PALMER: ALBERTA BILL HAS B.C.’S ATTENTION
Financing fairness: Notley moves to ban union, corporate donations that grease politics in this province
As the new Alberta government got down to business this week, the first piece of legislation was freighted with symbolic importance for neighbouring British Columbia as well.
Bill 1 on the agenda, an Act to Renew Democracy in Alberta, would implement Premier Rachel Notley’s campaign promise to ban union and corporate donations to candidates and political parties.
Henceforth, only persons “ordinarily resident in Alberta” will be able to make a political contribution in general elections, byelections and leadership contests.
“The first step in our efforts to help ensure that Albertans have the strongest voice in our democracy,” declared Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley in tabling the legislation, following delivery of the New Democratic Party government’s first throne speech Monday afternoon.
“These amendments will bring equity and fairness to election financing and represent just the beginning of our efforts to renew democracy in our province.”
The move brought a predictable denunciation — “a naked attempt to tilt the political scale in the current government’s balance” — from the ousted-from-power Progressive Conservative party.
But in a telling measure of how thoroughly Albertans turned against the PCs in the May election, the legislation was pretty much endorsed by the Opposition Wildrose party.
“Barring any surprises in the text,” said leader Brian Jean, “Wildrose will completely support this bill,” underscoring the point that his populist, right-ofcentre party had been opposed to union and corporate donations as keenly as the populist, left-of-centre New Democrats.
The Wildrose leader parted company with the New Democrats only on the premier’s suggestion of a need to replace the banned donations with a per-vote public subsidy: “We should not have governments subsidize elections on the backs of taxpayers.”
Adding to the “end-of-an era” tone was an endorsement from the provincial Liberals, who’d also campaigned for the ban because it would cut off the corporate gravy train for the PC dynasty.
New Democrats in this province responded favourably on social media at the news from their Alberta counterparts.
They chose not to enact a similar measure during a decade in power in the 1990s, being reluctant to tamper with their dependent relationship with B.C.’s powerful trade union movement.
But since losing power to the corporate-funding-dependent B.C. Liberals in 2001, the New Democrats have supported a ban, recognizing that their own party had already made the necessary shift to lining up donations from individuals.
“We do get a good deal of support from trade unions, but it’s individuals that drive the NDP,” said Opposition leader John Horgan during an interview with me on Voice of B.C. on Shaw TV last week.
“One of the planks of our electoral reform and legislative reform package is to do away with union and corporate donations. I believe that’s integral to bringing people back into the equation, and that’s another part of the platform that I believe will appeal, not just to New Democrats, but to Greenleaning voters and those really traditional middle Liberal voters. Not the right-of-centre types. They’re quite happy to have corporations pay for their political party.”
Maybe not all of those “types” either; witness the anti-corporatist stance by Alberta’s Wildrose.
For now, Horgan has to be focused on raising funds within the existing rules in B.C. The party pulled in unprecedented amounts from the corporate sector before the last provincial election, thanks to polls which seemed to herald an NDP win.
Donations have fallen off dramatically since, but Horgan maintains the situation has stabilized. “We’re now in the high season for fundraising,” he assured me. Out of debt? “We will be shortly. There’s a couple of financial transactions that have taken place that I can’t announce (yet) that will resolve that issue. By September that’ll be public knowledge.”
As for the governing Liberals, the party recently announced it had paid off $3 million in loans from the last election and was now embarking on building up a war chest for Campaign 2017.
Notwithstanding the broad support in Alberta for Premier Notley’s move to stem the flow of corporate and union donations, not likely will Premier Christy Clark undertake anything of the kind.
The Liberals have long relied on a steady tide of corporate money, even raising it from out of province sources from time to time.
On the eve of the last election, for instance, cabinet ministers Rich Coleman and Bill Bennett raised thousands of dollars for their party at a $125-a-person fundraiser in Calgary.
“Alberta’s fortunes are inextricably linked to those of British Columbia,” read the invite. “While we may joke that the election of an NDP government in B.C. would be good for Alberta business, we all know it would be bad for those doing business or owning property in B.C., and it would be bad for Canada.”
The same cross-border thinking will likely be in play in 2017.
Indeed, with the Alberta government forcing the province’s corporations to pocket their cash and their chequebooks, one can readily imagine the B.C. Liberals trying to carve out a bigger piece of that fundraising action for themselves.