Local Elections Expense Limits — Issue No. 3 — Friday, November 7, 2014 (HTML)

470 Hamber Foundation Boardroom, Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue
580 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, B.C.

Present: Jackie Tegart, MLA (Chair); Selina Robinson, MLA (Deputy Chair); Mike Bernier, MLA; Gary Holman, MLA; Marvin Hunt, MLA; Jenny Wai Ching Kwan, MLA; Linda Reimer, MLA

3. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

4. The Committee discussed an extension of its consultation and reporting deadlines.

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
LOCAL ELECTIONS EXPENSE LIMITS


CONTENTS
Page
Presentations	41
J. Whistler
N. Chernen
S. Bohus
T. Martin
R. Helten
E. Woodsworth
V. Gogolek
S. Vdovine
A. Reimer
S. Beuhler
Committee Meeting Schedule and Participation by Presenters	66

J. Tegart (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jackie Tegart. I am the member for Fraser-Nicola and the Chair of this committee, the Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits. The committee was appointed by the Legislative Assembly on October 9 to make recommendations on local election expense limits.

The committee will be conducting its work in two phases. The first phase is on principles for the relationship between elector organizations and endorsed candidates with respect to expense limits. The second phase is on expense limit amounts for candidates and third-party advertisers. The committee will be submitting its report on phase 1 to the Legislative Assembly by November 27, 2014. Its report on phase 2 will be submitted by June 12, 2015.

Today’s public hearing is part of our review in relation to phase 1. In October we heard presentations from the Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development, the Ministry of Education and Elections B.C. Subsequently, we launched a public consultation process to gather public input on principles in relation to local election expense limits.

A provincewide news release was issued, calling for presentations and written submissions. We announced at that time that five public hearings would be held to hear from stakeholders and interested citizens. In addition, key stakeholders were invited to participate by either making a presentation or making a written submission. We have also facilitated the making of written submissions through an on-line questionnaire.

Today we have allocated about ten minutes for the presentations, to be followed by an additional ten minutes or so for questions. The proceedings are being recorded by Hansard Services, and a transcript of the entire meeting will be made available on our website.

I’ll now ask the committee members to introduce themselves, starting with the Deputy Chair, to my left.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I’m Selina Robinson, the MLA for Coquitlam-Maillardville.

L. Reimer: I’m Linda Reimer, MLA for Port Moody–Coquitlam and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development.

Now I’ll invite Jonathan Whistler to come up from the Green Party of Vancouver to make your presentation. Welcome.

J. Whistler: Thank you for hearing me today. As was mentioned, I’m representing the Green Party of Vancouver, the local electoral organization here at the municipal level.

Just a little bit of background about myself. I’ve been with the Vancouver Green Party for well over ten years. This is, I believe, the fourth election cycle that I’ve gone through. I’m also with the Vancouver Centre EDA — Electoral District Association — at the federal level, where I’m the financial agent. I’ve gone through three election cycles at the federal level. About ten years ago I was the financial agent for the Vancouver-Burrard constituency association.

So I have quite a lot of experience at the federal level, I have quite a lot of experience at the municipal level, and I have had some experience, though some time ago, at the provincial level.

First off, I just want to comment about the process. I expect a lot of people will be commenting about the process. Certainly, you made the front page of 24 Hours on Monday. I think the most puzzling part of the process is that the province has just elected new regulations. You’re holding these hearings even before the election cycle is completed. This was a huge opportunity to test the regulations and then evaluate after.

It’s very difficult to hold hearings even before you’ve tested the new regulations. Then, of course, there’s the whole timing issue, which is very unfortunate, right in the middle of an election. It couldn’t have been timed worse. What really begs the question is: what is the objective here of this whole exercise? It’s not supporting democracy.

Anyhow, another comment I want to make about the process is that I’m hoping your mandate is going to include a best practices review. I would suggest that the federal government regulations are an example of best practices, certainly in my experience. The federal regulations have a lot of best practice components to them. However, I would hope that the mandate of the committee is to look at other practices across the world.

I think even before you start a process like this, you need to define the objectives. I have to say that when I looked at the Elections B.C. website and at the mandate on the Elections B.C. website, I was very disappointed. The mandate of Elections B.C. seems to be totally focused on administration.
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These are my perceptions of what the objectives should be. This is also what the Vancouver Green Party believes. The prime objective should be to strengthen and champion democracy. Within that is to maximize voter turnout to ensure that there is fairness and equity and transparency and also to facilitate a competitive playing field. I would think, also, central to that are simplicity and streamlined reporting and management.

I believe this is a fundamental thing that needs to be managed right up front. If you don’t have the right objectives, you’re not going to produce the appropriate regulations. I have to say that I am very disappointed when I see what the mandate of Elections B.C. is. I think that this has to be addressed first.

Now let’s get into the topic here. I realize the mandate of the committee is very focused on election expenses. That in itself is very problematic because this is just one piece of a puzzle. Election financing is a big puzzle, and this is one piece. If you look at this in isolation, it’s not going to fit in with the rest of the puzzle.

I’ll point out later in the presentation how that comes back — that this is part of a bigger puzzle.

Now, I would also think that you need to define what the strategies are here for election financing. The fundamentals, I believe, are…. You’ve got to have expense limits. I think fundamentals also include expense rebates or a rebate scheme, standardized on-line reporting and a requirement for audit with an open source public disclosure.

Then another significant component is that we need a few simple expense categories. Less is better. And it’s got to be easy to understand, so that when the public reads these reports, they can understand these reports. Also, less reporting periods. The number of reporting periods is extremely confusing to the public.

Okay, I’m going to talk a little bit more about the fundamentals — first, as it relates to the expense limits and rebates. I think the federal example is a good model, both for the amount of the expense limits at the federal level and the way it’s considered. Basically, at the federal level it’s a combination of population and geographical size.

Then within it you establish a rebate scheme. As you know, the federal level has changed, where part of the rebate scheme has just recently been retired. However, a rebate scheme can be a multiple rebate scheme. It’s not just like one piece. I think you can have three or four different types of a rebate scheme that all fit together, similar to what’s at the federal level.

You need to incorporate this into your marketing strategy for the election, and that goes back to fitting this piece of the puzzle into the whole puzzle. A rebate scheme could be part of the marketing of the whole election — of getting people out to vote and getting people to participate as a candidate. Both expense limits and rebates will level the playing field — in particular, if contributions are limited to individuals.

Really, the cost of a rebate scheme…. I know there are a lot of comments that: “Oh, a rebate scheme. It’s going to be dollars here. This is going to be expensive.” It doesn’t have to be expensive. And a rebate scheme doesn’t have to be…. I’m not suggesting a 100 percent rebate scheme. Even a rebate scheme that might only cover 10 percent…. It’s more the principle of a rebate scheme and the opportunities of using that to market the election and to champion democracy.

On-line reporting with audit. I think there’s a huge opportunity to develop it — a tool that campaigns can use to manage their election finances. Remember, most people that are financial agents — or if the candidates themselves are their financial agents — are probably not an accountant. They’re probably a volunteer. They don’t have the financial skills to do this. And this is the majority of the people, the financial agents here.

So an on-line tool that could assist the candidates and financial agents would be really beneficial. At the federal level you have the EFR software, which is a tool that was probably developed about 20 years ago. It’s a pretty crude tool. But today with app developers, you could get an app developer to develop something like this for probably less than $10,000.

What you do is you have this tool that campaigns can use that ties into the reporting. Then it can tie into the public disclosure. It can feed into the public disclosure. Then, with full open access public disclosure, people can download all this information, and they can manipulate it the way they want.

Like I said, there’s a huge opportunity where you could assist candidates and campaigns to manage their campaign, and it would feed into the reporting and public disclosure. And this is not an expensive proposition here.

I would also say there’s a requirement for audit. Not having audit conditions — you lose credibility. As you know, at the federal level $5,000 will spark an audit, and that would be my recommendation for an audit. Obviously, as you know, at the federal level that also includes.... The federal level will subsidize that audit for $1,500. Again, I think that is a reasonable component of an audit — where, if there’s a requirement for audit, there be a reasonable rebate associated with that.

That will then help give credibility that the regulations are being complied with. Also, it eases the burden on the Elections B.C. auditors, because without a requirement for audit, what it does is it puts all the pressure on the Elections B.C. auditors to review, and if there’s sort of no standards to audit against, it makes it very difficult for Elections B.C. from a compliance perspective.

Also, I’d just say I think that there’s a bit of an opportunity to provide more definition on things like expense invoice standards and mileage allowances. In the current regulations that came out recently in May, those types of things are not clearly defined. At the federal level those
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things are quite clearly defined: what is the expectation on an invoice?

Like I said, really the key point here is that most election campaigns are managed by inexperienced volunteers. For many of them, this is an overwhelming experience. It’s a minefield. This is where Elections B.C. can provide a tool that would help in the campaigns and then help Elections B.C. complete their sort of compliance requirements.

Now let’s talk about the categories. There are too many, confusing categories. That’s two adjectives: many and confusing. With the new regulations that came out in May, there are 23 categories. At the federal level there are only 14. Even the federal level has too many. I believe the maximum number of categories should be ten. Also, these categories are so confusing. I’m a financial agent. I’m university-educated. I cannot even understand it, and I’ve been doing this for many years.

If a financial agent cannot understand these categories, how do you expect the public to understand the reports that come out? This is central to Elections B.C. being a champion of democracy. If the disclosure is confusing, the public will lose trust in the process. When you look at all these expense categories, they’re confusing. It’s ridiculous.

There are a number of duplications. You’ve got two categories as it relates to interest. You’ve got one category for wages, one category for professional services. Now, let’s be realistic here. How many campaigns hire employees? That doesn’t happen. You don’t need a separate category for wages.

This is the best one here, in simplifying this. What is the difference between other campaign administrative expenses and other campaign-related functions? This is Orwellian. Like I said, when the public will see the reports, it’s going to be inconsistent because all the financial agents are going to treat this differently. Then you lose faith in the whole system.

I do think there’s an opportunity to include some meaningful categories, and I think that would include things like transportation costs, food and beverage costs, volunteer costs. I also think that this is a place where you might have segregation of in-kind expenses.

One of the things here is.... And I mentioned it here. It’s what I believe is one of the fundamentals. The reporting should be facilitating a competitive playing field here. In other words, at the end of the day, when all the reports come in, I should be able to look at the competitors financial reports, and then I should be able to analyze it and go: “Oh, that’s interesting that they spent this on this.“ Then that allows me to dissect their campaign so I can run a better campaign next time.

This exercise is not intended to be proprietary, where you’re protecting the proprietary rights of the other candidates or the electoral organizations, or I don’t believe it is. I believe this is about facilitating a competitive process where you want to be able to have disclosure, which allows the competitors to review the strategies and then to be able to take advantage of those strategies the next time.

I am interpreting, from what I’m seeing, that it’s actually the opposite, where the regulations now are actually confusing so as to make it more unclear and to actually protect the proprietary interests of the candidates. Like I said, I don’t support that as a strategy.

Anyhow, these are the 14 federal expense categories. I don’t think I really need to talk about it further, other than, like I said, even these could be reduced. Also, there are probably a few extra ones that could be added.

L. Reimer: Thank you very much for taking the time to come and provide us with your feedback. It’s greatly appreciated.

I had a couple of questions with respect to your comments about the mandate of Elections B.C. Could you just explain that further? We did implement 30 recommendations from the Local Government Elections Task Force in the spring sitting of the Legislature. The role of Elections B.C. will be compliance and enforcement. Can you just expand upon your comments?

J. Whistler: Yes. Certainly, when I look at the website, the website’s mandate is aligned with what you’ve just said there, where it’s managing the administration of an election and ensuring compliance. That’s what I read from the website.

However, my recommendation, or the Vancouver Green Party’s recommendation, is that their mandate should be broader, or their mandate should be more about championing democracy and to champion the electoral process.

In other words, get out the vote, and get out candidates. Assist candidates in running for a campaign, making it easy for a candidate to run a campaign. Give them tools to help them run a campaign. Remove barriers for candidates to make that choice to be a candidate. All of you, as elected officials…. This is a difficult job, and it’s overwhelming — the various steps you have to do and to be compliant. So any tools that can be provided to candidates will help ensure that the whole electoral process is better.

L. Reimer: I see. That’s great. You also made reference to some categories that came out in May. What, specifically, were you referencing?

J. Whistler: Now, are you talking about here the…? Of the categories I was referencing…. I actually didn’t bring my list today of the categories. Within the categories, first off, there are three distinct periods, okay? These
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are Orwellian, the names, too: campaign and the election period before the election or whatever. These names, like I said, are confusing.

