewable term means the watchdog’s reappointment depends on the people being lobbied. A single non-renewable term would remove that concern, whoever holds the office,” Cotton said.
Bélanger’s tenure is currently deemed “during good behaviour” on the Government of Canada’s Organization Profile site, meaning she has strong job security and can only be removed from her role for cause.
For Cotton, lobbying is part of a healthy political ecosystem, but only when there are strict accountability and transparency measures in place.
“Lobbying can play a useful role in policy design, so the goal is not to eliminate lobbying, but to ensure transparency and accountability,” he said.
“We need to see who is talking to whom, and there must be meaningful consequences when the rules are broken.”
