Hard to judge federal parties’ financial health on numbers alone

Grits, Conservatives seem to be doing just fine after bank-draining election

For political data crunchers, it used to be the most anticipated event of the year: the ceremonial posting of the federal parties’ annual financial statements to the Elections Canada website.

But while there are some of us who still find ourselves hypnotically hitting refresh when the June 30 deadline hits, the thrill is somewhat diminished, if not gone.

Before 2005, those annual reports were the only publicly available source of information on money in politics, but these days parties file quarterly reports on their fundraising efforts, which means few if any surprises lurk within the yearly totals.

The just-released annual reports do detail more of the fine print, but it’s still not entirely clear how much is left in the party coffers following the longest and most expensive election in Canadian history. Each party seems to have its own way of counting up assets, liabilities and other line items, which makes it far trickier to do a straight comparison.

We can, for instance, mentally file away that while the Liberals may have beaten them at the ballot box, the Conservatives were able to rake in considerably more cash from individual contributors — although the Liberals were swift to declare 2015 “the strongest year ever for grassroots contributions.”

(As for the New Democrats, Elections Canada granted them an extension to file their papers, which means we won’t be able to assess their balance sheet until the end of August.)

The newly released yearly returns also reveal Liberals took out a whopping $40 million in bank loans to bolster their campaign coffers, compared to $28.5 million for the Conservatives and just $1.25 million for the Greens.

The Conservatives were also the first to file the necessary paperwork to collect their election rebate cheque, which covers 50 per cent of all expenses. The Liberals are also expected to use the bulk of their rebate to whittle down their debt, although they were considerably later in submitting the final expense return.

It’s precisely that kind of if-when-asterisk scenario that makes it difficult to use the latest reports to rank the parties according to their relative and respective financial health. Take, for instance, net assets. According to the Conservative report, as of Dec. 31, 2015, the much-vaunted capital-F Fund was running a small, but unmistakable deficit of $4,677,373, while the Liberals were in the black, albeit barely, with reported net assets of $2,005,045.

A quick glance at the operations statement may reveal the somewhat unsurprising reason for the difference: the Conservatives simply spent more money over the course of the year than the Liberals.

Flipping through to the report on cash flow, the Conservatives had $1,885,586 in available funds at year end, down from $11.7 million in 2014, while the Liberals claim to have access to $6,428,863 in cash and equivalents, which is just slightly below the starting balance of $7,851,344.

When it comes down to it, the current balance sheets may not be particularly useful in projecting future campaign feasibility. Barring a seriously unforeseen turn of events, no one is going to be back on the election trail until 2019.

Back in the minority era, parties had to be ready to hit the hustings at the drop of a hat — or, more accurately, the fall of the then-governing party on a nonconfidence vote. In the current majority setting, they can count on a luxuriously long hiatus before the campaign crunch hits, which means the more crucial measure may be the overall trend in fundraising.

On that score, both the Liberals and Conservatives can rest — well, not easy exactly, as that could lead to complacency — relatively secure. The blue and red fundraising lines are going in the right direction, which means there’s plenty of time to restock the war chest. We’ll have to wait until later to find out if the New Democrats can say the same.

The rest of us will have to wait just about as long before we can start predicting how the election might play out, at least on the spending front.