Then also, there’s a third period, because there’s outside the election year. Outside the election year there are no reporting requirements. That’s one period. Then you’ve got the campaign period. Then you’ve got the period before the election or whatever that one is. Okay.

If you don’t have a rebate scheme and if you don’t have election limits, why do you have all these categories? You only need one. But if you have rebates and you have expense limits, then I could understand why you might have different time periods.

I only assume that those time periods are implemented because you anticipate implementing expense limits and you anticipate implementing rebates perhaps. But why would you implement these time periods at this point if you don’t have those types of programs going?

L. Reimer: Just to clarify that, you’re correct. We don’t have expense limits yet, but candidates are still required to disclose, and so there’s that disclosure requirement. Those three periods that you’re referencing are with reference to that, and yes, they will apply once we have our limits.

J. Whistler: Right, but let’s think it about it from the public perspective here. The public perspective is one of the key things here. This is what brings credibility to the whole process. You see, if the public is confused and they look at these names which are meaningless to them, immediately their eyes are going to glaze over, and they’re going to say: “This is all….” I won’t say it.

J. Whistler: Like I said, when you look at these 23 expense categories, each of them may have different applications according to the three periods. Then when you look at stuff like where you’ve got two other categories, and you’ve got two interest categories and.... Yeah.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation and for all the work you put into this. We have been hearing a little bit about the timing of these and the short window, so I do appreciate your comments on that.

You note in one of your slides that we should be testing the new regulations. This gathering is not about any of the new regulations. You’re right. We do need to let it play out and then, perhaps, review at some point.

But the reason for us gathering is actually to invite you to help us sort out what principles we use to establish expense limits. That was always my understanding. The intention was to establish expense limits. That’s this next phase of work that needs to happen.

We’re asking you to help us understand what the principles are that we ought to be considering as we move forward to develop expense limits. You’re right. It needs to happen, and we’re asking your opinion on what kinds of things we ought to be paying attention to when we move forward to develop expense limits for local elections.

J. Whistler: Yeah, and so with that, my answer would be that I think the federal regulations are very reasonable, where the expense limits are based on a combination of population and geographical size. Also, I think their expense limits are in the ballpark, okay? In other words, for Vancouver Centre, this federal riding, it’s approximately $120,000.

Obviously, the numbers would vary a little bit when you talk about a municipal application, but like I said, I think that the strategy and the numbers at the federal level are in the ballpark.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Just another question, because this is the kind of stuff I really would like to hear more about. Because you represent a party, and Vancouver probably has more parties than any other community, do you have a sense that there should be…? Do you have a sense, in terms of what principles we ought to be considering when there are individuals running, of what their expense limits might look like, or when you’re running as part of a slate or part of a party or a group, how the expense limits should be looked at or viewed?

When you talked about competition, you can be in competition as a group of eight versus eight different individuals. Do you have a sense of how that might look or what principles we ought to consider?

J. Whistler: Yes, and I realize it is a different situation here in the municipal level. Obviously, here, where we have an at-large system, you may have an independent candidate versus a candidate that’s represented by a party. As everyone knows, here in Vancouver or in many places if you don’t have an endorsement by a party, you’re not going to get elected. That’s the bottom line. So independents — the cards are totally stacked against them.

It is true, I would suggest, that for the expense limits…. I would say that you should accommodate an independent candidate in a beneficial fashion, where an independent candidate would have a higher allowance — maybe double. I’m just throwing this out as an example. I don’t want to really get into the actual numbers….

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): No, we don’t want numbers; we just want principles.

J. Whistler: It’s more the concepts. So I would say yes, an independent candidate in a municipal situation should have a greater expense limit. I would also say, in
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the case of an electoral organization, I would err on lower limits than higher limits. So I would say a reasonable limit in the case of a place like here, a reasonable limit at a municipal level, would be less than one dollar a voter.

Here in Vancouver, I believe — I’m just guessing — approximately 300,000 voters. Is that about right? I’m just throwing that out. I’m just guessing 300,000 voters. So I would say: “Okay, that’s $300,000.”

Now, of course, when you see with the current disclosures that some of the other parties are in the millions of dollars, this is a big difference. But I would say err on lower than higher.

J. Tegart (Chair): Thank you. Gary has a question, and then we’re going to have to go on to the next speaker.

G. Holman: Thanks, Jonathan, for the presentation. Selina asked one of my questions. The other one that we have to make recommendations on fairly quickly is expense limits for third-party advertisers. Do you have any thoughts on that, any comments on that? Aside from electoral organizations, third-party advertisers who may be advertising around particular issues that may or may not be attached to individual candidates or EOs — any comments or strong feelings about that?

J. Whistler: Yeah, we didn’t give a lot of thought on that. I would say lower. Absolutely no more than an electoral organization. I would actually say considerably lower than an electoral organization.

G. Holman: Is it fair to say that you have some concern about electoral organizations and third-party groups versus independents having undue influence in the electoral process?

J. Whistler: I have a lot of concerns about third-party groups here. It’s a principle here…. We believe that, on the income side, only voters should be able to donate, period. This whole business of allowing non-people to give donations is corruption, period. It’s disgraceful.

I sort of look at these third-party advertisers as part of that concept. Why do they have some sort of right here to distort and corrupt the whole political process?

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay, thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate that you took the time to be here today.

J. Whistler: Thank you for your time. I’ll be looking forward to seeing the results of your recommendations.

The next witness is the Cedar Party. Is it Nicholas? All right. The process is ten minutes for presentation and then ten minutes for questions.

N. Chernen: Good afternoon. My name is Nicholas Chernen, and I am running as a council candidate in Vancouver’s municipal election for the Cedar Party. It’s a municipal political party that my brother and I started two years ago, and we have four council candidates running. I’m happy to say that if the stars align, we may be lucky enough to put one or two of us in the council chambers on November 15.

I don’t have a really comprehensive presentation to give you today. The reason that is the case is because we’re in the middle of a campaign, and the election is just a few days away. We didn’t even know if we would have the time to even get here.

I guess my first comment is it’s unfortunate that this meeting is not happening 12 months, 18 months, 24 months ago. You know, we saw record numbers of dollars being spent in this last municipal election here in Vancouver.

Why we’re having this meeting one week before we’re back in the polls is concerning. That’s my big motivation to arranging our schedule to be here and speak to you all today. It’s just that important.

I think I’m going to go backwards and start with what I was going to finish with and share with you, from a candidate’s perspective, what this looks like. Without strict campaign limits, without caps on donations — I absolutely would like to talk about third-party involvement as well — I’d like to talk about what the results can look like.

I’ve been lucky enough in the last couple of months, during this heavier campaign session, to meet candidates from many different parties and, also, independents. There’s a gentleman that I met about a month and a half ago. He’s running as an independent council candidate. He lives in an SRO here in the Downtown Eastside, is incredibly passionate, incredibly knowledgable on probably some of the most pressing issues that this election is about.

He doesn’t stand a chance at all. I would be honoured to serve on council with him — not a chance, and I think that’s a real shame. And yet, he is still campaigning every day. When I was with him a few days ago, he had not eaten for three days because of what he’s spending on his photocopied campaign material, and he’s still doing outreach work on the streets. Not a chance. That’s why this is so important.

Even though I’m running with my own party.... I know that COPE has three First Nations candidates — one for park board, one for school board and one for council. Yes, they’re considered one of the majors. But against two heavily funded parties, I question whether or not they will have a chance to have a seat at the table, and they absolutely should be there. It’s time.

When we’ve got a system in place that is quite.... I don’t want to say “certainly.” I certainly hope they have a chance. But to minimize the opportunity for these amaz-
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ing candidates to have a seat at the table.... I think it has everything to do with the disparity in financing. I think it’s doing a terrible disservice to our city and our citizens.

I think maybe what I’d like to do is spend more time allowing you to ask some questions. You know, from the experience of.... I would almost consider ourselves as independents. Even though we are a registered party and there are four of us running, against the big money that we’re up against, it still feels like we’re independents. I would encourage you to ask some questions, and I’ll do my best to answer.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay. And I would encourage you to give some thought to the principles upon which you think we should be considering expense limits and third-party and electoral organizations.

We have to create a set of principles in order to determine what expense limits we’re going to implement. So what are your ideas on those principles?

N. Chernen: Actually, even just coming in and listening to the presenter before me, the latter part of the conversation in terms of limits for independents and parties, I’m in full agreement with how that conversation was unfolding in terms of giving the independents an opportunity with a higher proportional limit compared to parties. That’s one.

The third-party finance will.... Full disclosure on the amounts. Amounts must be set. I agree. They should be considerably lower than what the party levels should be. In terms of numbers, it’s hard for me to come up with those numbers right now. I’m sorry.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): This is also getting at…. What I’m trying to understand is sort of the relationship between all of these different players that we see in municipal campaigns. How should we be treating them relative to the other…? And also this notion of…. You certainly talked about — or what I heard from your presentation was — this idea of fairness and access. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, so I want to clarify. Is that sort of the most important principle, from your perspective?

N. Chernen: Absolutely. In terms of tools that can be provided, in terms of…. Right now I know the municipal government is talking about getting a voter turnout of 60 percent. We had a 34 or 35 percent turnout. Who benefits from a large turnout? Every candidate, but particularly that independent candidate.

Where I’ve seen a total disparity is the words of, “We want a large turnout,” and yet nothing is happening to promote that turnout. There is no advertising. I’m not seeing anything in bus shelters. I’m not seeing any kind of promotion to get the electorate aware that there is an election happening.

It’s not just about setting limits for independents or candidates; it’s about involving the civic governance to promote the idea of civic participation. That would go, I think, a very long way in removing a huge burden, from an independent’s point of view. Not only are they trying to promote themselves; they’re trying to promote the fact that there’s even an election happening.

If you could share that, we could encourage the civic government to share some of that burden. I think that would open up doors to, particularly, the independents and the smaller parties.

M. Bernier: Thank you for your presentation — your passion around it too. The takeaway for me is…. I’m trying to think of British Columbia as a whole here, and it’s very interesting, because aside from the Lower Mainland, we really don’t have a lot of electoral parties, right? It’s the independents. So what you were talking about, of balancing the playing field, let’s say, outside the Lower Mainland…. You get the great people that you were talking about; they have a fair chance in the smaller communities.

When I look at this — and we’re putting the lens around the expense limits — we want to make sure, I guess, that however those expense limits look, they don’t favour one group over the other, right?

You made a comment about how we balance that or make it fair. I’m trying to understand it, so please bear with me, because it’s outside of my expertise in the electoral organizations. If you’re an independent, do you even have — it might not be a fair question — the mechanisms to raise the funds to be able to compete with an electoral organization? That’s going to be something…. When I hear talk about limits, that means you have to have mechanisms to raise funds.

N. Chernen: Sure. It differs, you know, depending on what your situation is coming into the electoral process. If you’re coming from living in an SRO on the Downtown Eastside, compared to someone who operates their own law firm that generates a lot of cash that they can step away from, yes, of course, it absolutely depends on how you enter.

So there’s that. But if there are limits that are set for both those individuals that are the same, because they’re both coming as independents, then — you know what? — we are at least getting much closer to establishing parity.

M. Bernier: Using your example of somebody, maybe, in a law firm who might have some means to help fund a campaign, do you agree with some of the earlier comments on the theme, then, that possibly independents should have a higher limit than electoral organizations?
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M. Bernier: How would you see with an elector organization that you’re with? And congratulations for what you’re doing. How do you see maybe combining that? Some of the things we look at…. You know, you set a limit for an independent, and now you have four people in yours. Does that mean yours should be four times what we set for an independent? What do you think of that?

N. Chernen: I don’t know. I can tell you what we’ve done. We wanted to lead by example, so with our organization we set a donation limit. We set it at $2,400. We were mimicking what was happening at the federal level. So whether you’re a developer, a union or a private individual, if you want to donate, it’s $2,400. That’s it. Hopefully, encouraging that to be set for all parties — whatever that limit is.

That’s one thing that we’ve done. Seeing a campaign spending limit on cents per registered voter absolutely makes sense — when one party was spending $2 plus per voter in the last election, yet Calgary can do it on 60 to 70 cents per voter. It can be done.

But unfortunately, when you’re sitting inside government, what’s your motivation if the current system is working for you?

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much for taking time out of your campaigning to be here. Certainly, we understand how busy it is. But part of our process includes reaching out to elector organizations that often are active during this time. We wanted to make sure that we got to as many as we could, so thank you for taking the time today.

J. Tegart (Chair): Our next presenters are Stephen, Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver, and Terry. And No. 3 is….

S. Bohus: We’re just getting up my presentation. I’ve given it digitally. What’s been circulated — I think it’s being circulated — is NSV’s written statement regarding the white paper.

