B.C.’s third-party advertising rules were meant to equalize all parties and candidates during the last provincial election, but in reality they stifled “small spenders” and choked the democratic process.
This according to a study released Wednesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), which said 2008’s Bill 42 led to “widespread confusion, wasted resources, anxiety and self censorship” among organizations that spent limited amounts on election advertising.
“When the provincial government introduced these new rules its rationale was to limit election advertising by ‘big spenders’ but major flaws in the legislation mean that in practice the rules extensively regulated small spenders and cast a chill on the democratic process,” said Shannon Daub, the study’s lead author.
B.C.’s Freedom of Information and Privacy Association and the BC Civil Liberties Association also had a hand in the study, which examined the experiences of 60 charities, non-profits, coalitions, labour unions and citizens groups during the 2009 election. Most of the groups have annual budgets under $500,000.
Some key findings were:
Daub told Business in Vancouver that if the rules don’t change in time for the next election it could stifle the democratic process even further.
“A lot of these problems could be solved simply by putting a minimum threshold in place,” she said. “If you spent less than $1,000 on any of these things that are counted as advertising you don’t need to bother with these rules … certainly no one spending less than $1,000 during a campaign is going to swing an election, so why bother with those groups?”