Smith: Donations to Tories broke law
Wildrose leader wants $102,776 to be paid back
CALGARY —Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith alleged Thursday the Tory party accepted more than $100,000 in illegal donations from municipalities and other public bodies between 2004 and 2010, calling on Premier Jim Prentice to ensure the money is paid back.
At a news conference in Calgary, Smith said freedom of information requests revealed 238 donations totalling $102,776 were made to the Progressive Conservative party or its constituency associations from 41 communities and post-secondary institutions.
Such publicly funded groups are prohibited by provincial law from making political contributions.
“The buck stops with the PC party and the PC government. They wrote the law and then they proceeded to break it, dozens and dozens and dozens of time,” Smith said.
In 2004, the Tory government passed legislation barring taxpayer-funded institutions from making political donations. In April 2010, the law was changed to allow the chief electoral officer to order political organizations to return illegal contributions.
Last year, the chief electoral officer revealed 45 cases of illegal donations to the PCs between 2010 and 2011 and the party returned voluntarily or under order at least $17,000 in donations.
PC party president Jim McCormick acknowledged at the time that the chief electoral officer had also recommended the party and constituency associations voluntarily pay back donations made between 2004 and 2010.
He did not disclose the amount, but said it was under $100,000.
McCormick said in May 2013 the party was leaving it up to the individual constituency associations who received the improper contributions whether to repay the funds.
Under provincial legislation, Elections Alberta cannot reveal improper donations made before December 2009.
PC executive director Kelley Charlebois said Thursday he couldn’t say yet if the cases reported by the Wildrose were already known by the party or whether any of the money had been repaid.
“Any time there’s a suggestion like this, (we take it) very seriously and we’re looking into it,” he said of the Wildrose allegations.
The Tories have argued that in many previous cases, local politicians made the donation and then were reimbursed later by their organization, meaning the party had no way of knowing the contribution was improper.
The Wildrose list released Thursday shows individual donations that ranged from $25 to $4,000 for such events as golf tournaments for Tory members of the legislature, PC party annual meeting dinners and leader dinners for former premiers Ralph Klein and Ed Stelmach.
Some expenditures had already been disclosed by the opposition parties.