Thank you very much. My name is Stephen Bohus. Randy Helten here ran as a mayoral candidate in 2011, and Terry Martin, beside me, ran as a council candidate.

I’m going to go through a quick presentation. I’m going to try to address some of your questions and leave my other two presenters a little bit of time to present their own thoughts.

Basically, welcome. You’ve come to ground zero for campaign finance reform issues. Vancouver spent $5.9 million in 2011, with all parties, all candidates, all campaigns combined, and it’s actually more than that because some of the third parties spent over $200,000. So we’re over $6 million.

We ran five candidates — a couple of photos; I’m going to just skip over this. I think the lesson that we learned is that you can actually put on a decent campaign — rent a temporary office, have the signs, website — with around $40,000. Sandy Garossino, an independent candidate, ran her campaign on that.

If we look at who got elected — this is very interesting; this ties in with the campaign finance reform — the parties that spent the most money actually got seats at the table. I’m showing this graph that shows all candidates that received more than 10,000 votes for council. The cutoff was 48,000 votes or so to get a seat on council. Nine out of ten of those seats were taken by parties that spent over $2 million.

Only one party that spent a little bit of money, the Green Party of Vancouver, got one seat on council. That’s Adriane Carr’s seat. You can see how this breaks down. NSV — our best candidate got 19,500, our worst candidate got about 12,500, and we were in between. Here are the figures: 40,000 for NSV; Green Party was about 24,000. We released our campaign figures before the election in 2011, as did the Green Party. The other parties did not.

I’m first going to address the question of who sets the rules. Well, we believe that the province should set the rules and not a council majority in city hall. I would strongly urge that the province have two sets of rules, one for cities with a population of greater than 100,000 — large population centres — and something for rural. I think you have to make that distinction. In Vancouver, you can see, our experience is completely different when over $40 is spent per ballot, per voter who shows up at the polls. That’s wrong.

I will make the point that our current majority…. Of the ten councillors, seven are from Vision Vancouver. They only received 34.36 percent of the total votes that were cast, but they have a majority of seven plus the mayor, so it’s an eight-of-11 majority. So the at-large system that we have in Vancouver is not representative of the electorate. We also had a low voter turnout, so we don’t believe that council should be responsible for setting our campaign finance rules.
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NSV actually decided against running candidates. Part of the reason is that we didn’t see that we could actually compete when there’s so much big money. So it’s kept us out of the election. We’ve been active for the last three years. There was no campaign finance reform in Bills 20 or 21, so we’ve stayed out.

Very interesting — last week there was an announcement that one of the parties will release their campaign finances. The Green Party was first — $54,000 released; COPE, $60,000; and OneCity, $46,000. The two main parties were all above $2 million, and they’ll probably be a little bit more by the time election day comes.

This is one of the recommendations. I would say that for large urban centres, all the parties and all the candidates should release their donors two weeks before and three days before the election.

In terms of capping the overall budget, NSV would recommend a maximum of $200,000 that could be spent by any candidate or any elector organization. This would be all the candidates running under that elector organization per campaign. Also, limit the amount of money that you can carry over from one year to the next. You can’t carry over more than $25,000 and build a war chest.

Canadian examples. I think Toronto and Montreal are two excellent examples to look at. You can also look at Winnipeg or Calgary. We believe that campaign finance reform is mandatory for free and fair elections.

Toronto model. Well, there’s a $2,500 donation limit. I would consider that as the maximum that we should consider for B.C. That’s to any candidate in B.C. That would be all candidates running for an elector organization, as a total. Toronto also says you can’t donate more than $5,000 to any number of candidates. You can only donate $5,000 as an individual, split between different candidates or elector organizations, and no union or corporate donations.

I would recommend continuous reporting for the off years between the elections. We don’t know how much money some of these large parties have spent — maybe $500,000 on offices last year for Vision Vancouver, according to the AGM report.

Toronto also has very strict limits on how the in-kind donations are accounted for. It would be great to have deductible donations. That’s one of the things that people always ask us: “Can I deduct a donation from my income tax?”

I’ve already mentioned the $5,000 per person for all donations, and $2,500 to any given elector organization. Term limits. I think we need them for large urban centres — a maximum of 12 years at any level. That helps with the issues of incumbency.

How do we transition? Well, I think we have to hit the reset button very quickly so that any elector organization that has a war chest could only bring $25,000 forward. They would have to either refund their donors or hand the excess money over to the province. The parties have spent millions. They have extensive mailing lists. I think that’s one thing that would help with the transition, and to do this as soon as possible.

The at-large system is very problematic. We would recommend a mixed system, with half ward and half proportional representation in Vancouver.

Three-year terms would be better to go back to. But the other models to consider are four-year terms, with two-year and two-year alternating terms with half the council so that there are some checks and balances there.

The critical changes I would see are capping donations — limiting the donations to individuals, spending limits — releasing the donors list prior to the election and also capping third-party sponsors for elections, not the assent campaigns. I can go on about the real estate developers and public hearings and so on. There’s too much money.

And NSV supports the five points in the “Get big money out of civic politics!” petition.

T. Martin: Hi. Thank you for having us, and thank you for taking this issue so seriously. It is a very serious issue in Vancouver.

Democracy is something that many people have forgotten about — that it’s a very, very dear commodity that we have. People have lost their lives for it. In that way, I think this is a very appropriate time to hold these meetings, because we have Remembrance Day just around the corner. People died for this concept all around the world.

The problem with democracy is that it’s a very fragile system. What we’ve come to see in Vancouver is that it’s bought and sold. If you look at elections in Vancouver over the past several decades, you will see that the party that spent the most money is generally the party that got elected.

The most money was spent from donations by big business, not by individuals. The concept of a democracy is one person, one vote. When you allow corporations to have great influence in an election, you’re taking away from democracy. The system then fails us. To get back to that concept of one person, one vote, campaign finance is imperative.

When you have corporations able to finance a several-million-dollar campaign, two things happen. One, that party gets in, because they run a massive PR campaign. They get the advertising. They get the media. They get all the stuff they need. But the other thing that happens…. And this is really clear. If you follow the money and you follow what happens after that party is elected, generally, the people that have made the big donations get very, very preferential treatment at the table. Sometimes they’re the only people at the table. Our government is elected to serve the electorate, not special interest groups.

We’re adamant that corporate donations must be taken out of elections. The concept is so simple and so
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clear. We’ve seen in Vancouver, as Stephen said, over $6 million spent in a campaign. More money is spent in Vancouver in political campaigns than any city in Canada, and we’re not the biggest one. There’s really a grievous problem here.

We don’t recognize corporations as able to vote; we shouldn’t allow them to contribute to campaign finance. It just sets an unequal playing field, and it sets an unequal government. Our governments are here to serve the public, not the corporations.

R. Helten: Well, thank you for being here today. As Steve mentioned, I was the mayoral candidate in 2011 and came in third place. It was a very interesting experience to be a non-political, non-politician person but to see how the system works.

I am convinced that in Vancouver money buys power. I believe the B.C. government as a whole failed society this year with the new legislation by failing to put in strong caps on campaign finance while actually giving 30 percent more power to the people who win this election.

The provincial government gave a very strong hand to the incumbents to continue in power until 2018. I really very strongly encourage this committee and the provincial government to put in very strong reforms for the 2018 election and not to sway from that path.

There was an expectation that this would be for a three-year term this year, from 2014 to 2017, but at the last minute that was also changed. It also seems that the provincial government as a whole is listening to the incumbents and not listening so much to what the people want. The citizens, when asked in previous consultations, wanted strong caps on election finance, and that was delayed until the future. That’s just a very brief comment.

Again, I’d like to echo what Terry just said. November 11 is Remembrance Day. People lost their lives to fight for democracy. Personally, I have seen, and we have seen, right up front, that money is buying power in our political systems, and it’s not acceptable.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I thank all three of you gentlemen for coming and making this presentation. I think you’re right. There has been a failure to put in limits. It’s been a long time coming, but it is here. Now we are asking for your help in informing this body around some of the principles we ought to be considering going forward.

One of the things that we’ve heard from our other speakers, and that I certainly heard here again, is this idea of fairness in terms of access — making sure of a level playing field and that different groups…. So one of our challenges, and I’ll put this to you again, is that we have parties and then we have individuals. What should we be paying attention to in terms of making sure that there’s equal access, and how does that play out? What sorts of principles should we be paying attention to moving forward?

Adding on to that is third-party advertisers. What’s the relationship between all these different groups in terms of how we protect the democracy that you’re talking about?

S. Bohus: I’ll try to take a stab at it, and I’ll let Terry or Randy finish.

I think the cap is essential, in terms of whether it’s Nicholas Chernen’s suggestion of $2,400 or a $2,500 donation cap. We need that in place. We also need the ban on union and corporate donations.

NSV has actually…. We’ve put ourselves at a disadvantage, because we voluntarily refuse corporate and union donations. But then we can’t compete. This is part of our principle, so it’s a catch-22. We can’t get elected. We have this limitation.

In terms of what Ontario has done, they have a ban on political parties or elector organizations. I don’t know if that’s something to consider for B.C. But they also have a ward system, so that’s why I was mentioning the proportional representation for the council or having a mixed ward and PR system.

In terms of the limits, look at Montreal. They only have a $300 limit, and someone who donates actually has to reside in the area and be able to vote for the person that they’re giving that money to. I think the Montreal model and also the Toronto model are ones to follow.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): But expense limits. Those are donation limits. Thoughts on expense limits?

S. Bohus: Well, I think in terms of a $200,000 maximum that a party could spend in a campaign.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): But would that be appropriate in Abbotsford or Kelowna or…? I mean, it wouldn’t be, I’m assuming. I’m looking for the relationship between individuals. Should individuals also be capped out at $200,000 and parties at $200,000? You don’t think there’s a difference?

T. Martin: I think a more reasonable way to look at this is by population. It’s the only way you can set any reasonable standard in an election. If you have a population of 500 people, you’re not going to spend $200,000.

T. Martin: Right. So if you have a population the size of Vancouver, you’re going to spend a lot more money
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because you have to reach that many more voters.

S. Bohus: I think you’ve got to be careful when you look at the other cities in Canada, because they don’t have an at-large system. If you’re comparing the dollar amounts in Toronto, well, that would be very large in Vancouver, so that’s where our $200,000 maximum comes in for the city.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. I am very impressed at your self-imposed limitations. As a partisan politician, I find that very impressive — that you aspire to political office, but you impose principles on yourself that actually put you at a disadvantage. Congratulations for that.

There’s a lot to absorb here. I’m assuming we’re going to get the overheads, that the committee will get the overheads. I haven’t absorbed anywhere near all of your….

S. Bohus: We’re going to provide a point-form summary before the 19th as well.

Selina was asking about spending limits on EOs — elector organizations — versus individuals. Could you talk a little bit more about that? Or maybe I’m not understanding. Is the $200,000 limit…? Would that apply to both? Would it be one overall limit for all candidates running under the umbrella of an EO?

S. Bohus: I think that limit should actually be a lot less than that, if the third-party advertiser is running on the election issues. Now, if it’s an assent campaign, that might be a different animal, because some assent campaigns can be provincewide, like the HST repeal campaign. So you have to draw the line there.

G. Holman: A third-party advertiser could be advertising on behalf of candidates or EOs theoretically, right? Would you think that they would be subject to that overall spending limit then? It might be hard to tell, but anything contributing to a campaign of a particular individual or EO should all come under that kind of overall umbrella. But you could have…. What about a third-party advertiser campaigning on, you know, bike lanes, which is a topical issue in Vancouver, as I understand it. How would you…?

Some people would say: “Well, you know what? If you’re campaigning for bike lanes, that means you’re supporting Vision.”

S. Bohus: Well, you could be supporting COPE or the Green Party. You never know.

G. Holman: If it was campaigning on an issue that’s clearly not EO-related or candidate-related…. It’s on an issue that a third-party group feels is very important and should be addressed. What’s the principle for establishing a limit there?

T. Martin: Part of the principle is what a number of groups do, and that is they will send questionnaires to all of the parties and all of the candidates and ask for their position on those issues and then issue a statement on, perhaps, who they personally would recommend people to vote for. That’s not about the money. As far as I can see, if there is money spent by a third party, that should be an in-kind donation, because you have to have a system where it can’t be easily cheated.

S. Bohus: I think the other point I’d like to make is if you actually get the corporate money out and you cap the donations and it’s only individuals, then you’re also going to be just having a level of support for some of these assent campaigns that might be more reflective of the population. So maybe the money would not get out of control once you start having the various caps and it’s only individuals donating.

