Don’t muzzle environmentalists
Elections Canada should urgently clarify its absurd position that stating a fact is akin to taking a partisan stand, lest it stifle the ability of charities to share vital information in the lead-up to an election and thereby undermine the very democratic process the agency exists to protect.
The trouble, as is by now well known, started when Elections Canada recently warned environmental charities that, if these groups spend more than $500 setting out the facts of climate change in an advertising campaign, they must register as third parties, a standing that would jeopardize their charitable tax status.
The stated reason? Maxime Bernier, leader of the upstart People’s Party of Canada, denies the reality of climate change and therefore, the agency claims, that reality itself is somehow a partisan issue.
This reasoning is comic in its unsoundness and disturbing in the precedent it sets.
As Environmental Defence’s executive director put it: It is “discouraging” that charities have to zip their lips about climate change being real in the lead-up to the election “because one party has chosen to deny the existence of this basic fact.”
Clearly, Elections Canada has not thought out the implications of its position.
Will, for instance, Elections Canada warn public health agencies that they must register as third parties during the election campaign if they spend more than $500 on advertising in support of vaccination programs? One wonders, since one of Bernier’s candidates, Ken Pereira, believes the measles vaccine will give people autism.
What about, as the Star’s Alex Ballingall asked Elections Canada on Tuesday, if a party asserted that men are from Mars and women from Venus? The agency says to contradict this silliness, too, would be partisan.
Aside from being absurd on its face, Elections Canada’s position seems clearly to contradict the government’s intent. The Trudeau Liberals made clear that, after a decade-long chill in Canada’s environmental sector, this government was going to create more room for charities to advocate.
The new political advertising rules Elections Canada is interpreting, meanwhile, were meant to ensure transparency in the role of third parties, and certainly not to restrict the voice of charities.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has rightly explained that there is little he can do, given that he cannot interfere with Elections Canada’s independent decisions. It’s up to Elections Canada, then, to come to its senses.
The stakes are high. Politicians in Canada and beyond increasingly conflate fact and opinion, treating the former as up for debate. Surely our democratic institutions should not give official sanction to this deeply disturbing trend.