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Editorial decisions belong to newsrooms. A journalist decides whether your story is interesting, whether it holds up, and whether it beats the other things competing for the same page on the same day. No agency controls any of that, and an agency that has genuinely good relationships is the first to say so. What a good agency can promise is a defined volume of work: research, a targeted list, tailored pitches, follow-up, prepared spokespeople and honest reporting on the response.

If a placement is guaranteed, ask what is being bought. Paid editorial, sponsored posts and advertorial are legitimate, but they are advertising, and the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards prohibits presenting an advertisement in a format or style that conceals the fact that it is an advertisement. A guarantee also has legal texture of its own: the Competition Act treats a purported warranty or guarantee as reviewable conduct where it is materially misleading or where there is no reasonable prospect that it will be carried out.

Watch the same care in reporting. Distributing a release over a wire places it on sites that automatically republish wire content; that is distribution, not coverage, and a report that counts syndicated copies as earned placements is measuring the wrong thing. Ask for links, and ask which items were written by a journalist who spoke to someone.

The Competition Bureau's position is that influencers should disclose all material connections with the business, product or service they promote, and that a connection is material if it could affect how consumers judge the influencer's independence from the brand. Its examples include money or commissions, free products or services, discounts, free trips or tickets to events, and business or family relationships. The Competition Act applies to influencer marketing exactly as it applies to traditional advertising.

The Bureau is equally specific about how a disclosure has to appear. It should be prominent and visible on every device without the audience having to click or tap to expand a post, and it should not be buried in a long caption, a block of hashtags or a profile bio. Tagging the brand, posting a discount code or linking to an affiliate page is unlikely to be enough on its own. The test the Bureau suggests is simple: will the audience clearly understand that a material connection exists?

Ad Standards covers the same ground through self-regulation. Its Interpretation Guideline on disguised advertising techniques requires disclosure of a material connection between an influencer and the entity behind the brand, and its Influencer Marketing Disclosure Guidelines, first published in 2018 and updated since, address gifted product, platform paid-partnership tools, affiliate arrangements, content aimed at children and AI-generated content. Disclosures must be clear, prominent and in close proximity to the representation being made. An agency running creator campaigns for you should be able to show you its disclosure standard without being asked twice.

Lobbying is a different activity with its own statute, and the distinction is not cosmetic. Under the federal Lobbying Act, a consultant lobbyist is a person who undertakes, for payment, to communicate with public office holders on behalf of a client about legislative proposals or bills, regulations, government policies or programs, the awarding of a grant, contribution or other financial benefit, or a government contract, or who undertakes to arrange a meeting between a public office holder and another person. Registration is required within ten days of entering into that undertaking. In-house lobbyists register through their employer once their duties reach the threshold in the Act.

Registration is not the end of it. Registrants file monthly communication reports covering oral and arranged communications with designated public office holders, giving the date, the officials involved and the subject matter, and those reports are due by the fifteenth of the following month. The Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying maintains the public Registry of Lobbyists, which anyone can search.

Provinces run their own regimes. Ontario's Lobbyists Registration Act, 1998 appoints the Integrity Commissioner as the province's Lobbyists Registrar, maintains a public registry, and requires a consultant lobbyist to register within ten calendar days of first lobbying for a client; the Registrar may also investigate non-compliance and publishes interpretation bulletins. The practical point for a PR buyer is boundary-keeping: an agency that starts arranging ministerial meetings or pressing for a policy change on your behalf has moved into territory where registration may be required. Ask which registrations the agency and its individual staff hold, in which jurisdictions, before that work begins rather than after.