G. Holman: Sorry. I’m going on here. But do you see a limit at all for third-party advertisers — a limit of some kind?

S. Bohus: Yes, absolutely. I don’t think it should exceed $200,000, and maybe the limit should even be lower.

J. Kwan: I think my colleagues covered a lot of ground. We may not have time to get into it, and it’s something to think about if you wanted to submit something to the committee at a later time. I think, in terms of the application of third-party contributions, aside from the dollar figure in and of itself, the rules, if you will, or the principles that ought to apply, should be thought about as well — right? — because they could have a whole lot of influence one way or the other on whatever political organization they want to back.
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Those rules behind the application of third-party donations, I think, are pretty important, and we should think about that in terms of what will set a fair playing field. I think that’s really the thrust behind this work in terms of both the limit and the principles that ought to apply. So I would invite your input in that regard around that.

The other piece that’s important…. And I’m grappling with this because if you look at other jurisdictions, it is very different. They have a ward system that’s fundamentally different than what we have in Vancouver, and in some degree, what we have in Vancouver is different than some of the other municipalities, because the size is different and rural community versus urban is also very different. So perhaps different rules would apply for different populations, size and geography and all of that.

How do square that circle, I guess? And your thoughts — if you can break down as much as you can in understanding the difference between a ward system versus that of an at-large system.

As you know, I’m a proponent of the ward system, but that’s neither here nor there, and it’s not our mandate within this committee. But that said, that has huge implications in terms of how to come up with a fair system on spending limits as well.

S. Bohus: I think we’re going to try to answer that in the written submission, but very quickly, maybe we can consider a slightly larger council in Vancouver. We only have ten people on council in the mixed system. In terms of third-party sponsors, if you have a lower limit — let’s say $750 — which is something…. In Toronto, a councillor can only get $750. That might be a maximum cap per individual donation.

I think there are ways to bring in more fairness on the third-party and on the parties, but why don’t we get back to you about that question?

T. Martin: We really believe that a huge part of the solution, the biggest part of this solution, is allowing donations only by individuals who are eligible to vote — period. That’s really the bottom line.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation. As you can tell from the questions, the more we hear, the more complex it becomes. We really appreciate you taking the time today.

Next we have Ellen Woodsworth from the Women Transforming Cities International Society.

E. Woodsworth: Good afternoon, a pleasure to be here. My name is Ellen Woodsworth, and I’m the chair of Women Transforming Cities International Society. I’m also a former Vancouver city councillor. I was a city councillor for six years and chaired the cross-party committee that did the first recommendations on electoral reform to the Union of B.C. Municipalities.

In this case, I’m just going to address the three key issues that were of concern to Women Transforming Cities at this time. The reason why Women Transforming Cities was formed was, to a large degree, because women and girls work for cities, but cities are not working for women and girls.

Only 16 percent of mayors across Canada are women; only 26 percent of councillors are women. If you put an intersectional lens on those figures, in proportion to population, there’s not the diversity of women across Canada and certainly not the fair reputation of aboriginal women that we need to really reflect the population. That’s really key.

I’ve handed you one copy each of the Hot Pink Paper. Each one of the 11 issues in this paper, including electoral reform, has a background paper, which is up on our website. We’ve distributed thousands of these hard copies and tens of thousands by e-mail across Canada and throughout B.C. Ontario just finished their municipal elections, and Manitoba has had elections.

Obviously, we are seeing that the power of women across Canada leaves much to be desired. In fact, the status of women in terms of politics, economics and social standing has dropped significantly since about 1993, when the social safety net started to be gutted, particularly the affordable housing, a national housing plan. So, obviously, that’s one of the issues.

The three issues that we raise in terms of electoral reform are the parties need to run at least 50 percent of women. That’s a whole question of fairness within that in terms of diversity and aboriginal candidates. Secondly, we need some kind of a ward system, which was the recommendation of retired Supreme Court Judge Thomas Berger to council in 2004.

The final point is: establish campaign spending and donation limits and disclosure of all campaign donations. So given that’s your mandate, I’ll go into that aspect of it.

As I said, there are a number of key factors that impact whether women run for office at all or whether they get elected. Finance reform is absolutely key to these concerns. We asked all the parties, mayors and candidates to say whether they would commit to establishing campaign spending and donation limits. Every single party in Vancouver has responded to that. Unfortunately, we’re not releasing that information till Monday morning, so we will include that in our submission, and I won’t submit this document today until I’m free to release that to you.

Key, not just in Vancouver but particularly in Vancouver, is having access to money. Women earn 68 cents to every dollar a man earns. That’s not taking into account what Monica Townson, an economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says, which is
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that 42 percent of women work in non-standard, low-paid, non-benefit jobs. We’re just talking about an average when we say 68 cents to the dollar. That’s a huge obstacle for women.

Secondly, because women have such a low amount of income, it’s not the same thing when they turn to their women friends to get money. Women are not going to the golf courses, by and large. They’re not going to the bars. They’re not belonging to the private clubs. Their best friends don’t have the kind of money to fund their campaigns. This is enormous.

The other factor is that given the small percentage of women who are professionals, they don’t have an office infrastructure — secretaries and computers, etc. — to draw upon to help do their work, so that’s another critical part of it. In fact, if you look at.... In 2011, which is the last time Statistics Canada got the figures, men, on average, earned $49,000 a year, and women earned $33,600 a year — a significant gap. Women also have the additional costs of child care and elder care.

All of these things give male candidates a significant advantage in running for elected office. We could go on about it. The backroom boys really are usually the backroom boys. Vancouver has only seen white men ever get elected as mayors in this city, which certainly doesn’t represent the population of the city.

That key question of the lack of access to funding and the factor of who’s actually funding the campaigns.... I thought the.... Mr. Bohus’s comments and figures there were quite telling that it’s, by and large, very wealthy corporations and very wealthy individuals which are primarily, but not only, white gentlemen funding the campaigns, which enables campaigns to hire the staff, and who put out the literature and buy the TV ads and buy the newspaper ads and do the social media necessary to get elected in the city of Vancouver.

We have not seen.... I think in one election there were five women elected to council. In one election an aboriginal woman, Angie Todd-Dennis, ran for mayor. If you look at council now, you have four, out of the ten, who are women.

It’s quite staggering and appalling that Canada is, in terms of elected representation, behind the Congo — behind quite a number of countries around the world in terms of elected representation at the municipal level. In fact, in India they actually have a law that one-third of all municipal representatives have to be women. That has slowly started to change both the role-modelling and the issues that municipal councils are tackling.

If you look at the pay and the gender gap of women between the ages of 35 and 44, there’s a 38.5 percent difference in wages. That’s the key bracket of women who might consider or do run for office. It’s an ongoing problem. It’s not just a problem of cities or the problem of you legislating some things. It is a provincial responsibility, it is a municipal-level responsibility, and it is a federal responsibility.

That’s why I think the Up for Debate campaign was just launched on Tuesday, to bring these issues to the federal election. We have brought them to the municipal level of government, and we’re quite pleased at the feedback that we’re getting from the parties and the candidates.

We wanted to make sure that we presented this information to you. We were disappointed that this committee has not had an earlier mandate, a years-earlier mandate, because we feel that had there been provincial recommendation on these issues, we would have seen more women elected to office and the concerns that women have, whether it’s around public transit, affordable housing, violence against women — young women, aboriginal women, immigrant women — the design of public spaces, etc. We would see quite different cities, and cities that worked for women and girls.

I’ll leave it at that. I’m happy to answer any questions. I will send you some of the feedback that we’ve received from all the different parties on these issues.

M. Hunt: Thanks for your presentation, Ellen. You were giving national. We’re provincial. The stats that you gave, for example, are national stats versus provincial stats. I have a sneaking suspicion that the stats are quite different provincially.

We’re here for election expense reform. That’s what we’re dealing with — election expenses. Most of the issues that you’ve raised — and within the context of Vancouver, primarily, which is fair enough…. That blurs when we’re dealing with the fact that most everyone in the city of Vancouver who was elected over the last number of years has been within an electoral organization of some form. Therefore, you have much more of a group effort, much less distinction as to the male and female types of issues.

E. Woodsworth: I just gave you the figures on that. It’s only four women out of ten that have consistently been elected to office in Vancouver. The statistics are national because FCM has done the breakdown of the information across Canada. These are municipal statistics I’m giving you in terms of 16 percent of mayors and 26 percent of councillors.

M. Hunt: Yeah, but what our focus is on is election expenses per se. The basic principles…. This is the first wave through. We’re basically dealing with the principles behind election expenses — running independent versus running with groups and those sorts of situations.

My question is: what comments would you have concerning election expenses per se?
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E. Woodsworth: Sorry. I should have clarified. We very strongly believe — as I read out earlier and as you’ll see on this document — that there should be campaign spending and donation limits and disclosure of all campaign donations. I read it at the beginning. I should have read it out again at the end.

We very strongly feel that without limits, there is going to continue to be a significant gender gap in terms of women elected to council and women elected as mayors.

M. Hunt: Are there any principles on how we should come up with those kinds of numbers, what kinds of principles we should be looking at as far as how those numbers should be generated?

E. Woodsworth: They’re going to send you the statistics, but they said that per-population was a critical component. Given that we believe there needs to be a ward system and proportional representation in the city of Vancouver, we’re one of the few cities in North America that doesn’t have some kind of a ward–proportional representation system.

I think the province would have to look at the situation of Vancouver if we finally do approve a system like that, which most of the parties in Vancouver do support, as opposed to smaller municipalities. We’re not making recommendations on amounts at this point.

Just further to Marvin’s question. What we’re trying to get at here are the principles — at least, in the short term —underlying those limits, and also the relationship between limits for individuals versus electoral organizations and then third-party advertisers.

Now, you have pointed to a website that has, presumably, more detail on your recommendations, but do you have anything more? For example, the issue if you’ve got a number of candidates running under the banner of an electoral organization and you have a limit for the candidate and you also have a limit for the electoral organization — does your website go into any more detail on that?

E. Woodsworth: It doesn’t go…. The reason we think there needs to be some form of ward–proportional representation system is because the present system of parties doesn’t work for women. That goes into another aspect of our campaign. Because women do so much unpaid work and volunteerism, they tend not to be as visible in an at-large system as they would be in a ward or a neighbourhood system, where they can be known.

If you have a ward or a proportional representation system, you don’t need the dollars that you need in an at-large system here, with the media playing such a key part of who gets elected.

G. Holman: I do understand your strong feelings about that. I think the committee’s mandate is fairly narrow, though, so I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to get into it.

E. Woodsworth: Yes, in terms of disclosure of donations, I think that’s clear. But spending limits would be shaped by whether you had a ward system or not. I would hope you would consider both, and you could look at examples in other municipalities.

It was extremely unfortunate that COPE did not proceed with that because of some of the players in COPE when COPE had power. Clearly, the present mayor has said that he’s interested in exploring something like a proportional representation system but has not proceeded with that, so we’ll see what happens in terms of who gets elected this time.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Ellen, for your presentation. I’m very much interested in your thoughts around access. Right now thinking mostly about Vancouver, but if you could take off your Vancouver hat and think sort of outside of Vancouver, in communities where there might not be as many people, as much money or parties….

Access is an issue for women in those communities as well, but there might not be a sufficient volume, number of people, for wards either. Given that, what are your thoughts around how we ought to think about access in those kinds of communities and what principles we ought to be paying attention to? Just leave Vancouver out.

E. Woodsworth: Just look at the proportion of people in B.C. who are First Nations or aboriginal, Métis. They are not represented in councils around this province. They don’t have access to large sums of money to run or the boys clubs — excuse me — or golf clubs or any of the other vehicles that are often used for people to network and build a campaign around.

Not the money, not the access to power and influence, so how do they run in something that’s supposed to be a democratic system if we don’t limit campaign contributions and candidate contributions and declare contributions before, during and after elections?

If you put an intersectional lens on what’s running, we need to ensure that there’s the full diversity of people in our population who have access to public office. I think Winnipeg is the first city in Canada to elect an aboriginal mayor, that I know of. Some of the things we’re talking
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about are based on equity principles, not just a question of equity for women.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): So donation caps and expense limits — both— would be criteria for you.

E. Woodsworth: Yes, would be really very, very important and make a huge difference for women.

J. Kwan: Thanks, Ellen, for the presentation. I’m only just putting this out for thought and input from you. Much of your presentation centres around a gender analysis in terms of electoral participation. I’m wondering if you have an opinion on whether or not that gender analysis should also apply to the principles of spending and spending limits. Should there be an application of that tied to the principles of spending limits? I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on that.

E. Woodsworth: I just want to say that we look at everything with an intersectional lens. We look at race. We look at ability. We look at age. We’re calling on municipal councils across Canada. We’re part of a national coalition of five cities which is developing an equity inclusion lens that will be launched at FCM next spring in Edmonton.

