Both Toronto mayoral candidate Brad Bradford and B.C. Premier David Eby’s campaigns are being staffed by former Airbnb and real estate lobbyists, an investigation by Ricochet has revealed.
Using On the Trail’s database of lobbyists from every jurisdiction across the country, Ricochet found that Bradford and Eby’s campaign staff hold long-term connections with both Airbnb and the real estate industry at large, and bring into question how serious both campaigns are with their claims of making housing more affordable. The two of them even worked together at certain points in their careers.
Bradford’s campaign spokesperson is Laryssa Waler-Hetmanczuk, former director of communications for Doug Ford, and the CEO and founder of Henley Strategies, a highly active lobbying firm. Her past clients include Airbnb, Aventus Developments (a luxury condo developer), as well as High Art Capital Inc., and Willowdale Asset Management Holdings Inc., both real estate investment and holding firms.
“If you’re going to work on campaigns for politicians as a person who generally lobbies, then after the campaign is up, you shouldn’t be lobbying them at all because you put them in a position of expecting a quid pro quo.”
In a similar fashion, Cheryl Oates, a lobbyist and former chief of staff for the BC NDP, has been appointed as Eby’s campaign manager in the provincial election campaign. Oates was noted as being a lobbyist for Uber in 2021, and Shoppers Drug Mart Inc. in 2024, and Gateway casinos and entertainment as recently as October 2025. Records show she also lobbied on behalf of Teranet Holdings LP, a property registry for Ontario and Manitoba. IJF recently reported the same.
Additionally, in March of 2026, while lobbying the B.C. provincial government on behalf of High Art Capital Inc., Waler-Hetmanczuk met with Oates directly, then-chief of staff for the BC NDP, to discuss the viability of establishing a fund in B.C. “to acquire blocks of newly completed, unsold condominium units […] and convert them into long-term rental housing.”
Former real estate lobbyists managing political campaigns are certainly not a new phenomenon in Canada, with Alberta NDP’s Rachel Notley appointing Nathan Rotman, another Airbnb lobbyist, as her campaign manager back in 2023.
Airbnb is a major driver of housing unaffordability, particularly in urban and central areas. As of 2019, according to research by McGill University, Airbnb was already responsible for taking as many as 31,000 rental units off the rental market in Canada. In the years since the pandemic, rents have increased dramatically and many have been pushed to homelessness.
Toronto currently has 22,226 Airbnb listings, rented out on average for $232 per night. Vancouver has 6,525, a much smaller number due to B.C.’s new short-term rental policy, which severely limits the number of short-term rentals possible in the province.
Bradford and incumbent Mayor Olivia Chow have sparred over their respective records on housing policy. Rent has gone up by 71 per cent in Toronto since 2018. Chow was elected as mayor in 2023.
Toronto goes to the polls on October 26. The B.C. provincial election is set for October 24.
Ricochet reached out to the BC NDP and Brad Bradford’s campaigns for comment. Neither responded.
“If you’re going to work on campaigns for politicians as a person who generally lobbies, then after the campaign is up, you shouldn’t be lobbying them at all because you put them in a position of expecting a quid pro quo,” says Ian Stedman, Associate Professor of Canadian Public Law and Governance at York University.
Stedman told Ricochet that, although these are local issues, the federal lobbyist code of conduct put out advisory statements on campaigns working with lobbyists. It doesn’t inspire confidence in an incumbent like David Eby, and it could be worse for someone who has no record to point to which would defend them against accusations of being in the pocket of lobbyists.
“Anyone who’s looking in at a politician or a wannabe politician and being told, ‘This is what I believe in’ while they’re being helped out in their campaign by someone who makes their money doing the exact opposite, that doesn’t help your campaign,” he said.
“An incumbent who then goes to campaign with all of their friends from the lobbying industry sends a signal that those are always their friends in the lobbying industry.”
“Lobbyists working in senior positions on election campaigns is not in the public interest and it always causes a layer cake of conflicts-of-interest that corrupt public policy-making decisions.”
Meanwhile someone who starts a brand new campaign could be seen as signalling their allegiances from the get-go, he concluded.
Experts question the ethics of partisans moving so fluidly between public office and lobbying.
“Lobbyists working in senior positions on election campaigns is not in the public interest and it always causes a layer cake of conflicts-of-interest that corrupt public policy-making decisions,” said Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch.
By building a relationship with both businesses and party leaders, they get a privileged ability to influence a party or candidate’s campaign that will benefit their former clients, he said. Afterwards they can “sell themselves as a lobbyist who has inside access to the leader or politician who owes them for helping win the election.”
Lobbying is not illegal in any jurisdiction in Canada, and does not signal any sort of malicious intent. It is a term that generally refers to corporations who lobby governments, however lobbying can be done by charities, community groups, among many other organizations and actors. Nonetheless, the bulk of lobbying is by private corporations.
The two political campaigners are connected through their work at GT & Company, another firm where they both lobbied for Uber in separate jurisdictions in 2021. Uber has faced severe accusations of mistreating workers, and creating a system of gig workers that causes harm to labourers.
Uber has weaponized its own predatory AI algorithm to continuously push down the wages of drivers, and push fares up, allowing the company to profit off people’s desperation.
Despite these and other concerns about Uber’s business practices, Uber was lobbying the Ontario government as recently as June 2026.
Lobbying meetings are not required to disclose all parties present, they are only required to detail the reasons they are looking to lobby. This means that, despite some level of transparency accessible to the media and researchers, there is still a gaping hole for these accountability tools. Attempting to access this information through an access to information request is a laborious process, and the system has been called broken by elected officials themselves.
Ontario has been pushing to further narrow transparency laws and has made it near-impossible to do freedom of information requests to the premier and his cabinet.
B.C. has some of the best information available in the country. Their laws and websites are more usable and the data easier to obtain. It still has holes, but is generally an improvement over other jurisdictions.
Typically, municipal governments are less transparent than provincial governments. Stedman said that this has to do with population density. Ontario is leading the push to have better information on municipally elected officials, but information remains minimal.
The problem is that politicians are rarely going to enforce further transparency laws on themselves.
“You’re barely ever gonna get more robust disclosure laws unless there is a public scandal or the public demands it at the polls,” Stedman said.
“It’s rare that somebody’s gonna run a campaign on ethics and say ‘let me make this harder on myself and all of my peers.’ They only do that when someone before them messed up bad.”
