The Sixth Estate

I’ve been watching the Canadian lobbyist registry for about a month now, as part of my ongoing Lobbyist Tracker project. So far, I’ve highlighted the hypocrisy of the Harper regime in complaining about “foreign environmentalists” at the pipeline inquiry while tolerating legions of foreign influence-purchasers in Ottawa, and the entirely unsurprising fact that corporations and trade groups, not environmentalists or trade unions or any other supposed “socialists,” account for the overwhelming share of lobbying activity.

Today I thought it would be useful to break down those categories a little more and see what industries are most active in our national capital. Between January 1-24 (my database is delayed by a week to allow time for registrations to get processed by the Commissioner’s office), there were more than 240 new registrations. Taking out some duplicates and some occasional oddities, they fell along the following lines:

Incidentally this table is misleading in another sense. Two of the “labour” registrations actually come from Merit Canada, a pro-employer organization which actually campaigns against union rights.