We’re looking at inequities across the board. You know, why isn’t there a Chinese woman mayor of Vancouver? If we look at the city and we look at equity issues for spending, these are some of the things that need to be addressed by your committee.

Whatever we are looking at, if you put the intersectional lens on it, you’ll start to draw out a lot of other inequities within our so-called democratic electoral system at the municipal level. Whether it’s donations or spending or disclosure to parties and to individuals, it’s inherently really biased in favour of the status quo.

E. Woodsworth: Thank you all for taking the time to do this. It’s very important work that you’re doing, and I look forward to seeing the results.

We next have Vincent and B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association. Good afternoon and welcome.

J. Tegart (Chair): We have a ten-minute presentation, about ten minutes for questions.

You have our submission. We only heard about your committee on Monday. However, this is an issue that we have been involved in for quite some time. I would like to restrict my comments to the part that we’ve been involved in.

You’ve been hearing a lot about upper spending limits and how much third parties or candidates or their electoral organizations should have to spend. I’d like to talk to you about the fact that both provincially and locally, there is no lower limit. What you have is a system that requires registration with the government before people or organizations exercise their right to speak on issues during an election campaign. It’s unconstitutional. It’s a breach of freedom of expression.

Just so you know, we’re already in court on this, challenging the provincial act — which, as you know, is quite similar to the local elections act that you’re here consulting on.

I also had the opportunity to look up the materials that were provided by the ministry, and I noticed they didn’t mention any of this. I’m going to take a little bit of your time to talk about the fact that what we have in this province — and only in this province — is a system that requires pre-registration before the exercise of political speech. That’s wrong.

It also doesn’t make any sense. What we’ve been hearing about, the major concern in terms of creating spending limits, is how to create a level playing field among the candidates, the parties and other people having an effect.

If you put a sign in the window of your house saying, “Vote for a cleaner environment,” according to the definition, the way the definitions are written both provincially and in the current local elections act, that’s advertising.

You’re required to register. If you haven’t registered, you’ve committed an offence. You are liable to incarceration of two years provincially, only one year locally, thankfully — there’s that to be thankful for — and serious financial penalties. This is for expressing yourself. This is not for aligning yourself with a candidate or a party or saying “Vote for Joe” or “Vote against Jane.” You’re saying: “Vote for the environment.”

Let’s say you’re a person whose worldly goods are contained in a shopping cart, and you have a sign on the front of the shopping cart saying “Vote to end homelessness.”
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You’re an election advertiser. You’re liable to a year in jail — two years provincially — or a $10,000 fine — $5,000 for the local elections. This is wrong.

It’s really easy to fix. Because other elections that have a floor…. Part of the logic of election spending is that you have to have spend at least a given amount before you should have to register. If you’re spending nothing, if you’ve got a sign in your window, if you’re on Twitter doing tweets about an issue, you’re an advertiser.

You should not have to register if you’re not spending any money. If you’re not spending any money or you’re spending very little money, you’re having no effect. You’re not having a disproportionate effect on the outcome or the conduct of the campaign.

You have our written submissions. There have been a number of recommendations by the Chief Electoral Officer. In 2010 the Chief Electoral Officer said that the current definition of election advertising includes any “advertising message that takes a position on an issue with which a registered political party is associated.” This creates some concern regarding the ability of individuals and organizations to comment on issues unrelated to the election campaign. He repeated that in his 2014 recommendations. He said: “What we said in 2010 — in 2014, yeah, you should look at this.”

In terms of local elections, the Local Government Elections Task Force in 2010, in their report, said.... One of the recommendations, which I notice is not in here: “Establish that third-party advertisers must register and must disclose what they spent on ads and who contributed to them, possibly for advertising expenditures over a certain threshold.” The committee looked at that. They recognized that there is a problem there.

And there is a problem. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives did a study after the 2009 election, and what they found was that groups were self-censoring. Groups were saying: “Well, wait a second. Do we have to take down our website?” People were taking down websites. People were refusing to talk to the media, even though there isn’t a legal…. Even though that’s one of the very few exceptions. People are intimidated by this.

It’s actually quite simple to fix this problem and to restore equity and to restore people’s constitutional rights during election campaigns at the municipal level. That’s what you’re looking at. Bring in a floor. Say: “Unless you’ve spent X dollars, no registration requirement.” That’s what the task force has recommended, that’s what the Chief Electoral Officer has repeatedly recommended, and that’s what every other jurisdiction in Canada does. I don’t know why B.C. doesn’t do it.

The final point is that.... I know you’re looking at the upper limits now. The government hasn’t seen fit to impose those yet, but they did see fit to impose a registration requirement.

If you’re spending zero dollars, if you’ve got “Vote to end homelessness” on your shopping cart containing your worldly goods and you don’t register, notarized form.... You have to have people signing it. You have to go to your notary, as a homeless person with life in a shopping cart, or solicitor to get your signature sworn and hand in the form.

This is wrong. And like I said, the fix is real easy. Bring in a floor. Bring in a floor where spending nothing…. Which does not, by definition, have a disproportionate effect on the outcome or conduct of an election. This can be fixed. I urge you to do that, and I welcome your questions.

J. Tegart (Chair): Thank you very much. I just want to be clear that this is a case that’s in court?

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay. So if committee members can keep that in mind also. If there are questions….

M. Hunt: Vincent, I accept your presentation. I want to shift gears. Because you are what we would describe as a third party, let’s make you hypothetically doing advertising and this sort of stuff. You’ve got a regular….

M. Hunt: This is precisely where my question is going, okay? Normally, you’d be advertising, and your advertisements would be something to the effect that we promote that there needs to be more freedom of information at city hall. This is a normal campaign that you would do throughout the year as a normal advocacy situation.

Where do you think the line comes if now in an election campaign someone says: “Well, I think …”? You know, they make this as part of their election process. They think, “Well, maybe this is going too far, and these are the limits we want to have,” and now it becomes an election issue.

How would you see a shift between what is your normal advertising…? And would that normal advertising, if you did it…? It’s sort of running with what now somebody has created as an election issue within their jurisdiction. If you’re running the same ad you’ve always run, even though you’re running it at election time, it really doesn’t count? Or with any advertisement you do, because it’s now been made an election issue, is it now considered an election expense?

V. Gogolek: Well, there are a couple of issues there. One is the definition of “advertising.” Again, it depends on what’s been happening. There is some recognition in
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both the provincial law and in the local law that things happen during the election period, that there is a transformation.

What we’re primarily interested in is people who don’t do what most people would consider to be advertising. People are normally shocked when we tell them that if you have a small community group — you know, Surrey people for safer streets — and there are just ten of you or something and you have a blog and a Twitter feed, you’re advertisers.

This is one of the problems. And this is why the bottom threshold is really a very good way of keeping this registration requirement off people’s backs — the small people, small groups and individuals. If the value of what you’re doing…. Like, the stuff that’s on your website that deals with issues with which a candidate might be identified is up there. Its value is considered to be zero, as I understand Elections B.C. advice, unless you’re bringing in people or you’ve got additional people or volunteers or something to actually churn this stuff out and put stuff up during the election campaign.

If you’re just carrying on your normal course of business, as I understand Elections B.C.’s interpretation — and I’ll leave it to them to explain it — you would be an advertiser, but the value of your advertising would be zero. So if there is a threshold, you wouldn’t hit that threshold. If you were going out and bringing in ten people to set up a new municipal website and advertise on this and run a whole campaign on it, then there is a cost attributed to that. If you’re looking for a way of doing it, I think that’s how they would look at it. That’s my understanding.

G. Holman: Thanks very much, Vincent, for coming today. A really important submission.

I would make a comment though. In terms of the principle or sort of the rationale, you used the word, I think, “disproportionate.” It is possible that you could have a tweet or some kind of YouTube thing that actually could have a very disproportionate effect.

The underlying principle, it seems to me, is undue influence because of being able to spend a lot of money — not necessarily that you’re having a big effect. You could have a big effect and come well under the $500. It’s sort of that unfairness. It’s the fairness thing that I think is the underlying rationale.

V. Gogolek: Well, that’s the thing. We’re looking at it in terms of: what is the legislation trying to do? Well, it’s trying to remove the effect of big money having a disproportionate effect, whether it’s big money for candidates or third parties or however it’s set up.

You’re absolutely right. Especially with the Internet, you can have a disproportionate effect. But you could have that effect…. Some of us are old enough to remember Brian Mulroney being Prime Minister and talking about dealing with pensions. There was a pensioner from Quebec who said: “You do that, and it’s goodbye Charlie Brown.” Well, that had a huge effect, and she spent no money at all. It wasn’t in an election period. But things happen.

You’re all professional politicians. You understand better than I do how this works.

I think if you’re looking at a law that’s designed to remove disproportionate effects of large amounts of money, creating a system that requires registration for spending no money…. It’s not proportionate, it’s not rationally connected, and I don’t think it’s justifiable.

G. Holman: Just quickly, does your group have opinions at the other end of the scale? Are you planning on making a submission? Are you advocating certain principles around the other end of the scale?

V. Gogolek: Like I said, we only found out on Monday that your committee was having hearings. This is the part that we’re primarily interested in. In the short time I’ve been here, I’ve heard a number of people make quite detailed suggestions in terms of how this should be looked at. I think we’ll leave it to them.

I would just like to restrict what we’re saying to this point, the whole point about…. Essentially, it’s preregistration with the government before exercising political speech during the time when we choose our leaders. And that’s just wrong.

L. Reimer: I just wanted to confirm something I believe you’ve already said, if I heard you correctly: that this is the only jurisdiction in the local government, with respect to the Local Government Act, across Canada that has this requirement to register.

V. Gogolek: Provincially, definitely. Everybody else has…. Canada’s Elections Act is $500. I’ve got the list here. I think it’s Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Ontario have $500 limits, and Alberta’s is $1,000. That’s at the provincial level.

I think it’s partly to recognize the constitutional issue,but I think it’s also to recognize the practicality of it. I think that part of what the Chief Electoral Officer has said in his reports is: “Don’t need this. This is a pain.” If you were to remove the people spending no money — that requirement that they register or face the consequences — then it takes that whole problem off the back
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of Elections B.C. They seem to be in favour of it. The Local Elections Task Force in 2010 suggested this.

I’m not sure why this hasn’t been done, but I think it’s necessary. You’ll be making recommendations, and I would urge you to join the others who have recommended this.

S. Vdovine: Good afternoon. It’s a pleasure to be here and to make a presentation and a submission on behalf of Vision Vancouver. As you may know, Vision and Mayor Gregor Robertson have been vocal advocates, locally and provincially, on the need for comprehensive campaign finance reform. So your work here is timely, and we’re delighted that you’re considering submissions.

I have with me Coun. Andrea Reimer, who’s been our lead on the file and who is recognized as probably one of the foremost advocates on this subject in this province. You have copies of our submission in front of you.

A. Reimer: Thank you very much for the opportunity to present today. I made my first submission on the need for campaign finance reform in 2003 — 12 years ago, when Bush was in his first term in the United States, when I certainly wouldn’t have had an iPhone next to me, and when my child started kindergarten. They will be graduating from high school this year. I’m excited to finally be here today, a little bit further ahead along the road to campaign finance reform rules in Vancouver.

Our presentation today has three main messages that we’re hoping to leave with you. First, we wanted to thank you for the modest but significant step towards campaign finance reform that the government is looking at taking in the form of spending limits in municipal election campaigns and better disclosure laws.

Second and most significantly, spending limits in Vancouver, without contribution limits and bans on corporate and union donations, are wholly insufficient to deal with the problems that we’re having in the context of the city of Vancouver’s elections.

Third, there is a mechanism available to you to remedy significant campaign finance deficiencies in the city of Vancouver through amendments to the Vancouver Charter.

I was going to provide you with a little bit of context — because I know you’re not all from Vancouver and might not live and breathe our challenging electoral context — as well as a little bit of background and, finally, what help looks like and what the mechanism available to you would be in that regard.

The context. In the 2002 municipal election, spending exceeded $1 million for the very first time in the city of Vancouver. This fuelled public concerns about the lack of campaign finance rules to deal with that kind of money and led to the first request from the city to the province for rules to deal with this challenge. The legislative framework for municipal elections currently does not allow for the city of Vancouver, nor any municipality, to act alone. The full responsibility for these changes rests with the provincial government.

In the intervening decades since that election, three more municipal elections have occurred — 2005, 2008 and 2011. Spending has skyrocketed to over $5 million spent in the 2011 municipal election — an election which also saw the single largest donation ever, at any level of government in a Canadian election, with $960,000 donated by a single corporation. All major parties received over 80 percent of their donations from non-individuals, primarily corporations and unions.

