Category: Tech Lobby News

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ATI Requests Received in April

Technology companies increasingly lobby the Canadian federal government.  The Tech Lobby Project regularly submits Access to Information (ATI) requests for records relating to lobbying communications between Canadian federal government departments and companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Sidewalk Labs and Uber. Read more about our ATI requests here.  Below you can find a list of the documents we’ve received recently in response to our ATI requests.

You can subscribe to receive a list of descriptions of recent ATI responses we have received by monthly email by signing up to our monthly email listserv here. For more information, or to access the documents themselves, please email Sara Bannerman at banners@mcmaster.ca

Tech Lobby News

[Online News Act] Please stop helping us: the newspaper bailout is a comprehensive policy failure (The Globe and Mail)

Received in April 2024

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ATI Re-Requests

Document LinkReference
The document includes an email exchange about digital wireless coverage in Canada and a report by the Boston Consulting Group. The BCG report covers International Comparisons of Broadband Competition, Pricing, Performance and Regulatory Models is also attached.       Government of Canada, Access to Information Request A-2019-00033 Copy of A-2019-00033: All Records Pertaining to the December 2019 Report Regarding How a Decrease in Wireless Revenues Would Hurt the Deployment of 5G in Canada Re-Requested under Access to Information Request (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, 2019), http://open.canada.ca/en/access-to-information.
The document includes several emails between Public Service and CRTC regarding the 9-1-1 Manager for Emergency Service Working Group. The CRTC held a meeting with Apple and deduced that a mobile provider is not needed but mobile signal is required to dial 9-1-1. Apple Canada Inc. Senior representative has also emailed Étienne Robelin (CRTC) to request a meeting and in the subject, they’ve outlined their offerings: hybridized emergency location estimation technology, and the location transport technologies to transmit information to Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) in Canada through a Text-to-9-1-1 and Wireless Alerting.  Government of Canada, Access to Information Request A-2019-00036 Copy of A-2019-00036: Any and All Communications, Including Emails, Letters, Briefing Notes, Meeting Minutes, Regarding and Including a Meeting(s) with Apple Inc. and the CRTC in September 2019. Re-Requested under Access to Information Request (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, 2019), http://open.canada.ca/en/access-to-information.
The document includes an attachment from Rogers detailing how to keep Canadians connected during the pandemic.  Government of Canada, Access to Information Request A-2019-00051 Copy of A-2019-00051: All Records between CRTC and Bell Canada, Rogers Communications, Telus, Shaw Communications, and TekSavvyand Related to COVID-19 Virus from March 1, 2020 to Present. Re-Requested under Access to Information Request, 2019, http://open.canada.ca/en/access-to-information.
The document  internal communications and analyses related to the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review (BTLR) report within the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) following the release of the BTLR final report, from January 29, 2020, to February 12, 2020. These documents include email exchanges between key staff and messages from CRTC Commissioner Ian Scott.  The internal discussions and email exchanges indicate that CRTC staff, including analysts and senior officials, are evaluating the BTLR’s recommendations to understand their implications for the CRTC’s operations and regulatory framework. The CRTC is analyzing these recommendations to determine how they align with current laws and regulations, and to prepare the organization for potential legislative changes. Topics range from telecommunications to broadcasting, broadband, BTLR recommendations relating to Indigenous peoples, monitoring investor calls, and surveying of public engagement on social media.      Government of Canada, Access to Information Request A-2019-00048 Copy of A-2019-00048: Documents Regarding the Final Report by the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel Released on January 29, 2020. Re-Requested under Access to Information Request, 2019, http://open.canada.ca/en/access-to-information.
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2023 TechLobby Annual Report

Read the full report [PDF]

The TechLobby Annual Report for 2023 focuses on the federal lobbying of Google, Meta/Facebook, Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Disney, and Microsoft in 2023.

The interactive graphics for this report are available at the bottom of this page. By clicking on the buttons at the bottom of each graphic, you can enlarge, download, or share the graphic. You can also click on the graphics and legends to explore and even download the data.

