It was pretty much official before, but now it’s really official: The provincial government will not impose campaign spending limits for any political parties or candidates in this November’s civic election.
Coralee Oakes, the minister responsible for allowing the multi-million-dollar races to continue, made that clear in the B.C. Legislature last week.
Oakes did so despite a request from the NDP’s critic for local government, Selina Robinson, to have the Liberals give Vancouver the powers necessary to set its own electoral reforms.
The Liberals defeated Robinson’s amendment to Bill 21 by a vote of 39-32, with all Vancouver Liberal MLAs present, including former NPA city councillor Suzanne Anton, falling in line with their party.
Anton, for the record, supported spending limits when she was on city council. She didn’t speak in the Legislature, despite being baited by NDP MLA for Vancouver-West End, Spencer Chandra Herbert.
So what did Oakes say?
Quite a bit, actually.
First off, she said having a different set of rules in different communities “could lead to unfairness, confusion and potential compliance and enforcement challenges.”
Her example: “In an area such as the Lower Mainland, it can be confusing if a person was able to make a certain contribution in Vancouver but not in Burnaby.”
But, as I heard her say via the live stream from Victoria, she recognized Vancouver has done a lot of complaining about the current rules governing election campaigns.
“If every party in Vancouver agree that we need to look at this (Howell’s note: They do, minister, they really do and have said so for about a decade), then what reasonableness would suggest is that they could figure out the expense limits for Vancouver. So we are prepared to work with them.”
But just when you thought she understood Vancouver is the outlier here when it comes to campaigns — Vision Vancouver and the NPA spent more than $2 million each in the 2011 campaign — Oakes said this:
“But again, this government respects all British Columbians, we respect expense limits for all communities and not treating Vancouver different than Prince George different than Dawson Creek.”
Oakes promised expense limits will be introduced before the next civic election in 2018. But how much a party or candidate can spend or raise, or whether unions and corporations can still empty their wallets, are details to be worked out.
For now, the Liberals are boasting about changes put in place for this year’s campaign, including implementing four-year terms instead of the current three.
Also, candidates will be required to file campaign finance disclosure statements 90 days — instead of the current 120 — after and election and ensure those disclosures are published online.
So we’ll know 30 days sooner about all that big money spent. And, for the record, previous campaign disclosures are already online.
A four-year term?
That’s just an extra year to raise big money.
Electoral reform in action, people.
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