These factors, as you can well imagine, have led to an erosion of public confidence in Vancouver’s municipal elections and provide substantial barriers, as you heard from Ms. Woodsworth, to participation for potential candidates. We recognize that we may in fact be alone in the province of British Columbia in having these problems, and we’re committed to ensuring that whatever solution we need to deal with our problems does not become a problem for other municipalities.

For these reasons, we are again asking the province to amend the Vancouver Charter to allow us to put in campaign spending limits for candidates and political parties, a limit on contributions from any one source, a ban on corporate and union donations and, finally, rules that require disclosure outside of the election period.

I said I would give you some background. It is quite a detailed and lengthy tale, taking up three pages of my written submission, so I will just summarize the highlights for you. In September 2003, as I mentioned, the city of Vancouver established the Vancouver Electoral Reform Commission, or VERC, to provide recommendations on how best to transition from the at-large voting system to a ward system — a perennial discussion here in Vancouver.

Although not at all originally part of the scope of the investigation of VERC, it quickly became evident in the submissions from residents that their primary concern was in fact not the ward or at-large question but the lack of campaign finance rules that were prohibiting so many people from being able to enter into the process as a candidate at all.

As a result of these concerns, VERC recommended that the city seek changes to the Vancouver Charter to allow for campaign finance rules. This first request was made to the province in 2005, at that time to the minister responsible for municipalities. The city was told, at that time, that it must secure the support of other municipalities via the UBCM, or Union of B.C. Municipalities, in
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order for the province to take action.

That COPE majority at the time subsequently lost re-election. The Vision Vancouver party, my party, did bring a motion forward in 2007. That was passed by the council, but the NPA majority at the time chose not to act on it.

In 2009, following an NPA election loss, former COPE Coun. Ellen Woodsworth, who you’ve just heard from, brought a motion to council with the support of the Vision majority, asking the UBCM to support a Vancouver-specific campaign finance rule package. This motion never made it to the floor of the UBCM, as at that UBCM meeting former Premier Campbell announced the Local Government Elections Task Force, which led, in part, to the establishment of this special committee.

In January 2010 the city of Vancouver formed an all-party committee — sorry; this is a long and detailed tale — to prepare a submission to the Local Government Elections Task Force. This all-party committee unanimously made recommendations, which I’ve attached as appendix A to the presentation. The context section, the four issues that I raised, were the primary concerns of that committee. However, the final report of the Local Government Elections Task Force did not evidence an understanding of nor a response, therefore, to these concerns by the city of Vancouver.

We once again wrote to the minister asking for recognitions of these issues, at which point we were told that if we wanted recognition, we had to go to the UBCM.

The 2011 municipal election happened. Vision maintained its majority, immediately brought a motion back to council in January 2012, and gained unanimous support of the new council — which formed Vision, NPA and Green — for the longstanding position of the city of Vancouver for the four changes, which I outlined earlier.

The following month the motion was submitted to our UBCM regional association. Significantly, when that motion was brought to the regional association, it asked for the ability, provincewide, of all municipalities to make these changes, should they desire. That motion failed at the LMLGA, and the primary reason, we were told, was because if this was a Vancouver problem, it needed Vancouver-specific solutions.

Subsequently, in June 2013, not to be deterred, we brought forward another motion, this time straight to the UBCM, asking specifically for the changes to the Vancouver Charter to allow for these campaign finance rules. For the first time, we lost our consensus at council. Both members of the NPA opposed this motion. But we were ultimately successful at the September 2013 UBCM, when all but one elected official, NPA Coun. George Affleck, voted in support of our resolution. We were able to take that to the province.

Final chapter in the background section. It took a rather bizarre turn recently when we had a party suggesting that what we needed in Vancouver was “voluntary” campaign finance rules, which I’ll put in quotes, because obviously, if it’s voluntary, it is not, in fact, a rule. This proposal has created a further erosion of public trust in the electoral process by creating confusion about which entity has the power to create rules and, through the suggestion of a voluntary process, that an unlevel playing field is appropriate in a democracy.

Earlier today we saw further evidence of the damage done by this proposal. While four parties have released their full donor list for 2014 to date, prior to the election, one party, the NPA, today released an incomplete list, stating that they needed permission from their donors before providing further information. Additionally, their major donor contradicted the reported amount of his donation, raising serious questions about the validity of the list, with no recourse to voters to verify the information.

We need your help. We acknowledge the provincial government’s recognition of some of the challenges of local government elections by committing to spending limits. We see no specific issues with the broad parameters you’ve proposed. We have never heard, in the time since Vision Vancouver was created, a single complaint about the expense side of the equation. It is all about the contribution side of the equation.

In the 2011 municipal election a single corporation gave $960,000 to one party, the NPA. At the time it constituted over 40 percent of the total election budget of the NPA, which speaks to the heart of voter concerns about undue influence. This same donation would still be allowed with all of the proposals that you’re bringing in, making it possible for that one corporation to have given 100 percent of the donations, up to $1 million in an election campaign. We need the ability to establish fair contribution limits.

In the 2011 municipal election all four major parties received over 80 percent of their funding from non-individual donors. The public does not have confidence in a process where that is where the majority of donations are coming from. We need the ability to ban donations from corporations and unions.

Finally, unlike in other municipalities, Vancouver political parties exist between election periods and have significant staffing, office, communication and fundraising expenses that are not required to be disclosed outside of the election period. We need a mechanism for annual disclosure from municipal political parties.

Finally, what help looks like. We are asking for a change to the Vancouver Charter to allow for the creation of campaign finance rules that meet the needs of our residents. We understand that it’s an unusual request, but I am guessing, from the background that you just heard, that we have some unusual problems. We very much do not want to create new problems for other municipalities, simply to be able to find solutions for the problems that we have.

There’s no question that they are impacting the pub-
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lic’s confidence in the electoral process in Vancouver, and we think that that confidence, or lack of confidence, extends well past Vancouver, through public discourse in the mainstream media as well as social media.

We also respectfully submit that the municipalities are in the best position to know what works for their municipality. Indeed, the fact that you are holding this consultation during the final week of a municipal election campaign speaks, to us, to the lack of ability for the province to be responsive to issues related to municipal elections in a timely and appropriate way.

Finally, even as we near the end of this election, we need urgent action now. We cannot go through another election in Vancouver where a single corporation can give a $960,000 donation to one party. We can’t go through another election not knowing whether a donation of that size was given in the period between elections that will never be reported.

We need these tools as soon as is feasible following this current municipal election in order that the 2018 municipal election is conducted under the same standard of rules that the federal and provincial governments hold themselves to.

Please give us the tools that we need to restore our residents’ faith in the democratic process and allow parties and candidates to conduct a modern election with modern rules, fair rules and transparent disclosure on a level playing field with a neutral arbiter to mediate disputes.

G. Holman: Thanks, Stepan and Andrea, for coming here today. The fact that you’re recommending that we recommend that you change the charter — I presume that doesn’t mean that you’re recommending against similar kinds of limits or restrictions for other municipalities.

You’re just saying Vancouver has a clear problem. You see a simple way forward for Vancouver by amending the charter so you can make up your own rules. But you’re not recommending that we don’t extend analogous rules to other municipalities. Is that a fair…?

A. Reimer: It’s hard for me to comment on the needs of other municipalities. I know some of you have been elected to local government, and it’s a challenging position to be in. I would say, as someone who’s been a keen and vocal advocate, for more than a decade now, on both the campaign finance and the electoral reform, that the kinds of challenges that Vancouver experiences do not appear to exist as of yet in other municipalities.

I would say, going back through that history of Vancouver, it was really that million-dollar threshold that Vancouver hit back in 2002 that really started fuelling a lot of the more egregious outcomes that we’ve seen, in terms of sources of donation, size of donation, percentage of donations coming from corporations and unions.

G. Holman: Thanks. Just quickly, what we’re trying to grapple with are also some of the nuances or details around limits for individuals versus electoral organizations, and also the third-party advertiser limits. Do you have recommendations on that, or are you planning to provide further information? Does Vision have recommendations around those devils in the details?

A. Reimer: Well, I’ve looked at the paper. I couldn’t see any problem with the general proposal. I think that the provincial government itself, for your own elections, has quite good rules that anticipate both independent candidates as well as candidates that would be running with a party.

I think Toronto is an interesting…. Because you have to grapple with this concept of mayor as well, which you wouldn’t have a corollary for at the provincial level, the Toronto campaign financing framework, particularly the expense limits, I think deals well with the question of mayor.

We are well behind other jurisdictions on this. The good news in that is that there are lots of practical examples to look to as to what…. Toronto, I think, is the most interesting, because they were the first big city to bring in what I would consider modern campaign finance rules, with both the expense and contribution limits and the ban on corporations and unions. So you can sort of see that, over the last decade, that hasn’t resulted…. Okay, maybe that’s a bad example.

Certainly, on the campaign finance side, voters’ confidence in the campaign finance side is reasonably high.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the presentation. It was very thorough.

I want to just ask you questions on your appendix A. You’ve done a really great job of doing a summary. Your second one, which is to limit the amount of money that may be spent annually by an elector organization, campaign organizer or an individual…. We don’t have campaign organizers now. They’re either elector organizations or individuals, because LECFA has since come into being.

It is different from our provincial system. We do have campaign expense limits, but because the structure is very different — it’s provincewide, and we have party limits, and then we have individual limits — it’s a little bit different here.

Do you have a sense or can you share with us a sense of the relationship between sort of the individual candidate and then the one who runs with a party? We’re going to have to grapple with that relationship. We don’t have a whole lot of that in provincial. But we have that. There are
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whole communities that there might be four running. I want to say Kelowna has, I think, four running on a slate, and then everybody else is individual.

So we’re starting to see those challenges. We’re going to have to put in place some rules around the proportion — how it gets proportioned out.

Do you have a sense or can you share with us your thoughts about how fairness would play out or could play out or what we ought to consider, looking between individual candidates and parties?

A. Reimer: Well, the first thing I would say is that I would make a distinction between large municipalities and small municipalities. I think you have to consider that whatever the reporting requirements are, if you’re thinking about them in the context of a large political organization, a party or an electoral organization, and if you set the standard there, then, in a smaller municipality — somewhere up north, where you’ve got a relatively small population — the reporting requirements could be so onerous that they actually turn people off from running.

That’s not what you want to do. You have to sort of balance off that threshold.

The work that went into our campaign filing in an election period was substantial. I don’t think that an individual candidate could have undertaken that work and still be sitting here in front of you providing a presentation.

Having large municipality rules that deal with the large electoral organizations that exist now in Vancouver and Surrey and Richmond and Burnaby and making.... I was reading through the provincial government rules this week to be clear on.... I used to be very involved with the Green Party, so I’m very familiar with how it worked ten years ago. But it still sounds relatively similar.

You do have independents running at the provincial level. They’re rare enough, but they do have their own structure to be able to operate independently from a political party. I think a similar rule for a large municipality like Vancouver would make a good deal of sense.

We would very much like to be able to register our electoral organization…. Currently, it’s four months before an election that we sort of come into being in a civic election context. We have to work through the Society Act, which is a bit cumbersome.

We would very much like to be able to register as an electoral organization permanently, as a continuous electoral organization, provide reporting in a continuous way, conduct nomination contests in a similar way to you in the provincial. I think you could do that while still providing for independents to be able to run, without onerous rules, in a city like Vancouver.

Just to give you context, Surrey would have crossed $1 million last election. This election I wouldn’t doubt that it’ll be close to $1¾ million to $2 million — just so you recognize that the numbers are large there.

In the midst of this challenge that we’ve got.... We’ve got a couple of interesting ones. For example, if we had the rates done per individual, there are some that would think that everybody would run a full slate so we can get the maximum number of dollars to spend. Do you really see that being a challenge here, or are all of the electoral organizations running full slates?

A. Reimer: In Vancouver I don’t believe any electoral organization is running full slates. There’s a certain mathematical logic that goes along with the at-large system that does not.... It’s not worth whatever extra you’re going to get to spend to lose more seats, because the math isn’t going to work out for you.

I have to say, though, if you did hit $1 million last election and you’re already at $2 million, this speaks to all the more reason that you need to deal with this issue of contribution limits and bans on corporate and union donations. I can guarantee you Surrey will be at $5 million by next election if history is any indicator of it.

M. Hunt: Next one is.... You raise an interesting point that’s not normally discussed in this, and that’s the whole nomination process. I believe your electoral organizations have nomination processes. Question. Is money spent in that nomination process?

M. Hunt: Well, that was my next thing. Was it going to be a significant amount, or would we consider it to be a relatively minor number?

