Bill 20 - Local Elections Campaign Financing Act is being debated today in the BC legislature. We have repeatedly moved private members bills to eliminate corporate and union donations from BC provincial politics. We support such bans or caps on the local level as well. Unfortunately, that and several other important measures were left out of this bill. We support the bills other measures but oppose the absence of the measures listed above. The government claims that they are consulting and will introduce campaign expense limits for the 2018 elections, rather than a contribution limit. We support both an expense limit and donation limit. We will be attempting to amend to add those issues, also banning corporate and union donations and to allow Vancouver to implement the measures they have requested from the government. The UBCM supports the Act. In the 2011 Vancouver civic election, one person, Rob MacDonald, donated $960,000 to the NPA. That donation was not really for the NPA, but for the mayoralty campaign of Susan Anton, now Attorney General of BC. That was probably the largest single, private political donation ever made in BC history. Does anyone really believe that the process is not affected by such extraordinary largess? The BC Liberals promised reform in 2010. In April, 2011, then Minister Ida Chong announced that there was not enough time to introduce changes before the 2011 local election cycle. However, here we are in April, 2014, debating the Act, again only six months before the 2014 local election cycle. This Act, failing to introduce expense limits recommended by the UBCM task force until 2018, a full eight years after the task force report. The bill does introduce expense disclosure requirements in 90 days, rather than the existing 120 days following an election. It also includes a new requirement for sponsorships to be declared on all campaign advertisements. There is also a requirement for third-party advertisers to register and disclose expenditures made within a 46-day pre-election period. Currently, there are no requirements around third-party advertisers in municipal elections. There is also a new compliance and enforcement role for Elections BC, including online publishing of candidate campaign disclosures. Currently, local elections are run entirely by local governments and there is no role for Elections BC. We support this change, but we oppose the fact that there is no accompanying budget increase for Elections BC to undertake this new role. The issue of terms of office being extended to four years is not part of this bill. That is past of Bill21 - Elections Statutes Amendment Act, which is up for Second Reading Debate after this one. We support the basic measures of Bill 20, but we object to the failure to include the elements I have described above. We will attempt to amend to include them.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 23:19:24 +0000
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