Yes, but it's the conjunction with intelligence that I proposed as the filter, not the tool use on its own.

Even if you get a runaway sexual selection for intelligence, the species has to have some tool-manipulation ability for it to result in technology. A primate that gets human intelligence through runaway sexual selection is in good position to develop a technological civilization that can communicate or colonize. A corvid that gets human intelligence might manage something, or it might be stuck in a stone age forever because of inferior manipulators and insufficient body strength. A human-intelligence baleen whale, I don't see how they can possibly get to technology from where they are.