S. Vdovine: Well, I think it would depend on circumstances. We’ve been through a very vigorous nomination process in 2008, and significant amounts of money were spent then. We had a nomination process just four months ago, which was significantly smaller than the one in 2008. They do vary. I think the expenditures in 2008 were probably in the range of half a million dollars for all candidates combined. That was a mayoral race.

M. Hunt: The next piece of the puzzle that comes in there as a logical consequence is: should that be considered in the midst of the limits, or should we just simply be saying, “That’s your business”?

S. Vdovine: Just so that we’re clear, the nomination contributions received and money that is spent are considered to be part of the current election disclosure.
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A. Reimer: Not exactly. If you’re the successful nominee, it is included. If you’re not successful, nobody will ever know who donated to your campaign, unless you choose to voluntarily disclose it. That is one of the reasons we’ve been asking for this continuous structure that allows us to operate fairly, transparently and openly.

M. Hunt: Considerably ahead of the election but generally within the year of the election, you would say.

S. Vdovine: But there’s also nothing in our rules that would preclude us from holding it earlier.

M. Hunt: Let’s shift gears and pick another one that’s outside of Vancouver’s jurisdiction but inside Vancouver’s election jurisdiction as well — Kinder Morgan. Third-party advertising.

For whatever good, bad, ugly…. It has become or has been made an election issue within the city. Now, let’s just suppose that Kinder Morgan now decides…. I don’t know the truth of this, so this is just me being hypothetical. If it’s true, I don’t know. I’m just being hypothetical.

They’ve been advertising all along. They’ve been always doing their thing of letting people know who they are and “we’re the nice guys,” etc. Where does that come into third-party election? Within a jurisdiction, it has now become an issue. How does that then…? Where would you see a line where it becomes election expenses, third-party, for them?

A. Reimer: I have to say I was listening to Mr. Gogolek’s presentation. I have certainly followed the third-party advertising rules. I used to run the Wilderness Committee, which is a large non-profit that I’m sure you’re all aware of. We grappled with this, as did many of our colleagues in the non-profit sector who were literally taking down websites that….

All of our work just had to come to an end because of this sort of blackout curtain that came down in the election zone. We actually chose not to. That’s a whole other background story of our fight with Elections B.C., which we did win.

I don’t understand why it’s so hard in British Columbia. There are many jurisdictions in Canada that don’t seem to grapple with this the way that we do. I think that Mr. Gogolek’s suggestion — which is a suggestion not wholly original, taken from other jurisdictions…. You have a threshold that if it’s clearly the act of an individual not needing special financing, that is not a third party.

If you have a large corporation that’s promoting its interests within the context of an election, that is third-party advertising — or a union or another entity. If it’s clearly intended to influence the outcome of the election and there are significant or even modest funds being put into it to advance their interests as an entity, that is a third party.

Other jurisdictions have not had the challenge that we had trying to figure out what a third party is. I think there is a large body of work out there that you could draw from.

J. Kwan: Thanks, Andrea. I know you’ve been working on this for quite some time. I know you’ve lobbied hard over the years as well.

I am interested, though. This is the same question I put to some of the other folks. We have an at-large system versus that of a ward system, and that distinction is very different in terms of the spending, the spending limits and the rules, although the principle of the rules, one would want to apply to be the same. That is to make an electoral process to be fair, as much as you can, for everybody.

In that context for Vancouver, what would your suggestions be — maybe not just for Vancouver but for large municipalities in general? What would your suggestion be in terms of trying to come up with the application of the rules on party limits?

Is it centred around corporate and union donations? Do you think that by eliminating those, as a recommendation, it will, therefore, eliminate a lot of the inequities that come with substantive donations? I’m curious about that.

Second, on your question around candidates, I am fascinated by that concept. Currently, as it stands — correct me if I’m wrong — candidates seek nominations with political parties, and those are their own expenses. It’s not the parties’ expense, right? When you disclose at this point in time, you as a personal candidate will disclose how much money and who you got money from for your candidacy, if you were successful, and then beyond for your electoral success.

But in your instance, are donations made to you individually? Once you’re a candidate, are donations made to you individually, or are they made to the party, on the whole? And how do you dissect that difference?
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A. Reimer: It is entirely at the discretion of the candidate in the nomination campaign how they choose to deal with it. I could send you some interesting background reading from news reports on Sam Sullivan’s nomination back in 2008, where numbers were being bandied around, sources were being bandied around. But he wasn’t successful as a candidate, and therefore, we’ll never know what happened in that process.

When I ran as a candidate in a nomination for Vision Vancouver, I actually chose to mirror the rules as though I was a candidate in an election, so I went out and found a financial agent. I had them set up a bank account that was arm’s length from me. But there was no formal legal structure for me to do that. Because I’d had a fairly lengthy history with political parties at the provincial level, I had a good sense of what that structure should be. If you didn’t have that history, it’s a bit hit and miss as to how it goes.

On the first question that you asked, about if I had to choose between the expense limits versus the other three, I would take the other three in a heartbeat. Limiting the contributions from a single source, as well as bans on corporate and union donations and, significantly, annual disclosure so there is no dark money in our campaign would solve 98 percent of our problems in the city of Vancouver.

We do acknowledge that expense limits are important. Certainly, at the provincial level, I can’t imagine what your elections would be like without them. But here in the city of Vancouver, it really doesn’t speak to what our challenges are.

The proposal that you have in front of you for expense limits is great. I can guarantee you that I will be back here again in front of you begging you for the other three things, if there’s not a way for you to advance them through the government, and you’ll continue to read about the challenges in our elections in the front-page news and on social media.

J. Kwan: Not a question but just something to ponder and to bring back at a later time. I think that with the information that you bring back, the more specific in its detail and its application, in both its principles and application, and how it would be implemented, would be welcomed.

I think that the broad statements around overall limitation, and so on and so forth, is important, and it gives you the scope of where you go. I think what we would need to grapple with beyond that — right? — are some more specific, detailed rules and guidelines as to how it would be applied and implemented on the ground.

I think, on the flip side of that question, the enforcement question, as well…. Presumably, it’s a matter that goes to, I guess, Elections B.C. or some body that would oversee this, and then all of those component pieces would be important for us to get your perspective on.

A. Reimer: I would encourage you to look at…. This already exists. First off, you’re not going to find an answer that works for Williams Lake and Vancouver, so if that’s the only way this can happen, it’s not going to happen. The second thing I would say is that you have an example in Toronto. I know they run by wards, but their mayor runs citywide, so you can look at the financing rules that they’ve been using for those citywide elections and get a good understanding.

The last thing is that you do have provincial political parties. Your expense limits for the provincial political party provincewide are quite substantial. I can’t imagine that any of your parties choose to run a full slate simply because it gives you another $70,000 per candidate as a spend at a provincial level — right? — to your question, Marvin.

The same principle holds true on the ground in the city of Vancouver. So I think you have the functional structure at the provincial level of what…. I mean, we’re spending $5 million on elections. We’re not that far off from what you all are spending provincially on an election. I think this election will be even closer.

You have the structure that would work for Vancouver. As well as, if we could register our electoral organizations, then we could mirror similar to what you do at the constituency association level for your work and the candidate level.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation and for taking the time to present today.

J. Tegart (Chair): I’m pretty sure you’ve been told, Sarah, but ten minutes presentation and about ten minutes questions.

Well, I’m sure you’re all just raring to go with another one. Excellent. This will mimic the report that we submitted — I believe it was in January — to the Coralee Oakes commission.

Just as an overview, the Coalition of Progressive Electors is a Vancouver municipal political organization founded in 1968. We’ve run mayoral candidates as well as candidates for city council, school board and parks in the city of Vancouver for the past 46 years. As this hearing is being held eight days before British Columbia’s municipal elections, COPE is currently running a mayoral candidate, eight council candidates, five park and five
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school board candidates.

S. Beuhler: Just to get it off — I think probably everyone has said this — we do formally object to the timing of these hearings. Committee deadlines notwithstanding, it is sort of incomprehensible that no objections were raised around the timing of this crucial phase of fact-finding.

As the executive director and one of the campaign managers for COPE, I have had to take valuable time away from the election to prepare for this presentation. This is very, very important, especially, and I would say, almost particularly for COPE. To consider, I am one of two paid staff for COPE, and I am neglecting critical campaign duties to be here. That said, I am very happy to be here.

Let’s go to campaign donations for 2014. Thus far this week, if you’ve been paying attention to this election, fairly intense media pressure, mainstream and social media, resulted in disclosure of campaign finances from our five municipal parties, the five registered electoral organizations.

Totals were released by party and are unaudited. I’d like to just make that very clear, because what these are are PR exercises. I know because I conducted one. We did the best of our ability, but there is nothing to say that these are anywhere going to resemble what comes out February 13. The Greens, around $46,000; OneCity, around $47,000. We’re around $60,000. Vision, $2.2 million; the NPA, $2.1 million.

The disparities are obvious, and they’re not unique to this election cycle. As noted in the Expense Limits in Local Elections Discussion Paper, $5.3 million was spent during the 2011 municipal election campaign. Vision Vancouver alone spent $2.2 million.

Reporting in the Globe and Mail, November 6, 2014, Frances Bula listed the following contributions to Vision Vancouver from the development industry this year alone — and I would like to get this into Hansard. PCI Group and Andrew Grant, who received rezoning from the city for the marine gateway tower now under construction at the foot of Cambie Street, donated $35,000 through the company Faith Hope Investments Corp. and $1,000 through PCI.

Magnum Projects, a major marketing company currently handling the new Telus Garden and Trump Vancouver projects: $75,000. Aquilini Investment Group, the Aquilini family company that is currently building office towers around the stadium where the Aquilini-owned Canucks play: $60,000. Holborn Holdings, a Malaysian-based company redeveloping the former Little Mountain social housing site and building the Trump hotel on Georgia Street: $75,000.

These were released yesterday. We have been working overtime to try to find out, for example, who is behind the numbered companies and the anonymous contributions.

Rennie Marketing, the company owned by Bob Rennie, who marketed the Olympic village: $26,000. You’ve got the rest of it, and I think that’s fine.

It should be obvious to everybody that this is out of control. This needs to stop. It’s well past time. I’m glad this committee has been struck.

We’re on target to replicate the results of 2011, which is over $5 million. We would like to propose — probably along with half of the other presenters here — that we adopt the city of Toronto’s election contribution limits. I’ve reprinted them here, but I think probably everyone’s all right with them.

These are around the limits that I think we, as a municipal organization and a municipality, should be looking for in order to conduct elections that are not dominated by corporate donations. I don’t speak of corporate and union donations in the same sentence, generally, because they are not on par. We are looking at millions versus hundreds of thousands. While there is a degree of difference, it is the corporate ones that I think we’re most concerned with.

Most important, of course, is their section 70(4), which is that corporations or trade unions are forbidden to donate for mayor or city councillor. These seem very obvious to us as to why this is a good idea, and we urge you to follow this example and ban corporate and union donations from municipal elections.

Where COPE has, perhaps, a little more experience, say, in terms of the importance of the democratic process for smaller parties is around anonymous contributions. In general, we do support the provision in the act that ends anonymous contributions to election campaigns. We urge, also, that out-of-province contributions to B.C. municipal campaigns either be disallowed or subject to the same strict spending limits that we’re talking about in terms of Toronto.

COPE stresses the importance of a full disclosure of the identity of all contributors. Numbered companies and holding enterprises that camouflage the identity of donors should be prohibited outright. Residents are entitled to full transparency at the municipal level and full disclosure of the identity of those who wish to influence our municipal campaigns.

However, we do dispute the need, under the act, to
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regulate even the very small donations that are made — for example, passing the hat at meetings. It is an unnecessary encumbrance on an organization or candidate of limited means and staffing to have to identify every small donation, including those of only a loonie or a toonie, in an envelope marked with the identity of the contributor. Not only is the reporting onerous; it is our experience that most will choose to keep their money if they have to fill out the same form as does someone donating $1,000.

The rules, as they currently stand, disproportionately affect electoral organizations with limited resources that rely on many small donations from individuals rather than large corporate donors.

Again, the reporting requirements around these rules are disproportionately onerous on small parties. Parties well funded by corporate donations can easily afford to hire accounting firms and staff to do the reporting. Smaller parties rely on volunteers and few staff members, if any. Time spent conforming with this legislation is time lost from campaigning, and there is a clear imbalance in the effect of the legislation. Rebalancing should be a priority.

