FUNDRAISING PACS ARE A MAJOR FORCE IN RACE TO LEAD UNITED CONSERVATIVES
Strolling along 4th Street S.W., Wildrose Leader Brian Jean remarked that his political action committee might spend $1 million to ensure a “yes” victory in the conservative unity vote on July 22.
Jean was at Calgary’s Lilac Festival last Sunday, looking happy as a stream of Calgarians bought Wildrose memberships to cast a vote for unity.
He said his PAC — called the Alberta Fund — is being “repurposed” to campaign for unity.
After July 22, the Alberta Fund simply rejoins the struggle to make Jean leader of the new United Conservative Party, and then the premier.
The conservative unity movement has brought rapid growth of these netherworld political action groups.
Under provincial law — or the lack of it — they can function entirely without regulation or reporting as long as they don’t buy political advertising.
The Unite Alberta PAC that saw Jason Kenney through to the PC leadership campaign did not advertise, so it isn’t required to report donations that are sure to total more than $1 million.
Last fall, Kenney’s campaign boasted that it raised more money in one fiscal quarter, $497,000, than any of the legislature parties, including the NDP.
Kenney has always promised that, even though it isn’t mandatory, Unite Alberta will file financial reports voluntarily, in the same format as third-party advertisers.
His outfit says the financials for both the PAC and his leadership campaign will soon go to auditors, and then to Elections Alberta.
It will be fascinating to see if Elections Alberta makes the PAC disclosure public. From the official viewpoint, Unite Alberta never existed. And now, the PAC itself really doesn’t exist.
Kenney and the board wrapped up Unite Alberta after he won the leadership and founded a new PAC, the Alberta Victory Fund. Staff and the coffee maker simply moved from one PAC to the other.
The Victory Fund is registered as an advertiser. So is Jean’s Alberta Fund. They will have to fully disclose.
But everyone knows these PACs can operate in a murky world that could easily lead to abuse.
It’s entirely possible, for instance, for a politician to run one fundraising machine entirely in private, while establishing another to raise and spend money just for advertising.
Kenney’s Unite Alberta got caught up in one technicality. Because there was no legal obligation to report, but Kenney promised to do it, donors had to formally agree to disclose their contributions to Elections Alberta.
Some refused. That likely means at least a few donors who gave more than $250, the limit for anonymous contributions, won’t be identified.
Elections Alberta’s last set of recommendations to the legislature didn’t say anything about regulating PACs. At the time, they weren’t yet so prominent.
But we can be pretty sure that the next time this comes up, the elections office will ask for legal changes to get more control.
“There is nothing in the legislation that allows us to oversee anything about these organizations,” says Drew Westwater, Elections Alberta spokesman. “Unless they engage in advertising, they don’t have to report anything at all.”
It’s now routine for politicians with a fight ahead of them to found a fundraising PAC, or have it done for them.
The Alberta Fund was created in January by Jean supporter Dave Yager, formerly a Wildrose party president.
He also heads up Jean For Premier, a “project” of the Alberta Fund. Yager has called the PAC a Jean “fan club.”
Kenney’s Unite Alberta was also up and running quickly. With the growing appetite for a united conservative party, it proved to be a money-raising juggernaut.
There’s a great deal of political cash on the hoof in Alberta, much of it heading for PACs. They should all fall under the same regulations as parties.