Alberta hired more U.S. lobbyists than other provinces, feds since 2000: data
“Neutralizing” environmentalist arguments. Consultants with personal access to United States senators. A giant oilsands truck on the National Mall.
Alberta’s attempts to influence the winds of American politics go back much further than the current administration of Donald Trump.
For many governments and private firms outside the U.S., hiring lobbyists and media strategists to advance interests in a crucial market is simply a given.
But Alberta’s efforts are particularly persistent — according to U.S. data, Alberta has hired more lobbyists since 2000 than any other province or the federal government.
Thanks to American regulation and reporting requirements for foreign lobbying, publicly available data and documents provide a window into those attempts at influence.
“You’re talking about a sub-federal government in Canada that is trying to have its eyes and ears on the ground in D.C.,” says Greg Anderson, a political scientist at the University of Alberta.
“There are limits to what provinces can do in the American political system without that kind of third party representation.”
Public transparency
The Foreign Agents Registration Act, passed by Congress in 1938 to combat foreign propaganda, requires disclosure from parties working in the interest of foreign entities, including private companies and governments.
While there are exemptions — such as journalists, diplomats or those engaged in “private and nonpolitical” activities — generally, anyone seeking to bend the ears of politicians must register.
Along with the required forms, registrants must also submit documentation detailing a comprehensive list of the activities to be performed on behalf of the foreign principal and the compensation provided for those services.
Those documents, along with any “information materials” disseminated on behalf of the foreign entity, are publicly available on the FARA website. This includes materials like contracts between the Alberta government and its lobbyists that could take months to obtain through Alberta’s freedom of information law, often with significant redactions.
The FARA registry, which falls under the auspices of the Department of Justice, can also be downloaded in bulk datasets stretching from the 1940s to the present.
Alberta loves to lobby
A CBC News analysis of the FARA data found that the Alberta government hires more lobbyists than other provinces.
Since 2000, Alberta appears in the registry 15 times, more than any other province. The federal government appears three times in that time period.
Each occurrence represents a “foreign agent” — the lobbyist or their firm — registering as representing the interests of a foreign principal, such as the Alberta government. (In practice, these agents themselves are very often American.)
For this analysis, CBC News counted only federal or provincial governments and ministries. This excluded Crown corporations like Travel Alberta and provincial corporations like the defunct Canadian Energy Centre, which was also known as the “war room.”
Jieun Lee, an assistant professor of political science at the State University of New York at Buffalo, says Alberta’s special interest in lobbying is likely due to the fact that the province’s economic well-being is so closely tied with oil exports, the overwhelming majority of which flow to the United States.
“Given the unique position of Alberta within Canada, I could see why Alberta might have these extra incentives to maybe build its own unique, separate line of relations with the U.S. government,” she says.
Proximity to power
Alberta’s earliest appearance in the data is April 1964, when it registered itself as its own lobbyist, providing an office address in Los Angeles.
The most recent entry is from October 2024, which was an updated contract for one of its existing lobbyists, Capitol Counsel.
The project proposal from Capitol Counsel notes as a selling point that a member of its core team, Jonathan Kott, was a senior adviser to two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Chris Coons of Delaware. Manchin was the chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
“Through our work, Senator Manchin became a key ally for Alberta, which was particularly important given his leadership position and ability to work along bipartisan lines,” says the proposal. “To that end, we were pleased to coordinate Senator Manchin’s visit to Alberta.”
Lee says this proximity to power is exactly what clients are looking for in a lobbyist.
“In the US, there’s a focus on relationships and making the right connections with the right people,” she says.
Alberta’s current contract with Capitol Counsel pays $50,000 per month for two years, for a total of $1.2 million. There is an option for a one-year extension at the same price beginning in 2026.
In an emailed statement, Sam Blackett, press secretary to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, defended the use of lobbyists.
“With around 90 per cent of Alberta’s exports — valued at more than $160 billion a year — the U.S. is by far Alberta’s largest trading partner,” Blackett said.
“Effective and sustained engagement with key U.S. stakeholders is critical to ensuring continued access to the U.S. market for Alberta businesses.”
