Playing the influence game A deep dive into how lobbyists work Manitoba’s corridors of power By: Julia-Simone Rutgers Posted: 7:00 AM CST Friday, Jan. 23, 2026

Amid his usual slate of year-end sit-downs and lookahead interviews in late December, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew delivered a surprise announcement: the political ethics scandal involving Sio Silica’s controversial sand mine isn’t over yet.

Starting as early as this year, he said, the province would hold a public inquiry into the previous Conservative government’s attempt to license the mine, which would use a previously untested airlift method to extract silica sand from a southeastern Manitoba aquifer, days after losing the 2023 election. Part of the inquiry’s work, he added, would be to examine whether Manitoba’s lobbying rules are “strong enough … to make sure that you, the average person, know what’s going on with your government officials.”

As for the laws as they stand now, he told CBC, “I think we can do better.”

Kinew is one of few politicians in the last decade to publicly critique the province’s lobbying legislation. The Lobbyists Registration Act came into force in 2012 and outside a handful of tweaks — most notably a ban on gifts to politicians — has remained virtually unchanged.

But following an ethics investigation that culminated in three provincial cabinet members, including former premier Heather Stefanson, being fined for violating conflict- of-interest policies, the regulations that govern relationships between government officials and those who seek to influence their decision-making are under the spotlight.

In his final report, then-ethics commissioner Jeffrey Schnoor found board members, executives and consultants working on behalf of the mining company had met and communicated with public officials during the transition period between governments, in some cases urging the province to move ahead with the licence approval. The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press found many of these communications were not listed in the lobbyist registry.

While Schnoor did not indicate any lobbying regulations had been broken, Paul Thomas, a University of Manitoba professor emeritus in political science, believes these off-the-book activities highlight gaps in the rules.

“Sio Silica is kind of a major example of what, in the worst-case scenario, can happen,” he said in an interview.

Lobbying, Thomas said, is as old as government itself. It is, fundamentally, a process by which individuals and groups can advocate their interests to the government and shape policy, law and funding. But it is often viewed with “an aura of suspicion,” he said, because of the possibility for conflicts of interest and “back-door” tactics.

To mitigate those risks and ensure transparency, lobbying activities are guided by a set of conduct rules and recorded in a publicly available registry. Through the registry, members of the public should be able to understand who is trying to influence government decisions — and what they’re hoping to achieve.

Thomas believes Manitoba’s rules are “far behind” best practices in other provinces: the registry is hard to navigate and lacking in detail, the penalties for improper lobbying lack teeth and the law leaves plenty of room for informal, undisclosed activities.

Despite its flaws, Manitoba’s registry offers valuable insight into the voices seeking to shape government decision-making.

The Free Press/Narwhal set out to better understand what is — and is not — known about the voices seeking to influence government decision-making by analyzing the lobbyist registry over the first two years of the NDP government.

Here’s what we found.

What’s in the registry?

All lobbyists working in Manitoba are required to file returns, called registrations, detailing their activities, including who they contacted, what organization they lobbied for and what they were lobbying about. These registrations, filed periodically, have been collected and stored in the registry since 2012.

The level of detail included in the registration is left up to the lobbyist, and varies widely throughout the registry.

There were just shy of 1,500 registrations between Oct. 1, 2023, and Oct. 31, 2025.

They show Manitoba officials were contacted by more than 600 lobbyists representing more than 250 organizations and 50 lobbying firms.

All told, these lobbyists reported 3,557 activities — defined for this analysis as one subject matter reported by one lobbyist in the activities portion of their registration.

For every activity, the registry lists target contacts — public officials that the lobbyists contacted, or attempted to contact, about a particular subject. In all, lobbyists recorded more than 71,5000 target contacts in the first two years of the NDP government.

To help illustrate what we know about who the lobbyists are and what topics were discussed, each square of this grid will represent 10 lobbying activities.

Who are the lobbyists?

The office of the lobbyist registrar has a flowchart to help prospective lobbyists decide whether their efforts to get in touch with the government technically count as lobbying. If an individual is being paid to communicate with a public official to influence a decision or to set up a meeting with a third party, and they are not acting in their official capacity as a government employee, a diplomat, a representative of an Indigenous group or a charity — they are a lobbyist.

If they are lobbying on behalf of an organization they work for and spend (either individually or with a team) more than 100 hours per year lobbying, they are considered an in-house lobbyist. If they’re lobbying on behalf of a third party, they are considered a consultant.

