Understanding Carrefour Lobby Québec

The Espace professionnel

If you are involved in performing or reporting lobbying activities, the creation of your Professional Space is the first essential step leading to the disclosure of lobbying activities.

The Espace professionnel [French Only] is your personal account, from which you can access :

• your Profile, where you can add and edit your personal and security information as well as information about your current or former public office holder duties, if applicable;
• a dashboard containing all the Espaces collectifs [French Only] to which you have access or for which you are waiting for access;
• certain actions related to the Group Spaces, such as writing a warrant;
• notifications regarding actions required of you in Carrefour Lobby Québec.

The information contained in a Professional Space is not public, except for the following information in the case of a lobbyist

• that which must be disclosed as required by the Act [French Only] ;
• that which the lobbyist expressly consents to make public.

This information is made available to the public upon publication or update of a mandate to which a lobbyist is attached. It appears on the mandate and on the Lobbyist Registry.

Create an Espace professionnel

You can have only one Espace professionnel in Carrefour Lobby Québec.

To create your Espace professionnel, you must :

1. provide the following information :
   • some personal information;
   • your contact information;
   • your security information,
2. validate your identity.

Once your identity has been validated, you can access your Espace professionnel and consult your Profile, which contains information about you, and then become a member of a Espace collectif.

The Espace collectif

The Espace collectif is the account of a company or an organization. It provides access to all the features for writing, publishing and managing mandates.

The Espace collectif contains the required information about the company or organization, as well as the functionalities for assigning roles to the individuals who are members.

Once your Espace professionnel has been created, you must join an Espace collectif  and become a member to access all the functionalities related to the disclosure of lobbying activities and to be attached to mandates as a lobbyist.

You can also create an Espace collectif or your enterprise or organization if it does not already have one.

*Note that a consultant lobbyist must join the Espace collectif of his enterprise (consulting firm), and not the Espace collectif of his client, to disclose the lobbying activities he carries out on behalf of this client.

Once you are admitted as a member of a Group Space, the most senior officer (PHD) or an administrator (ADM) will assign you one or more roles depending on the nature of your duties and tasks.

Joining an Espace collectif

You can join an Espace collectif :

• by sending a request to your most senior executive and his or her administrators from your Espace professionnel ; or
• by invitation from your most senior executive or an administrator. This invitation can be sent to you by email or by notification in your Espace professionnel .

Espace collectif of which you are a member are accessible from your Espace professionnel. Those for which you have requested membership and are awaiting a response are also visible there. They will be accessible once your request has been accepted.

Create an Espace collectif

You can create a Group Space if you are

• the most senior executive (MSE) of a company or organization; or
• an individual authorized by that company or organization.

A company or organization can have only one Espace collectif. Therefore, before creating a Group Space for a company or organization, we suggest that you check to see if the company or organization already has one, using the search tool in your Professional Space.

You can create a Group Space from your Professional Space. You must provide certain information about the company or organization:

• its identification and Quebec Business Number (NEQ), if applicable
• its most senior officer and director
• certain information about the company or organization (name(s), contact information and summary of its activities);
• if applicable :
  • details of the members of the grouping, association or coalition;
  • Addresses of its other establishments or places of business;
  • a list of websites or corporate accounts with which it is associated.

Validation of the Espace collectif

Once the creation of the Collective Space is completed, it must be validated by Lobbyisme Québec and then confirmed by the most senior executive (PHD) of the company or organization. Lobbyisme Québec commits to proceeding within the prescribed timeframe with respect to the services offered.

While waiting for these validations, a member of the Collective Space may, if his or her roles allow it

• invite or authorize other people to become members
• modify the information concerning the Espace collectif;
• write draft mandates.

When Carrefour Lobby Québec is officially launched in the fall of 2022 and once the Collective Space has been validated by Lobbyisme Québec and by the PHD, the functionalities related to the disclosure of lobbying activities will be activated.

Until Carrefour Lobby Québec is officially online in the fall of 2022, the DPOH or his duly authorized representative must continue to report lobbying activities in the current Lobbyists Registry.

Writing and publishing a lobbying mandate

(The mandate writing and publishing functionalities will be operational in Carrefour Lobby Québec as of October 13, 2022).

Once you have created your Espace professionnel and joined an Espace collectif, you can start writing lobbying mandates.

All members of a Espace collectif hold the de facto role of Editor-Reader (ER). This allows everyone to contribute to the drafting of lobbying mandates.

However, the publication of these mandates and the certification of the veracity of the information they contain is reserved for :

• the most senior officers (PHD) or their representatives, for corporate or organization lobbying mandates;
• consultant lobbyists (CL) or their representatives, for consultant lobbying mandates.

Writing a mandate

If you are an enterprise or organization lobbyist, your mandates must be written and published in the Espace collectif of the enterprise or organization on whose behalf your lobbying activities are carried out.

If you are a consultant lobbyist, your mandates must be written and published from the Espace collectif of your enterprise or organization, for example your firm or your personal consulting firm, and not from the Collective Space of your client. It is during the drafting of the mandate that you will be able to add the information related to the clients for whom you are lobbying.

Attaching lobbyists to the mandat

A lobbyist must be attached to the mandates for which he or she performs lobbying activities.

Several enterprise or organization lobbyists who are members of the same group space, when they are active in the same mandate, may be attached to it. This option favours an optimal presentation of information and reduces duplication.

Publish a mandate

Once all the required fields have been filled out, the company’s or organization’s most senior officer (or his or her representative) or the consultant lobbyist (LOC, or his or her representative), as the case may be, must attest to the veracity of the information contained in the mandate.

This same person can then proceed with the publication of the mandate. This is done instantly, without prior validation by Lobbyisme Québec, unless otherwise specified.