It finds that, in 2023:

  • Much tech lobbying focussed on the reform of the Broadcasting Act, the Online News Act, privacy reform, and AI regulation. Some tech companies, including Google and Amazon, cover a very broad range of issues and federal departments, while others (Apple, Facebook, Netflix, and Disney) conducted more focussed lobbying.
  • Tech lobbying had some significant impacts:
    • While video streaming companies like Google (YouTube) and Netflix did not prevent the passage of the Online Streaming Act, the applicability of broadcasting regulation to video streaming, or the discoverability provisions as they may have hoped, their arguments certainly found resonance with a number of parliamentarians and created friction for the bill as it passed through the parliamentary process.  
    • Google’s lobbying efforts relating to the Online News Act did not stop the act’s passage but did succeed in having the amount of money the corporation would have to pay to compensate Canadian media for news circulated on their platforms capped. 
  • The number of registered tech lobbying communications were slightly down in 2023 compared to 2022. This may represent a return to normal after a very busy year in 2022.  However, Microsoft’s lobbying rose, possibly to address the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act, which continued its way through parliament.
  • Registered tech lobbying has grown dramatically over the longer term, but this is part of a trend that we see across all companies; lobbying registrations have grown, in general, on a similar scale.  
  • Not all lobbying is registered; tech companies exert other forms of influence on government outside formal registered lobbying. Tech companies fund advocacy groups and events, such as the “AWS Public Sector Symposium Ottawa,” which took place in September 2023. 
  • While lobbying of members of parliament and senators usually outpaces lobbying of government departments, 2023 is an anomaly: tech lobbying of Canadian Heritage outpaced even its lobbying of the House of Commons in 2023.  We postulate that this is due in part to Google’s lobbying for concessions on the regulations for the Online News Act.
  • We see a longer-term shift from consultant to in-house lobbyists among tech companies, which have also made moves to establish offices in Canada.  We also see that tech companies rely on in-house lobbyists more than is typical of lobbying overall.  While consultant lobbyists are often portrayed as offering a rolodex of connections with government and parliamentary officials, in-house lobbyists are often assumed to specialize in providing specialized expertise in specific policy areas. While tech companies’ reliance on in-house lobbyists may therefore suggest a greater importance placed on expertise, personal connections and expertise often go hand-in-hand.

Tech lobbying should properly be viewed in the context of the lobbying of traditional media companies and broader coalitions of advocacy organizations and companies.  While this report focuses on the lobbying of ‘tech companies,’ it is important to note that traditional media and communications companies lobbied extensively in many of the same areas that tech companies did, as did advocacy groups and coalitions and associations representing groups of companies. We intend to focus, in future annual reports, on the relative lobbying between these groups of companies as well as the lobbying of other organizations in the same areas.

Interactive Graphics

Figure 1: The Subjects Lobbied by Tech Companies in 2023

Figure 2: Number of lobbying communications: 2023 vs 2022

Figure 3: Lobbying communications by company: 2021-2023

Figure 4: Tech lobbying vs all lobbying

Figure 5: Top government targets of tech lobbying in 2023 and 2022

Figure 6: Tech lobbying of the executive and legislative branches of government

Figure 7: In house vs consultant tech lobbying

TechLobby Annual Report 2023Download
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A trip to the moon: AWS Public Sector Symposium Ottawa

Tamara Shepherd, Associate Professor, University of Calgary

Tamara Shepherd is conducting a case study on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and cloud computing lobbying activity in Canada with the TheTechLobby project.

[Figure 1. Image of symposium website. Screengrab, September 22, 2023]

I went to the AWS Public Sector Symposium in Ottawa to get a sense of how AWS is pitching its services to government. Given that AWS is also actively lobbying on a host of cloud policy issues including privacy and access to information (as detailed here [link to Charnjot’s company profile: https://thetechlobby.ca/company-profile-amazon/]), it’s significant that they are being contracted by various government departments and agencies to provide cloud technology services. The symposium was indeed oriented around the government’s procurement of AWS: “Explore how the cloud can help you enhance security, analyze data at scale, advance sustainability, and achieve your mission—faster and at lower cost.” As such, the attendees were mainly AWS representatives (most of them with the vague job title “solutions architect”) and government personnel from various departments and agencies. 

[Figure 2. AWS sign in window looking over Ottawa. All photos by the author.]

Held at the Shaw Convention Centre, the symposium featured a keynote, meals, and networking, along with several sessions organized into tracks (data, technology, and security), according to different levels of expertise (“introductor,” intermediate, advanced, and expert). A basic mobile app enabled users to build their day’s schedule and allowed AWS to gauge interest in each session – some sessions had the added requirement for attendees to scan their RFID tagged badges at the door. When I asked why, the person scanning my badge said, “so we know who’s in this session.” I guess that is on brand for Amazon.

