Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre took aim at Canada’s “corporate lobbyists” in a speech a week ago to the Vancouver Board of Trade, saying they were “utterly useless” and that under a Conservative government they would no longer “write a policy statement and expect it to be implemented.”
But in the past weeks and months, his party has in fact widely opened the doors to them. Poilievre has rubbed shoulders with more than a hundred active or recent lobbyists at dozens of fundraising events since he became leader in 2022, a Breach investigation has found.
Lobbyists for oil and natural resource companies, big banks, telecoms, large retailers, and real estate investors paid for entry to private cash-for-access fundraisers with Poilievre held across the country.
That included one event in the ski and party town of Banff in the spring of 2023 which was attended by former or current heads of major oil and gas companies Enbridge, Cenovus, Suncor, Husky, and Pembina Pipeline Corporation.
In his speech last week, Poilievre proclaimed that “when I’m prime minister my daily obsession will be about what is good for the working class people of this country.” He blasted “corporate lobbyists in Ottawa [who] are focussed on getting lunches with ministers at the Rideau Club,” which is frequented by movers and shakers in the capital.
But according to data analysis by The Breach, these lobbyists have also been focussed on getting dinners with the potential Prime Minister-to-be at exclusive venues like the Toronto Club, National Club, and Royal Glenora Club in Edmonton, where memberships cost as much as $20,000.
The data comes from fundraising reports that political parties are required to file with Elections Canada.
Despite Poilievre’s rollout of ads and speeches touting his party as a defender of ordinary people, the lobbyists turning up at lavish mansions and ritzy restaurants for fundraisers reflect the Conservatives’ powerful, traditional corporate backers.
Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch, an Ottawa-based watchdog organization, told The Breach the revelations are “helpful in neutralizing the rhetorical claims Poilievre is making. He’s talking out of both sides of his mouth about corporate lobbyists.”
With Poilievre enjoying a sizable and stable lead in the polls in advance of a probable election in the fall of 2025, it’s a natural time for lobbyists to be strengthening or rekindling a relationship with the Conservative leader.
Lobbyists looking for Poilievre to ‘return the favour’
Soon after coming into office, the Trudeau government was dogged by controversy when media reports exposed how it had raised millions of dollars at private fundraisers that gave donors access to the prime minister or cabinet ministers.
At the time, Poilievre condemned the “glitzy Liberal fundraisers” full of the “super-rich” and “glitterati.”
On the heels of the scandal, the Liberals brought in fundraising reforms. Since 2019, political parties have been required to disclose who attends events which require a donation of more than $200 and where a party leader, cabinet minister or prime minister is present.
“The Liberals brought in reforms because they were caught,” Conacher said. “But it didn’t stop anything. What it did was reveal that it wasn’t just them doing it.”
According to data scraped from the fundraising event registry, Poilievre and the Conservative Party held events in multi-million dollar mansions in the swankiest neigbourhoods in the country, from West Vancouver, to Forest Hill and Rosedale in Toronto, and Westmount in Montreal.
The Breach matched the nearly 2800 attendees at the three dozen events attended by Poilievre to names in the federal lobby registry, and then manually confirmed their identities using publicly-available information.
At least 30 were actively registered lobbyists, dozens of others lobbied in the last few years, many more are senior executives of companies who continue to lobby, while the rest have let their registrations lapse but have lobbied at one point or another in the last 15 years.
In total, 29 of the 35 events were attended by at least one lobbyist who had lobbied in the last three or four years.
Democracy Watch’s Conacher said that despite a maximum allowable donation of $1,700, such gifts can still reinforce political expectations.
“Donations are a potent means of social influence—regardless of how small the amount,” he said. “Giving a gift creates a subconscious obligation that they return the favour.”
The Conservative Party did not respond to The Breach’s request for comment.
The Liberals themselves have continued to throw ritzy events frequented by lobbyists, despite previously promising to end cash-for-access fundraisers and even kick out lobbyists who tried to attend.
An investigation by the Investigative Journalism Foundation last year identified 166 actively-registered lobbyists who attended Liberal fundraisers between 2019 and 2022.
Behind Poilievre, the classic corporate coalition
The lobbyists turning up at the cash-for-access fundraisers reflect those sections of the corporate class who typically back the Conservative Party.
They represent corporations that fight aggressively against unions, higher wages, and universal public programs like healthcare.
This includes scores of medium-sized businesses, construction firms, low-wage employers like Walmart, railway companies and manufacturers, and dozens of mining and forestry companies like SNC and Resolute.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives have been far less friendly with lobbyists for the larger corporate and financial interests that tend to gravitate towards the Liberal Party.
Poilievre, just like former Prime Minister Stephen Harper before him, has given a cold shoulder to the Business Council of Canada, the major lobby group that represents the CEOs of Canada’s biggest corporate giants.
This is what explains why Regan Watts, a lobbyist for software firms and a former Conservative staffer, boasted in The Hub media outlet last week that the Business Council of Canada “can’t even get a meeting with Poilievre.” (Though Watts himself managed to hobnob with him in January at a fundraiser at First Canadian Place, a skyscraper in downtown Toronto.)
Last year, The Breach revealed that nearly half the members of the Conservative’s new top governing body were also lobbyists for oil, pharma, real estate and anti-union companies.