A suggested remedy is different reporting requirements for parties of different magnitudes. Parties with more than 5,000 members or with more than 30 percent of the vote in the last election — i.e., parties that can afford to hire these teams of accountants — could be directed to report any and all contributions with the strictest requirements. Smaller parties that are not likely to be funnelling money into their campaigns via anonymous donations would be free to accept the loonies and toonies of supporters who live in poverty, without being swamped by these onerous reporting requirements.

COPE also argues that Canadians, including British Columbians, prefer the system of tax credits that exist at the federal and provincial electoral levels. Ontario uses a rebate system, for instance, to refund part of the contributions that residents of that province make to municipal election campaigns. A tax credit or rebate system allows contributors of more modest means, as opposed to big corporations or big labour unions, to make relatively affordable contributions to a municipal campaign.

COPE also maintains that a tax credit or rebate system helps to encourage involvement in municipal voting, an area that often has a lower participation rate than at the provincial or federal levels.

Ward systems. We’ve long advocated for the return of a ward system in the city of Vancouver. We continue to advocate for the implementation of a simple and fair mechanism, based on a majority vote, to allow Vancouverites to reintroduce a ward system if they so choose. So a referendum or a plebiscite based on a simple majority plus one.

Proportional representation. COPE also recommends that an alternative voting system, such as proportional representation, be adopted and enshrined in legislation to avoid majority municipal governments, which tend to be unresponsive to people outside of election years.

In summary, COPE strongly recommends that this committee adopt the city of Toronto’s model for municipal election financing, while making a clear differentiation between the sizes of municipal parties.

I’ll skip my formal objection to the timing, again. I think you’ve probably all heard that. But truly, if the aim is democratic reform, why are we not here next month, when we all have very little to do except report, instead of eight days before election day?

The 2011 election campaign in Vancouver saw total spending of $5.3 million, and total spending in this election is on track to be even higher. There is ongoing potential for serious perceived and actual conflict of interest for massive donations to municipal campaigns, particularly from the development industry.

In January COPE urged that these issues be dealt with in advance of the November 14 election. In light of the failure of the government to enact substantial reform before the election that we are in the middle of right now, we reiterate the urgency of addressing these issues.

COPE calls upon the committee and the provincial government to take meaningful action and commit to substantive reform before 2016. It is important that these long-overdue reforms be done now.

G. Holman: Thanks, Sarah, for coming. Believe me, the committee hears your complaint around the timing but, also, the fact that you’re glad to be here.

Is there anything that you want to comment on in terms of spending limits and how that works, between elector organizations and individual candidates? Also, third-party advertisers — any thoughts there? Or are you planning on providing additional information? Or do you have a position on things like that?

G. Holman: Okay, because that’s the devil in the detail that we’re trying to come to grips with as well.

S. Beuhler: Absolutely. I think we will probably submit an appendix, if we can get it in by the 17th. I think that’s the deadline. We’ll do our very best.

In terms of the disparity of candidates who can fundraise versus candidates who cannot, what we have seen, what I personally have seen in this election, is that candidates of means or candidates with a fundraising machine in place can do things like purchase robocalls, can do things like pay their own PR firm — you know, that sort of thing.

We are a centralized campaign. We rely on very small
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donations that we then spread out throughout our 19 candidates. Of those 19, three have their own financial agents. The rest are under ours because they simply don’t have the means. Many of our candidates live in poverty. We have the first three indigenous candidates ever to run in North America.

Supporting these women and supporting these candidates has meant that we are spreading ourselves really thin. But we took the political decision that we needed to make an impact, and so we ran a full slate. But I think it is important to note that, again…. One of our candidates can afford robocalls, and we can’t, as an organization. That means our candidates can’t, as an organization.

So in terms of campaign spending limits, it seems to me a lot like the arms race, which is Vision releases an attack ad and NPA releases an attack ad. All week we’ve been seeing…. I think that in the last election, ads for the final two weeks were $569,000.

We can’t compete on that level. We don’t want to compete on that level either, actually, because we’re about policy. But what we see now, without these spending limits, is a total devolution of the electoral process to something resembling a hard-fought Republican primary in the States.

I honestly think that is the most pernicious effect of this lack of campaign financing rules. People with the most money win. And people can argue that they can’t stop taking these donations, but COPE decided not to take developer money. We had to split from Vision to sort of finalize that, and we’ll maybe pay for it at the election booth.

But what we have after this election is a position of ethical responsibility in terms of the issues, and no one can say to us that we don’t have integrity around development issues. Neither of the major parties can sit on council after going through this process and not be beholden to someone in the development industry. I think that speaks very clearly to a lot of Vancouver’s problems.

In terms of third-party election advertisers, it’s a much more complicated question. I’m actually with Andrea in terms of the spending limits. But then without meaningful third-party limit reform, what we would have is a funnelling into Kinder Morgan, into Chevron, into Reputations PR firm, into all of these big backers. I’m not sure that a battle by proxy via third-party advertisers skirting the line is necessarily going to elevate the discourse in Vancouver municipal politics.

We do of course want to be very careful that the non-profits, who are working hard to do this sort of thing…. We can’t just say, “You’re bad, so you can’t be influencing this,” and: “You’re okay.” Maybe something like commercial. You could make a differentiation between multi-billion-dollar companies, multinationals, versus non-profits. I mean, there are ways to go here, and again, the other jurisdictions can probably shed some light. We need meaningful reform.

We called Elections B.C. — I think it was October 2 — because Kinder Morgan is flooding the airwaves with these “Clean energy. Great energy.” Whatever your stance is on the pipeline — in an election where one of the main issues that have come up has been, “Do you or do you not support Kinder Morgan?” or “How far will you go to oppose Kinder Morgan?” — their advertising during an election seems to me a clear conflict.

M. Hunt: In the 46 years that you’ve been in existence, how many times have you run full slates? Ballpark — most of the time, half the time?

M. Hunt: Okay. Second, you raised an interesting one, where you said some of your candidates within the electoral organization umbrella are running their own set of expenses independent of…. Correct?

M. Hunt: There are no rules at this point in time. Now let’s shift to what kind of rules we should make. The issue would be that part of the COPE…. The electoral organization campaign is going to be listing their names. So a portion of the electoral organization’s expenses is going to be attributable to those people, beyond what they’re spending themselves. How would you be apportioning that? In your mind, what kind of apportioning rules would you kind of think of?

S. Beuhler: I think those would be political discussions in terms of electability. For example, if we ran a full slate….. I mean, we have to have those discussions now. But if we’re running the slate we’re running now…. We have eight council candidates. If I’m responding correctly, right now if somebody has saved, or whatever, and they have $100,000 personally to spend on this election, they’re going to robocall and they’re going to do this, that and the other thing. Everyone else just sort of gets….

If that were taken out of the picture, we would then have the resources…. It wouldn’t be so much about the resources we’d be deploying. I think it’d be more about how we don’t have to have the arms race with the other organizations. If nobody is robocalling, our well-heeled candidate doesn’t need to robocall, or can’t.

M. Hunt: Okay. Turn that slightly the other way. Now, this is a personal question to your organization. You may say this is an unfair question that you shouldn’t respond
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to, and I’ll be happy with that. I’m just curious. With that individual, is there a charge…? Since this individual is well-heeled, this well-heeled individual, are they being required to make a contribution to the overall campaigning of the electoral organization because you’re naming them as well, in the midst of your advertising?

How it works is that we came up with a funding formula. What has happened. In the pre-nomination phase we had a 50-50 split. The idea was that to get candidates out and fundraising, we’re going to provide an incentive. If you go out and door-knock and you raise money, 50 percent of that goes to your campaign; 50 percent of that goes to COPE.

After, in the election campaign, it was meant to be 100 percent. We looked at it and realized that we have candidates who are struggling to get gas to go to candidate appearances. So we retooled and made a sort of progressive split. Up to $250 — they keep it for election expenses. We split it between $250 and $1,000. Then over $1,000 — it goes to COPE. This is public. We’re a democratic organization. So I don’t have a problem discussing this.

M. Hunt: A last question. Since you raised the issue of the number of members in a party being distinctive as well, how many are within COPE?

S. Beuhler: About 2,300 right now. But that’s a complicated metric, and probably….

M. Hunt: I hear you, but I’m just trying to get an order of magnitude in my head. That’s all I’m trying to do. Okay?

J. Tegart (Chair): No further questions. Thank you very much. We do appreciate you taking the time out. We know it’s a busy time.

S. Beuhler: Well, look for our press releases. They’ll be, I’m sure, hitting the wire this evening.

J. Tegart (Chair): That ends the presentations. Thank you very much to everyone.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I actually have an item for the agenda, for discussion. I just wanted to bring to the attention…. I think the committee has certainly heard from just about everybody who’s sat at this table about their frustration, their concern with the timing and the impact that that’s had on their ability to participate. I have heard from others who just put out phone calls to me saying: “This is ridiculous, and I’m not going to participate, because we just don’t have the capacity.”

I’d actually like for us, at a minimum, to have a discussion about what to do about that. When we’re on the front page of 24, which basically says that we are not engaging in a proper process, given the timing, I think we ought to have a response to that — as well as this letter that we received from the BCSTA. They, too, would like to participate, but given the timing, they don’t have enough time to go back to their membership to have a fulsome discussion and then make a presentation to us.

I would like to have a discussion and hear what people have to say about that issue and how we ought to respond to that — the public response to our saying, “Here’s the timeline,” and their saying to us: “That doesn’t work.”

J. Kwan: In addition, we actually had to cancel two of the committee meetings because people were not able to participate because of the short timing. Even the people who presented today all expressed the point of view that because of the limited time, the short notice and the busy timing of the committee, they weren’t able to provide, I think, as fulsome in terms of the input to us as they might otherwise.

I actually think that it’s a clear indication at this juncture already to the committee that we ought to be requesting formally, of the minister and of the government, an extension on the work. I do think that it would be far wiser to have this work done thoroughly and to give the various participants and the public time to provide that input.

The fact is that no matter what we do out of this committee, it’s too late to affect this upcoming election, so it’s going to be for the next election. There’s time to be able to prepare this information, for it to come forward. I know that leg. counsel, who will be drafting the legislation, will be pressured in that sense. But you know what? If we’re going to do it, I think it is important that we do it as thoroughly as we can and as thoughtfully as we can.

With that process, we need the capacity and the ability to allow for the people to come and provide their information and thoughts on these important questions. I think it is time for us to actually formally, from this committee, request of the government to lengthen the time period to allow for this.

M. Hunt: This isn’t a government committee, so it has nothing to do with the minister or government.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): We make it to the assembly. I asked around. We make it to the Legislative Assembly.

S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): I think probably a let-
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ter to the House Leaders. A preliminary to that would be for each side to talk to their House Leaders and get the House Leaders to talk and then, if the committee wants to formalize that, to put it in a letter to the House Leaders.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Well, I’ve had a very brief conversation with our House Leader, who basically said to bring it to the committee for discussion. That’s what I’m doing, and I think that I certainly have support from our House Leader that we ought to be considering doing a robust job, especially given that we all come from local government, and we all know what happens when you don’t have a proper consultation period. The whole thing becomes sort of suspect. I would rather that we actually have a proper consultation period and do it right so that we have the proper discussion and move it forward.

L. Reimer: Well, given that this committee was struck with a mandate and with a timeline, I would like to…. I’m happy to speak with our House Leader about this to know what the factors are behind the timeline and that sort of thing. But I think that each of us could speak with our own House Leader first.

J. Tegart (Chair): If that’s the wish of the committee, then the Deputy Chair and the Chair will both speak with the House Leaders, and then we’ll have a conversation and report back to the committee.

Thank you for everything today. We’ll see you tomorrow morning. Okay, so we’ll adjourn at this time.

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1) Green Party of Vancouver	Jonathan Whistler
2) Cedar Party	Nicholas Chernen
3) Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver	Terry Martin
	Stephen Bohus
	Randy Helten
4) Women Transforming Cities International Society	Ellen Woodsworth
5) BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association	Vincent Gogolek
6) Vision Vancouver	Stepan Vdovine
	Andrea Reimer
7) Coalition of Progressive Electors	Sarah Beuhler

Chair:	Jackie Tegart (Fraser-Nicola BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	Selina Robinson (Coquitlam-Maillardville NDP)
Members:	Mike Bernier (Peace River South BC Liberal)
	Gary Holman (Saanich North and the Islands NDP)
	Marvin Hunt (Surrey-Panorama BC Liberal)
	Jenny Wai Ching Kwan (Vancouver–Mount Pleasant NDP)
	Linda Reimer (Port Moody–Coquitlam BC Liberal)
	Sam Sullivan (Vancouver–False Creek BC Liberal)
Clerk:	Susan Sourial

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON LOCAL ELECTIONS EXPENSE LIMITS

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
LOCAL ELECTIONS EXPENSE LIMITS