The 100-hour rule is among the more outdated provisions in Manitoba’s legislation, Thomas said. Other jurisdictions have largely done away with time-based cutoffs, given they are largely reliant on the honour system and difficult to monitor.

The rules for in-house and consultant lobbyists are slightly different: consultants need to file registrations within 10 days of starting any lobbying work, while in-house staff have a representative, called the senior officer, who files a report approximately every six months detailing the activities of all of the organization’s lobbyists.

About four out of every five lobbyists who got in touch with Manitoba public officials between October 2023 and 2025 were in-house lobbyists. These in-house representatives registered nearly 90 per cent of all lobbying in that time frame.

Lobbyist backgrounds vary widely. Some are legal professionals, others have experience in politics or government relations. Some are experts in a particular field, or are staff of a non-profit.

As is the trend across the country, there are a handful of former provincial politicians who took on lobbying roles after leaving government. Former Manitoba MLAs Cameron Friesen, Gord Mackintosh and Scott Fielding are each registered as consultant lobbyists and recorded a combined 50 activities. Under conflict of interest legislation, former cabinet members are not permitted to lobby about subjects they were previously involved with for 12 months.

Which organizations have hired lobbyists?

The registry shows 266 organizations lobbied the provincial government in its first two years. Almost a third — 80 in total — were health-care or pharmaceutical organizations. About 20 were from the energy, oil and gas sector. There were also five mining organizations and two forestry companies. Other sectors represented among the lobbying organizations include agriculture, construction, finance, education, automotive manufacturing, housing and telecommunications.

Ten organizations — including four pharmaceutical companies, three professional associations, an international mining company and a national oil and gas company — conducted more than half of all lobbying activity in that time, with an average of 12 lobbyists and 188 activities each.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, a non-profit advocating for the interests of small and medium-sized businesses nationwide, dominates the registry with more than 700 activities across its 14-person in-house lobby team.

At the other end of the spectrum, nearly half of the organizations registered just one lobbyist, and about a third conducted just one lobbying activity.

While laws are meant to ensure anyone can influence the decisions made by government officials, critics caution larger organizations are sometimes able to exert more influence over policymakers.

“The lobbying community has some more active, more aggressive, more well-connected actors and institutions that have potentially disproportionate impact on the formulation of public policy, bills and regulations and budgets,” Thomas said.

While more resources mean you “probably get listened to, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that your advice is accepted,” he added. Instead, those larger organizations likely have more resources to monitor political developments in their area of interest, and more opportunities to informally meet with public officials at industry events.

What are they lobbying about?

Over the first two years of the NDP government, lobbyists registered activities relating to 44 subject categories. Health care was by far the most common with over 1,000 registered activities — nearly 30 per cent of all activities in that time.

The focus on health care is not surprising: the NDP campaigned on a promise to rebuild the provincial health-care system and has spent the largest portion of its last two budgets within the health, seniors and long-term care department.

Energy and economic development were the next-most popular subjects with 199 activities each, followed by the environment at 152.

Energy, oil and gas and other resource extraction companies made up more than half of energy-related activities, one-tenth of economic development activities and one-third of environmental activities.

TransCanada Pipelines, Enbridge, Imperial Oil, South Bow Services, the Canadian Fuels Association and the Explorers and Producers Association of Canada, are particularly well represented among these subjects, registering a combined 156 activities.

Renewable energy and electrification-focused organizations, including the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, hydrogen and helium producers, sustainable fuel organizations and electric vehicle infrastructure companies, combined for 43 activities in the same subject categories.

Data shows lobbyists took a variety of strategic approaches.

Some more prolific organizations spread their lobbying across topics and departments — the Canadian Federation of Independent Business registered 25 different subject matters, Brazil-based mining company Vale, which ran one of Manitoba’s largest nickel mining operations for several decades and was once the largest employer in the northern city of Thompson, lobbied 21 subjects.

Other groups appeared to focus their efforts on a single subject. The Canadian Medical Association, for example, conducted 259 activities (the second most by a single organization) focused exclusively on health, while Enbridge’s 49 activities all focused on energy.

Who is being lobbied?

Lobbyists targeted 356 public officials across approximately 120 government departments and agencies during the two-year time period.

Staff in the health, seniors and long-term care department were targeted most often, followed by the premier’s office, then the department of Finance, the department of Business, Mining and Trade and the Environment department.

When reaching out to departmental staff, lobbyists tend to target the relevant minister, at an average 84 per cent of the requests. Other staffers that tend to be targeted include deputy and assistant deputy ministers, chiefs of staff and program directors. The economic development and health departments saw the largest proportion of activities targeting non-ministerial staff.

