No. The relationship must be a qualifying one, established by ownership and control: parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate. Common ownership by the same individuals in substantially the same proportions can create affiliate status, but it has to be documented with registers and agreements, not asserted from the family connection.
Show the percentages, not the family tree
Ask the corporate lawyer or accountant for a current statement of who holds what in each entity, including any shares held through a holding company or a trust, and ask whether anything changed in the last three years. Then compare the two lists side by side. Where the same individuals hold both in similar proportions, an affiliate case can be made and the documents to support it are the registers, the articles and any unanimous shareholder agreement. Where the proportions differ substantially, or where a US partner holds a large stake, the analysis changes and should be examined before a petition is drafted. In many farm families the ownership has drifted through estate planning without anyone re-reading the registers, and that is precisely the drift this exercise is meant to catch.
Hypothetical example: the controller of a grain-elevator cooperative is proposed as the U.S. president after years of signing budgets abroad. A first review compares the Canadian and U.S. ownership ledgers, voting rights, reporting chart and payroll history. Those records settle both the qualifying relationship and whether the foreign work was executive in substance. If the controller’s daily record mainly shows bookkeeping without authority over goals or policy, the role needs a candid reassessment. The applicant also needs the required uninterrupted year with the related foreign business during the preceding three-year period, not simply long family involvement.