You would think, after one donor (developer Robert Macdonald) contributed $960,000 to the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) campaign in the 2011 Vancouver municipal election, that alarm bells would be clanging in Vancouver and Victoria and everywhere in between: don’t ever let this happen again!
Not that Macdonald’s egregious spending bundle was completely out of context. Vancouver voters had been warming up to his lollapalooza since Vision Vancouver tucked away a $169,000 donation in 2005 from John Lefebvre, who didn’t even live in Vancouver. The Canadian Union of Public Employees, representing most of the city’s staff, reported $127,000 in third-party expenses in Vancouver in 2011, with another $429,000 donated directly to civic parties, according to the Vancouver Sun civic spending database.
With a total of $5.3 million spent in the 2011 civic election, or $14 per registered voter, the city of Vancouver is off the scale nationally for heavy spending to win municipal votes. Vancouver’s spending per eligible voter is 16 times the legislated limit in Ontario.
Then came Bob What-Was-He-Thinking Rennie’s recent $25,000-a-plate pre-campaign dinner with Mayor Gregor Robertson. Each of those diners contributed 10 times the $2,500 maximum donation allowed in Toronto’s mayoralty races. In Alberta, the cost of a seat at the Rennie soiree would be 50 times the $500 maximum allowable donation per candidate; in Quebec, 83 times the maximum allowable. (Vision Vancouver isn’t saying how many people showed up for the $25,000 party with the mayor.)
Enough already.
That is also the sentiment of the B.C. government, which intends to introduce expense limits, but not until “the next local elections after November 2014.” Its Local Government Elections Task Force, a partnership between the province and the Union of BC Municipalities, chose to limit expenses rather than contributions. Oddly, this still allows one person to finance an entire campaign. Vancouver city council had unanimously asked for limits to both expenses and contributions, as well as a ban on all corporate and union donations. Calgary limits contributions to $5,000 per donor.
So when the task force recommendations came to the floor of the legislature this month, of the 31 recommended changes to local election financing, the most important one, spending limits, was orphaned and bumped to 2017.
Yes, the other changes will deliver more rigorous, prompt and transparent disclosure of funding amounts and sources for this year’s election, but no limits. Why not?
Defending the government’s position in the House, Education Minister Peter Fassbender, former mayor of the City of Langley, said there still isn’t a provincewide consensus on how to bring in spending limits.
Provincial legislation has to cover all municipalities, but this financing fire is burning brightest by far in Vancouver. That’s where it really needs to be doused. As I write this, Vancouver council has asked the province for a change to the Vancouver charter to allow the city to set its own limits, or failing that, it’s considering asking civic parties to agree to voluntary limits on expenses and contributions and no corporate or union donations (good luck). The Green Party has already agreed to self-imposed limits. Perhaps other parties will follow.
Despite several unanimous motions for changes in Vancouver, and historic trends showing the City of Vancouver increasingly marginalizing candidates without access to hundreds of thousands of dollars, we’re heading into a fall election with all wallets wide open.
The only consolation for disillusioned voters might be that the deepest pockets don’t necessarily win. The NPA outspent Vision Vancouver (barely) in the last election and got only a quarter as many seats.
Don’t tell that to Bob Rennie.
