NDP, Liberals gaining ground in fundraising

When it comes to sizing up the party war chests, the federal Conservatives are comfortably ahead of their rivals, but new filings with Elections Canada show the Liberals and New Democrats are slowly playing catch-up.

The annual financial reports of Canada’s federal political parties were made public on Elections Canada’s website Thursday.

While the parties are required to file quarterly updates — which removes some of the suspense from these year-end numbers — one thing the annual reports include that still can’t be found elsewhere are the financial statements of each party. These provide the only publicly available breakdown of just how the parties spend their money.

So, what can we glean from the fine print buried near the back of the latest batch of filings?

The Liberals — and, to a lesser extent, the New Democrats — aren’t quite hot on the heels of the Tories, but for the first time since the upending of the political financing rules in 2003, they can at least be considered a distant but visible dot on the fundraising horizon.

On the expense side of the ledger, the Conservatives spent $2.5 million on advertising last year — $1.2 million on TV spots, $954,000 on radio and $349,000 on “other” platforms, which generally means print and online campaigns.

The Liberals outspent the Conservatives in the “other” category, into which the party poured $417,000 and came within $200,000 of matching the Tories’ TV buy, but reported a much more modest radio ad budget of just $340,000.

As for the New Democrats, according to their filing, they didn’t spend a penny on TV or radio ads.

The NDP also spent considerably less on polling and research than their competitors, in sharp contrast to the $358,000 and $242,000 for the Conservatives and Liberals, respectively.

Despite a slight downturn in overall revenue from 2013 — $13.7 million to $12.6 million — the NDP actually saw contributions go up — from $8.1 million in 2013 to $9.5 million last year, with their net assets showing a similar jump — from $8.5 million in 2013 to $10.2 million last year.

The Liberals, meanwhile, managed to top the salary and benefit list, spending just over $7.5 million on party staff, compared to $6 million for the Conservatives and just $4 million for the New Democrats.

Team Trudeau also forked out $1.6 million on travel and hospitality, which is substantially more than the Conservatives ($514,000) and New Democrats ($551,000) combined.

As for the Greens, while they’re not even in the same financial league as the Big Three, they can, at least, comfort themselves with the fact that their numbers are on the upswing across the board when compared to last year’s report.