Vancouver municipal parties criticized campaign financing rules last year
The NDP’s legislative effort to “keep big money out of politics,” as Municipal Affairs Minister Selina Robinson has characterized it, did not take into account third party groups out to influence the vote, all three of Vancouver’s sitting local parties claimed in a letter sent last year.
The civic parties welcomed Robinson’s then-bill in their joint Nov. 20 letter, but they requested rules and enforcement provisions on advertising by third parties involved in voter influence and identification aimed at supporting candidates. Robinson dismissed their concerns in a letter dated Jan. 18, weeks after her bill had received royal assent, but she noted that the province planned to watch for issues in the coming elections.
The letter to Robinson was signed by councillors George Affleck (Non-Partisan Association), Adriane Carr (Green party) and Andrea Reimer (Vision Vancouver).
“Campaigns have seen increasing involvement — on the right and the left — of groups, who have all the attributes of elector organizations, yet are not subject to scrutiny by Elections B.C. These groups will conduct campaignstyle work that includes polling, voter identification, and get-out the-vote activities,” they wrote in their request for further rules on advertising.
Robinson said she’s confident third-party organizations won’t find a way to get around the new rules, which set a cap of $150,000 for directed and issue-based advertising during the municipal campaign period that runs from Sept. 22 to Oct. 20 this year. She said she doesn’t think third-parties will try to conduct polling, advertising and voter outreach in different ways to get around the limits.
“When we took a look at what the spending rules are for third parties we believe it limits the ability for those kind of things to happen,” Robinson said. “The election spending rules that currently exist in the legislation we expect will dampen any of that possibility.”
But Robinson admitted the government will keep an eye on the new law to see how it plays out and whether it needs to be changed.
“We need to monitor it to make sure it actually does deliver what we say it’s going to deliver.”
In their letter, Affleck, Carr and Reimer also requested amendments to allow income tax deductions for contributions to local candidates, and to permit contributions for candidates running with electoral organizations to be in line with those for independents.
The joint letter did not cite the issue of using corporate and union donations for “operational purposes,” which became a point of contention last week between Vision and the NPA.
Robinson weighed in and said she felt the NPA was trying to find ways around the intent of her legislation and said she wanted her staff to come back with options to close what has been characterized as a loophole in the act.
Affleck said his party had followed closely the rules set by the government and he protested Robinson’s comments. “What is going on here? This is democracy we’re talking about and she’s just flying by the seat of her pants? Come on. This is crazy.”
He criticized the NDP for the flaws in what he described as “legislation that was written on the back of a napkin at a coffee shop.”
On Monday, Liberal MLA Todd Stone introduced a bill, titled the Local Election Campaign Financing Amendment Act, also aimed at keeping corporate and union donations out of municipal elections.
“Last year, we supported a bill to take big money out of politics but inconsistencies in the NDP’s rushed legislation have opened a fundraising loophole at the municipal level. This bill closes that loophole,” Stone said in a news release.