The Volunteer Gap

Decisions about how the Ontario Autism Program is funded — how much a family gets, and when — are shaped by the people a minister listens to. Ontario keeps a public registry so you can see who those people are. But the registry only records someone if they were paid. If they advise for free, they never appear in it at all, however often they are heard.

That is the gap this page is about. It is not a story about any individual. It is a description of what the law, as written, does not require anyone to tell you.

The rule

Ontario’s Lobbyists Registration Act, 1998 requires people who are paid to lobby to register in a public registry — consultant lobbyists, who are paid by a client to communicate with public office holders, and in-house lobbyists, paid employees whose duties include at least 50 hours a year of lobbying, counted alone or together with colleagues’ lobbying duties. The Office of the Integrity Commissioner of Ontario, which administers the registry, puts it plainly in its Interpretation Bulletin #1, “Am I lobbying?” (first issued March 30, 2020):

“You are lobbying if you are paid to communicate with government.” … “If you are a volunteer and are not paid for your work, you are not lobbying. You do not need to register as a lobbyist.”

That is the whole gate. Not influence. Not access. Not results. Payment.

The Commissioner’s office states the limit of its own registry plainly:

“the definition of lobbying in Ontario only captures individuals who are paid to lobby”

What fits through the gap

An unpaid person may, without ever appearing in any public record:

• advise a premier’s office or a minister’s office on the design of a public program;
• recommend which contracts a ministry should keep or end;
• arrange meetings between private individuals and ministers;
• do all of this repeatedly, over years, while truthfully saying they are “not a lobbyist.”

None of that is an allegation about any person. It is a description of what the statute, as written, does not require anyone to disclose.

The regulator has asked for this to change

On June 1, 2021, Ontario’s Legislative Assembly referred a required review of the Lobbyists Registration Act to the Standing Committee on the Legislative Assembly. In its newsletter that August (ON Lobbying, Issue 18), the Integrity Commissioner’s office set out the changes it wanted made, in its own words: “Reporting lobbying done by volunteers or unpaid directors” — noting that some companies ask unpaid directors, and some organizations ask members, to lobby on a volunteer basis, and that “this lobbying activity should be disclosed in a company or organization’s registration”; “Significantly reducing the annual 50-hour threshold for in-house lobbyists”, which it called “high” and a cause of “less transparency on who is lobbying whom in government and about what”; and “Broadening the range of penalties for non-compliance”, which currently extend only to naming the person or barring them from lobbying for up to two years.

Two precisions. First, the Commissioner’s volunteer recommendation, as written, addresses volunteers who lobby on behalf of an organization — it would put their activity in the organization’s registration. An individual acting alone, for no organization and no pay, would still fall outside even the amended Act. Closing the gap fully means extending the same disclosure logic one step further, to unpaid advisers generally: register because of what you do, not because of how — or whether — you are paid. Second, these are the regulator’s recommendations, not law. The Commissioner made them to a legislative review in 2021. Five years later, the Act’s last amendment remains 2019, c. 1, Sched. 4, s. 28, and the word “volunteer” does not appear anywhere in it. Both facts are visible on the first screen of the statute on e-Laws. That is the point of this page.

What closing the gap would mean

Registration is not a sanction. It is a public record that a communication happened. The registry exists so that the public can see who is trying to influence public decisions; a compensation test measures the wrong thing.

What you can do

• Read the Act and the Commissioner’s guidance — both are linked in the sources below, and how to search the registry yourself is set out in a companion note.
• Email Your MPP and ask whether they support amending the Act to implement the Integrity Commissioner’s recommendations, including disclosure for unpaid advisers who seek to influence government decisions.