‘Message to Corporate Canada’ contradicted by Poilievre’s record
Since becoming leader, Poilievre has redoubled his efforts to rebrand his party as an anti-establishment political movement fighting for those left behind economically.
Speaking to the Vancouver audience on March 8, he boasted about how it was the first time he’s spoken to a chamber of commerce since becoming Conservative leader in September 2022, while he claimed to have visited 110 shop floors and five local union halls.
“My message to corporate Canada is that when I’m prime minister, if you want any of your policy agenda pushed forward you’re going to have to convince not just me but the people of Canada that it is good for them,” Poilievre said.
But the fundraisers full of corporate lobbyists tell another story.
These corporate players will be looking to a Poilievre government for the sorts of policies Stephen Harper’s Conservatives implemented: slashing corporate taxes, undermining labour rights, limiting access to social assistance, and removing environmental regulations
Poilievre’s own political record continues, and even exceeds, Harper’s commitment to right-wing libertarian doctrine.
He supported the recent anti-scab or replacement worker legislation put forward by the Liberals, but he voted seven times against such laws previously.
He has championed the “the power of privatization,” called to roll back wages for public sector workers, and voted against increases to the minimum wage.
-With research contributions from Helen Jacob and Shaki Sutharsan
“It’s about getting to the bottom of things. It’s about unveiling who has the power and what they’re doing with that power.”
Linda McQuaig, journalist and author
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This entire article sounds as though written by scared liberals who are aware that
“Winter is Coming”
I love how you call yourselves “investigative journalists” when the sum-total of your “investigation” consists of doom-scrolling on Google.
Wow you really want the liberals to remain in power? Or the NDP who shat on everything Jack Layton stood for?
Imagine if the Liberals were in power untill 2029. I mean really. You better not write anything dictator Trudeau doesn’t like or hel freeze your bank account and block you on Facebook.
What a joke. Vice went bankrupt. I know you’re trying to be a cool trendy lefty news source, but the jig us up. A pretentious JT jerk circle is all I see.
Is that what you took away from the article? I never saw one sentence that suggested support the LCP or Trudeau. I just read that the CPC, the LPC, and the NDP are all cut from the same cloth and represent the interests of the owning class vs the working class. Nothing really surprising. I don’t think anyone in the working class would see their material conditions change in a positive way if any of the 3 big political parties took power or retained it in the next election. YMMV.
it’s all of them- even ndp singh; (from a liked comment I made on Huffington’s way back then) “jagmeet’s one to talk about being elitist….because of his work with the civil liberties I donated $50 for his ndp leadership bid. That was welcomed after his success in that with an invite to a $150 plate dinner. Like, dude, we are blue-collar wage earners. We have 3 latch-key kids because both myself and my wife have needed to work to maintain our rented apartment. We have an 11 y/o rusting mazda. We are dead tired after work, man- we dont have the energy, time or money to go to your fancy dinners. The ndp is supposed to be about folk like me, not the effete single, white collar dandys living in a downtown condos driving audis. How rich do you have it to be so oblivious to your hypocrisy ?”- There arent any heroes in this world; they’re all dead to me.
Polievre just another political hypocrite like Trudeau and Singh looking to fill his pockets at voters expense.
It’s bad enough that our government is under the thumb of corporate and Zionist interest without having to consider another political pie in the sky player. PP has no climate crisis, agenda, because, “we are conservative, and we don’t believe in that.” The ‘Semmelweis syndrome’ has always plagued humanity, so it’s no surprise that these flat earth, disease infected fools, are still trying to influence us with their verbal diarrhoea and hypocritical “daily obsessions.”
“..my daily obsession will be about what is good for the working class people..”.
Oh, sure.
Polievre can’t wait to show the working class what HE thinks is good for it. He will be worse than Harper – and the working class remembers how it had “their teeth kicked in” with Conservative anti-labour legislaton (bills C- 377 or C- 525). And Conservative strike-breaking. And the castigating of politicians with ties to labour, as “public enemies”. And the “Enemies List” handed to Harper’s Ministers. And the silencing of marginalized communities as well as the Public Service. And the loyalty oath’s imposed upon the Public Service. And the privacy invading measures forced upon unions. And Harper’s loathing of Canada’s public health care system. And Revenue Canada attacks on charities Conserbvatives didn’t like. And Polievre’s own attempt to make it more difficult for Canadians to vote in elections. Canada’s working class need only look at Argentina to anticipate what is in store for it to a degree. A la Argentina’s Javier Milei, Polievre is likely to utilize neo-liberal shock treatments to ensure the “triumphant rule of corporations”. And yes, Trudeau is also a neo-liberal – albeit with a bit of a social veneer, while Polievre neo-liberalism is couched in a phoney rhetoric of populism. In the last few elections Canadians wisely were able to vote for somewhat balanced minorities to avert the worst of each iteration of neo- liberalism. As the corporate lobbyists line up at the Conservative trough, I fear dark times are ahead.
With incompetence, scandals, broken promises (ie electoral reform), arrogance and a pandemic election campaign where he chose to polarize Canada, Trudeau has alienated Canadians to such a degree that most can no longer hold their noses to once again vote for a some balance in the House. And Pollievre is about as much obsessed with what would really be good for working class people, as much as he has consulted the working class or as much as he has worked in the working class.
RBG