Calgary, Alberta’s City Council Passes Proposal to Explore Implementing Lobbying Law 

On July 28, the city of Calgary’s City Council passed a proposal to explore the consideration of a lobbyist registry. The council’s Executive Committee’s “notice of motion” application made to the city council requested the council to direct the chief administrative officer and the council’s ethics advisor to conduct a jurisdictional review and report back its results to the Executive Committee by the end of 2026. The report must explore several options for city council’s consideration, including best practices from comparable Canadian municipalities; possible public disclosures requirements, and any accessibility requirements. The council also passed an amendment requiring any proposed registry  also apply to lobbying the council’s senior administrative staff.

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After July 31, the online mechanism for searching for federal Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) reports becomes available at https://lda.gov/system/public, consolidating the search functions from both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate LDA webpages. The LDA reports include lobbying Registrations (LD-1), Quarterly Activity Reports (LD-2), and Contributions Reports (LD-203). The Contributions Reports are filed under section 203 of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA). The law requires all reports filed under the LDA and HLOGA are made available to the public over the internet. Additional information will still remain available at lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov and disclosure.senate.gov for further LDA guidance, filing deadlines, registration thresholds, frequently asked questions, ADA accommodations, LDA laws and more.

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The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its audit of federal lobbying compliance for 2025. For the audit, the GAO reviewed a stratified sample of 101 quarterly disclosure reports filed for the third and fourth quarters of calendar year 2024 and the first and second quarters of calendar year 2025. They also reviewed random samples of 160 LD-203 reports for the year-end 2024 and midyear 2025 reports. Among its findings, the GAO concluded 94% of filers of lobbying disclosure reports were able to provide documentation to support reported income and expenses, 7% of LD-203 reports were missing reportable contributions, and for an estimated 80 percent of LD-2s, lobbyists provided documentation for all individuals who engaged in lobbying activities. For 2025, the GAO estimated that about 22 percent of LD-2s may not have properly disclosed covered positions for individual lobbyists listed. This estimate is generalizable to the population of LD-2s and does not represent a statistically significant change from prior years. The 45-page report, which was released on June 30, is titled “2025 Lobbying Disclosure: Observations on Compliance with Requirements.”

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The public has until August 17 to submit comments regarding the province’s lobbying laws. The Lobbyists Act, which is required to be evaluated by the Legislative Assembly of Alberta every five years, is undergoing a comprehensive review by the Standing Committee on Alberta’s Economic Future. The committee has invited written submissions from identified stakeholders, and the public, relating specifically to the Lobbyists Act. Submissions may be emailed to AEFCommittee.Admin@assembly.ab.ca or through the committee’s webform available at https://www.assembly.ab.ca/assembly-business/committees/EF. Written submissions, along with the names of those who submit them, may be made public as part of the review process. While the Lobbyist Act is mandated to be reviewed, the government is under no obligation to amend or change the Act.

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On July 14, the city of Calgary’s Executive Committee unanimously passed a proposal for the consideration of a lobbyist registry. The committee’s  “notice of motion” request to the city council, if accepted, would direct the chief administrative officer and the council’s ethics advisor to conduct a jurisdictional review and report back its results to the Executive Committee by the end of 2026. The report must explore several options for city council’s consideration, including best practices from comparable Canadian municipalities; public disclosure and accessibility requirements; and whether the registry should apply to the city’s senior administration. The notice is scheduled to be submitted on July 28 at a regular meeting of the council.

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On July 22, The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) will be considering changes to its pay-to-play rule. As part of a regulatory modernization initiative, the MSRB will review Rule G-37, which imposes  pay-to-play rules upon brokers, dealers, municipal securities dealers, or municipal advisors making contributions to officials of state and local government entities. Rule G-37 does this by prohibiting dealers from engaging in municipal securities business and municipal advisors from engaging in municipal advisory business with municipal entities if certain contributions have been made to officials of such municipal entities within the preceding two-year period. It also requires dealers and municipal advisors to disclose certain political contributions and other information. At the meeting, the board will be electing its chair and vice-chair, approving its proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year, and discussing other rules in addition to the pay-to-play rules, including rules dealing with dealers’ supervisions of personnel and stakeholder engagements on open contractual commitments.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) release of its semi-annual regulatory agenda for 2026 includes potential reform of its pay-to-play regulations. The Division of Investment Management is considering recommending the SEC propose amendments to rule 17 C.F.R. §275.206(4)-5 under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, which prohibits certain investment adviser pay-to-play practices, to address identified compliance burdens. The targeted regulation imposes pay-to-play rules upon investment advisers and their covered associates who make contributions to officials of state and local government entities. The rules mandate investment advisers cannot provide investment advisory services for compensation to a government entity within two years after a contribution to an official of the government entity is made by the investment adviser or any covered associate of the investment adviser. Specific recommendations for amendments to the regulation are not included in the SEC’s agenda.