The use of “consultants who have excellent connections with senior Administration officials and lawmakers at both the national and state level” helps create jobs in Alberta, said Blackett.
‘Neutralize’ environmental arguments
The FARA documents typically include the original request for proposals issued by the Alberta government, which details the services and “deliverables” sought and often the price of the contract.
A central part of most of these contracts was outreach to the news media to try and shape the public conversation.
The supplemental FARA filings by Alberta’s contractors include email correspondence with journalists at the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico and the Wall Street Journal, among others. The lobbyists pitched opinion pieces by Jason Kenney and interview opportunities with Danielle Smith, with mixed results.
One document from 2014 includes a list of the many failed attempts by a lobbyist to pitch an interview with Premier Alison Redford.
The FARA filings from that lobbying firm, Feverpress LLC, laid out a proposed communications strategy around the Keystone XL pipeline — specifically, how to overcome the problem that “environmentalists opposed to the project have aggressively taken control of the debate.”
The objective, it stated, was to “neutralize the environmentalist arguments” and provide President Barack Obama “the air cover he needs to support the pipeline.”
Obama ultimately killed the controversial project, which would have carried crude oil from Alberta to Nebraska.
Attempts to shape public opinion or raise awareness can also go awry.
In 2006, as part of the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the Alberta government parked a giant dump truck, like those used in the oilsands, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The idea was to showcase the immense scale of the oilsands projects. Instead, it attracted the unwanted attention of environmentalists to the destructive impact of oilsands mining.
“There was quite a focus on the oilsands for several years, and I don’t think that was the reaction that everybody anticipated,” says Anderson, the University of Alberta professor.
“It’s a kind of double-edged sword at some level.”
Effective? Hard to say
Aside from its U.S. offices in Washington, Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis and Dallas, Alberta has an international presence in several other countries. However, the United States is the only place where Alberta hires lobbyists, reflecting the reality that the U.S. is by far its largest market for exports.
Lee, the SUNY Buffalo political scientist, says that while the lobbying industry is only growing, it’s hard to measure its effectiveness.
“As a researcher, I could tell you that it is extremely difficult to show empirically that the act of lobbying leads to particular outcomes, just because there are so many other things that could play a role in the outcome of a policy,” she says.
Trump’s second term has already proved disruptive and chaotic to the American political system. Notably, his administration has sought to concentrate power in the executive branch, and more specifically in one individual — President Trump.
Anderson says that may disrupt the state of play in the U.S. lobbying industry.
“I think there’s a bit of a scramble at the moment,” he says. Many of the established lobbying firms with access to traditional power players “have been on the outside looking in and trying to reorient themselves as Trump has taken over the Republican Party.”
At the same time, anyone with a connection to Trump is suddenly in demand.
“You’ve seen a lot of little firms pop up … think tanks trying to put some meat on the MAGA bones,” says Anderson.
Alberta goes its own way
That strategy was reflected in the Council of the Federation’s choice of lobbyist in February: the premiers selected Checkmate Government Relations, which had only recently opened a Washington office, but which boasts multiple people with connections to Trump.
Given that the goal was to avoid the threat of trade tariffs, it doesn’t appear to have worked out.
“Did they pick the wrong outfit? Maybe a little green, still untested?” says Anderson. “Maybe. But I think a lot of people are scrambling to try to figure out who has the access, the genuine access.”
Danielle Smith broke with the other premiers and their “Team Canada” united front in January, in part due to Alberta’s central economic interest — fossil fuels.
Anderson suggests that Alberta’s extensive experience in lobbying might give it something of an advantage relative to other provinces, even in a fast-changing and unpredictable new environment.
Even so, as a small fish in a very large lobbying pond, it’s not clear how significantly Alberta can influence events south of the border.
“For every stakeholder that’s spending money on access, lobbying firms, advertising campaigns, pressure groups trying to push in one direction, there’s usually a couple of others pushing in a completely different direction,” says Anderson.
“It costs an enormous sum of money to move the needle even a tiny, tiny bit.”
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