Aside from government departments, lobbyists targeted staff at public agencies and Crown corporations, such as Manitoba Hydro and the Hydro-Electric Board, the Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corporation and the Securities Commission.

About 60 per cent of target outreach was aimed at MLA offices, regardless of political party. Each office received approximately 800 requests in the two-year period, with the exception of Tuxedo and Transcona, with 628 and 303 requests respectively. The vast majority of these MLA requests — 92 per cent — were made by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

What do lobbyists want out of it?

The idea behind a transparent registry is to understand how some corporations or organizations are able to influence government decisions in their favour. To understand what impact organizations have, it’s important to know what they hope to gain.

In Manitoba, lobbyists are able to choose one or more of six pre-written “outcomes” in their filings. There’s also room to further describe activities, though the amount of additional detail varies widely.

Here’s what we do know: more than half of activities seek to “influence the development, amendment or termination of a program or policy;” one-quarter aim to “influence the development of a legislative proposal.”

Additional outcomes include setting up meetings between public officials and other people, influencing the making or amending of regulations, shaping the content, passage or defeat of bills in the legislature and, finally, influencing the awarding of a grant or other financial benefit.

Lobbyists are expected to outline any “legislative proposal, bill, resolution, regulation, program, policy, contract or financial benefit” relevant to their activities, but not every organization does so consistently.

Vale Canada, for example, registered 122 activities over the two-year period, all aimed at influencing a program, policy, bill or resolution. For all but 10, the “detail” section simply reads: “to accelerate development of critical minerals.”

By contrast, the Explorers and Producers Association, an oil and gas industry group, notes its activities advocate for “policy, fiscal and royalty provisions that ensure Manitoba remains a competitive and attractive destination for investment” as the province reviews its drilling incentive program and related royalty regimes.

There’s also no requirement to outline any outcomes that came as a result of the lobbying efforts. For example, organizations looking to secure funding are not required to report whether or not it was provided. There is a section in the registry for organizations to list any government funding they receive, but they are not required to list when it was allocated, or under which programs.

This is another area where Thomas believes the registry can be strengthened.

“You need to make it more demanding on lobbyists to indicate who they’re lobbying and the subject matter beyond glittering generalities,” he said.

How else could the registry be improved?

There’s a balance to be struck when it comes to reporting requirements for lobbyists, Thomas explained.

Stringent and demanding rules provide more transparency for the public, but can create barriers for smaller organizations with fewer resources.

“Not all lobbyists have the same political clout. If you write rules that are too burdensome and demanding, non-profits will find them difficult to comply with and spend too much time filling in forms, recording every interaction they have with the government,” Thomas said.

An ideal set of regulations, he explained, would have “reporting requirements proportional to the size and scope of the organization that’s interacting with government officials.” Legislation to this effect is currently being developed at the federal level.

For lobbyists that don’t comply with the rules, Thomas said the legislation needs a stronger enforcement mechanism. As it stands, the lobbyists registrar does not have its own enforcement power, and violations of the act must be handled by police. The penalty for a violation is a fine of up to $25,000, but the office of the lobbyists registrar said in an email it is not aware of any prosecutions or penalties having been applied to date.

Thomas suggests tiered administrative penalties and the possibility of a temporary lobbying ban — similar to the penalty structure under British Columbia’s laws — would give the province more opportunity for effective enforcement.

Every year, the lobbyist registrar should provide an annual report — as is the case at the federal level and in other provinces — summarizing trends and compliance, he added. In Manitoba, the lobbyist registrar also serves as the ethics commissioner. Since 2023, the ethics commissioner’s annual report has included a short section related to lobbying.

Finally, Thomas believes the province should draft a code of conduct to clarify the “legal and ethical norms of lobbying” and help promote trust between the lobbying community and the public.

All of these changes, Thomas said, could be achieved without an inquiry into one particular scandal. But they’re adjustments he hopes will come sooner than later.

“You want to build a made-in-Manitoba solution,” Thomas said. “But we’re not there yet.”

 

Methodology: The Free Press/Narwhal created an independent database of registered lobbying activities between Oct. 1, 2023, and Oct. 31, 2025, including lobbyist names and firms, lobbying organizations, subject matter details, lobbying dates, intended outcomes and target contacts, as entered in the provincial registry. Each individual subject matter recorded in a registration was treated as a separate data point, for a total of 3,557 activities. These activities were analysed for trends in lobbyist names and organizations, subject matters, intended outcomes and target contacts.

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

julia-simone.rutgers@freepress.mb.ca