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Sometime in 2027, New Brunswick, Canada’s new lobbying law amendments will be brought into force. Bill No. 44, An Act to Amend the Lobbyists’ Registration Act, which was introduced and passed in May and received royal assent in June, mandates monthly reporting and additional disclosures not currently required, including with whom a lobbyist met, when they met, and where they met. The new law gives the Office of the Integrity Commissioner the authority to investigate violations and to impose financial penalties. The commissioner will also create a code of conduct for lobbyists. The code, with which lobbyists must comply, will detail the expected ethical standards, behaviors and responsibilities of lobbyists.

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On July 7, the gift limit for lobbyists imposed by Canada’s federal Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct increased from $40 for gifts and hospitality for an official they lobby or expect to lobby to $43. The new gift limit has an annual maximum amount of $215, per calendar year, from one lobbying source. The previous aggregate limit was $200. The intention of the limits is to avoid the creation of a sense of obligation on the part of the official. Both increases were announced by the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada, which considers Statistics Canada’s consumer price index. The commissioner, on an annual basis, has the option to take inflation into account in adjusting the individual and annual gift limit amounts.

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On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court decided political party coordinated-expenditure limits violate the First Amendment. The case, National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, presented to the Court the issue of whether the limits on coordinated party expenditures in 52 U.S.C. §30116 violate the First Amendment, either on their face or as applied to party spending in connection with ‘party coordinated communications’ as defined in 11 C.F.R. §109.37. The definition of political party communication includes when the communication is paid for by a political party committee. The National Republican Senatorial Committee argued the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA) unconstitutionally restricted their ability to coordinate campaign advertising with their own candidates. Here the plaintiffs contended spending money independently on advertising to get Republican Party candidates elected, without the ability to coordinate with the candidates and create a unified  and integrated political  message, was financially inefficient and a burden to First Amendment electoral speech. The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The Sixth Circuit Court, sitting en banc, had previously held that the FECA’s limits on coordinated campaign expenditures did not violate the First Amendment. In Justice Kagan’s dissent, joined by Justice Sotomayor and Justice Jackson, Kagan maintained a party’s unlimited coordinated expenditures undermine contribution limits imposed on individual candidates.

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In the upcoming months, Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations prescribing a code of conduct for members of city councils and of local boards, including Toronto. On June 2, Bill 9, a bill to change the ethics framework of the province’s city councils, received royal assent and became law. The law now provides the Lieutenant Governor in Council with the authority to make regulations setting a code of conduct for members of the province’s municipal councils and boards. The Act also requires the Integrity Commissioner of Ontario to perform certain functions with respect to a city’s Integrity Commissioner, including providing education and training to the local Commissioner. Additionally, Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner may conduct inquiries, refer matters back to the local commissioner, and recommend that a member’s seat be declared vacant and require a city council to vote on such recommendation.

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As of June 16, the website and public registry of the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner are currently offline because of a “potential security vulnerability.” The Ethics Commissioner’s office did not disclose how the problem was identified or any risks for users of the office’s website. The Office, which oversees compliance with the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons and the federal Conflict of Interest Act, is not commenting on “specific cybersecurity measures or ongoing assessments” for both security and confidentiality reasons,” according to The Globe and Mail.

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On June 11, Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas disclosed he is working with the city council to establish a registry of lobbyists for the city. The registry would be separate from a proposed provincial code of conduct applicable to local municipal councils announced earlier this year by Alberta’s Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams. The ministry issued a statement to Globalnews.ca that Calgary “is free to advance its own lobbying registry” independent of the province.

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The Canadian federal Commissioner of Lobbying Nancy Bélanger has submitted her annual report to the Parliament of Canada for 2025-26. The report, which covers registrations, lobbyist activity reports, compliance, and other issues concerning the commissioner’s office, also highlights the implementation of a new registration threshold and the start of the statutory review of the Lobbying Act. A new interpretation bulletin was issued in July of 2025, lowering the registration threshold for organizations and corporations. That threshold became effective on January 19, 2026. The report details the October 10, 2025, briefing session about the current lobbying law, which Commissioner Bélanger had with the Parliament through its Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (ETHI). It also details the statutory review of the Lobbying Act begun on March 9, 2026, by the ETHI with Commissioner Bélanger as the first witness. Belanger discussed her 21 recommendations for modernizing and improving the federal lobbying law. This annual report is required to be filed within three months after the end of each fiscal year by the commissioner about the administration of the Lobbying Act during that fiscal year. 

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