The first data session I attended was presented by an AWS representative who promoted “data driven organizations” by emphasizing that they were more agile, efficient, and valuable at generating customer experience. As the presenter argued, organizations need to evolve from a “data platform mindset” to a “data product mindset,” in order to deliver “governance value and business value together in lockstep.” A representative from the Canada Revenue Agency then joined the podium to present the CRA as a data-driven government organization. He discussed how the culture, people, and infrastructure at the CRA are transforming to be more data-driven so the agency can become more innovative and efficient. This remark garnered more than a few chuckles from the audience. 

The session slides throughout the day contained tech/business jargon like “continuous innovation,” “scalable iterative solution,” and “innovate your flywheel” (invoking the so-called “Bezos flywheel” positive reinforcement loop). These sorts of phrases often appeared on growth curves with unlabeled axes – the growth is so fast it can’t even be measured!

[Figures 3 and 4. Images of presentation slides with growth curves]

The keynote session was in a large conference room with a few thousand attendees, who walked in to find their seats amid thumping techno beats and a laser light show. The central keynote speaker was astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield, who used his journey to space as an allegory for the ways AWS enables a change in reality by fundamentally shifting the human perspective – he shared some very loud footage of a Blue Origin rocket launch to bluntly reinforce this point, while also noting that the moon has water and sunlight and could provide another place for humans to live (read: colonize) as what he called “an untapped continent of wealth.” This was a very Bezos moment. 

[Figure 5. Image of keynote presentation by Chris Hadfield]

After launch, there was lunch. The banquet room also housed the exhibition booths, about half of which featured branches of AWS and the other half comprising assorted partner tech companies providing things like security services and AI software compatible with AWS’s technology. Taking up more space than these booths though were various games, in line with the “no collar” ethos of tech companies explored eloquently 20 years ago by Andrew Ross [link to book: https://tupress.temple.edu/books/no-collar], which apparently remains relatively the same. There were stations to compete in hockey (of course), soccer, basketball, and darts along with carnival games like “hook a duck,” a driving simulator, and a Lego town.

[Figure 6. Hook a Duck game at the expo hall]

As might be apparent, this version of “fun” was targeted toward the mostly male attendees. From my own eyeball estimate, I would guess that around 80% of the delegates were men, wearing either government or tech versions of business casual. Most of them spoke English, although there was French being spoken as well among government workers. In the sessions, almost no one was taking notes aside from myself, but quite a few attendees took photos of the slides on their smartphones. They did not, however, take many photos at the desolate photo-op tableaux featured all around the convention centre.  

[Figure 7. Photo station beside escalators.]

Most of the people working at the event to distribute badges, field questions, and usher delegates around the space were temporary contractors. I spoke to one of them who wasn’t even sure what AWS was. I also overheard a conversation between government workers who saw new technologies like AWS’s suite of software as “shiny new things” that managers neither understood nor had the capacity to implement, instead choosing to “dump and run” after introducing new platforms to their departments. This group was quite cynical about the government having the capacity to effectively implement AWS services without a complete cultural and organizational transformation within their departments. 

Nonetheless, at nearly every session, AWS was hailed as “game changing” for government operations. Particularly at an over-capacity session I attended in the afternoon, generative AI was central to the paradigm shift promoted by AWS. The AWS representative conducted demos of AI-based tools SageMaker, Bedrock, and CodeWhisperer, the names of which almost sound like parodies of tech-speak. At one point, the speaker showed how Stability AI – a platform with an “open-source ethos” that paradoxically is partnered with AWS – could generate images from prompts like “a person waving the Canadian flag at a university” and “government citizen assistant.”

[Figure 8. Stability AI’s result for “government citizen assistant”]

As the speaker said after revealing this visual, “we’re in the first three steps of a 10k run,” which I suppose was meant to excuse the cheesiness of the image. The accelerationism and tech jargon on full display at the symposium offered an insight into how AWS is positioning itself to government with respect to procurement, a key context for their wider lobbying activity on policy issues favourable to AWS’s proprietary and sweeping version of the cloud. Chris Hadfield’s keynote address, with its explicit injunction to colonize the moon, aptly enveloped all this in the frontierism common to tech platforms predicated on relentless expansion.