Local Elections Expense Limits — Issue No. 7 — Saturday, November 29, 2014 (HTML)

Present: Jackie Tegart, MLA (Chair); Selina Robinson, MLA (Deputy Chair); Mike Bernier, MLA; Gary Holman, MLA; Marvin Hunt, MLA; Linda Reimer, MLA; Sam Sullivan, MLA

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

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	113
S. Gung
K. Morris
B. Locke
J. Heilman
G. Rice
J. King
S. Oh
H. Colbert
J. Allen
E. Diano
Other Business	140

J. Tegart (Chair): Good morning. My name is Jackie Tegart. I’m the member for Fraser-Nicola and Chair of this committee, the Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits. This 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 the principles for the relationship between electoral organizations and their endorsed candidates with respect to expense limits, and principles for establishing expense limits for third-party advertisers. 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 December 15, 2014. Its report on phase 2 will be submitted 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 expense limits.

A provincewide media release was issued, calling for presentations and written submissions. We announced at that time that 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.

The committee held public hearings in Vancouver on November 7 and 8. Recently the committee’s consultation period was extended so that the committee could obtain further input. This was announced in a provincewide media release and in a call for submissions placed in provincial daily newspapers.

The committee scheduled two more public hearings. The committee held a public hearing in Victoria earlier this week, on November 26, and scheduled this one here in Surrey today.

The deadline for written submissions has been extended to December 5. Today we have allocated ten minutes for the presentations, to be followed by an additional five minutes for questions. The proceedings are being recorded by Hansard Services, and a transcript of the entire meeting will be available on our website.

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

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

M. Bernier: Good morning. I’m Mike Bernier. I’m the MLA for Peace River South.

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

J. Tegart (Chair): We also have staff here from Hansard and from the Clerk’s office.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): Good morning. I’m Kate Ryan-Lloyd, Deputy Clerk.

J. Tegart (Chair): With that, I will now turn over the floor to our first presenter.

S. Gung: My name is Sylvia Gung, two-time mayoral candidate for the Burnaby office. My theme I brought about the local election expense limit is: don’t limit it, but use it to serve the poor.

Differently from the old golden days when everything around was plenty for us, so that we could have established such programs as a national medical plan, we now live in a saturated society — saturated in the number of jobs, housing, food affordability, enormous amount of commercial goods and services and the high prices, desires, corruption and so on. Nothing quite helps the poor live right nowadays.

While the resources are limited and serving the rich, who want more and more, the poor are the ones who always get hurt at any other change that is meant to be doing good for the poor. But some real tangible and helpful change can be done for the poor by forming some non-profit insurance policies, using any possible funds.

While the rich collect more on top of what they have already, even through the election campaigns, not a single penny or nickel is available for the poor. So why not put up some from here to rescue the poor that have been drowning, giving up, left out, bounced off, eliminated or evicted — either legally or illegally, even by govern-
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ment-run facilities such as Metro Vancouver Housing Corporation, approved by the mayors and councillors in the Lower Mainland and aided by the residential tenancy branch.

Such sizes of non-profit organizations could also easily formulate some non-profit insurance policy. My name is Sylvia Gung. I’m coming again here — one of the mayor candidates in 2011 and 2014. Through these elections, I have witnessed how an election and government have been working.

In the case of the city of Burnaby, which has been governed in our century by one and the same ideology, it is growing into an amebic existence. While an ameba colony cannot cover the entire universe as it should, as is said, with its propagation power, but doing it in its own waste…. The waste of human mentality can be explained by the words that have “mis-” as prefixes, such as miscalculations, misjudgment, miscorrections — intentional or unintentional mistakes — and so on and so forth.

The result is secretive conduct, as a political group would try to hide instead of bringing it to daylight and fixing it — ignoring the poor all along. Corruption is more ripe in Burnaby against its outlook.

Even those all-candidate debates meetings were, I felt, biased by design, and continued until 2011. At one meeting both the president and moderator had been befriended by the BCA. I almost went into fighting mode, disturbed a bit, and was laughed at. Also, one of those was leading into some, actually, very good discussion-group style that would do a great job during the term. Nevertheless, it wasn’t fitting for an election debate.

Simon Fraser University invited the candidates twice but were the worst ones. Only one all-candidate meeting did it the way it should, but it was only a 1½-hour meeting and the chunk of the allotted time was taken up by the moderator. All fell into the category: misguiding conduct.

If everything was left — disregarding such tactics worked in throughout the term — controlled by the long-presiding party, or whatever, then what’s the point of having an election at all? At the very least, by the results of the election, some goodness can be brought in if the fund can be collected to serve the poor.

I graduated from high school in 1971 and was nine years in and out of a college education, between 1998 through 2007. I served various occupations, and now I am a community newspaper delivery person.

In 2012 I went back to college for a political science 101 course for some political knowledge. There I found two recurring fundamental facts, one of which is the fact that all the wonderful and hopeful ideology and policy developers’ call had been for a period in a good government to serve the poor so that society as a whole will be balanced and sustainably flourish. But that’s then.

As any ideology or movement falls short by the passing of time, building of a good government that serves right has also proven to be amiss — the longer the government’s history being the worst, with the big top of corruption everywhere. Society is thrown into chaos as the poor are more and more ignored and thrown out of society. Society has become like an overcrowded ship, which the bottom weight cannot hold the weight of the top, and it will eventually topple.

As an ordinary hard-working citizen, I would rather have paid attention to my daily living rather than plunging myself into politics. The fact that you see me out here should be alarming enough for society and all. It is very wrong for the government to drive a citizen or groups of citizens like me out of homes and into politics, “doing irrelevant stuff.” I put “doing irrelevant stuff” into quotation marks, because it’s not that those people are not able to do anything else, but it’s that they’re out of their preferred life course, right?

But there is work to be done out here, regardless who or what I am or they are. The ship is at the verge of toppling. It is very long overdue to do something about the situation. We have to do it before it is too late. So do something. Organize some non-profit insurance policies and serve the lesser and oppressed too.

M. Hunt: In your presentation, you talk about the secretive conduct of the elections. Since we’re here looking at the principles at this point in time of election expenses…. So you’re looking for things like honesty, openness, transparency. Those sorts of things would be the principles that you would want to see us working with.

S. Gung: That’s right. Yes, sir. Secretive conduct is not just…. Election isn’t terminal or ripe…. The secretive conduct isn’t ripening into election. They are hiding because they want to get re-elected and keep the good job for themselves — not even this time.

BCA — Burnaby Citizens Association — that is governing Burnaby didn’t even allow new faces from its own party. It’s all something to do with holding power, not servicing the people, its citizens.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I appreciate Marvin twigging around how people talk about what their values are. What caught my attention in your presentation was the distinction you make between rich and poor. So the other principle that I’m thinking of is accessibility, that anybody should be able to participate and put their name forward and that money shouldn’t be a key driver as part of that.

Would you say that that would be an important prin-
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ciple for you as well, making it accessible to anybody to put their name forward?

S. Gung: The election cost. I mean, there are lots of donations from, especially, unions and from corporations and individual donations as well. Some are individual citizens that can find the money to afford those elections. I see enormous money going there. That could be somehow, by the system, collected to serve the poor.

During the election there’s lots of money going in advertising and making the materials. Some candidates can’t afford any money at all, intentionally or by ability. In my case, I couldn’t afford a penny. I didn’t put any money into it.

From there to no limit, then, perhaps there will be a great deal of money. The next one is coming next year. Another one, the provincial, is coming next year. Then in another two years is coming another provincial one, and then a municipal one again. That will be a lot of money. Why can’t we use that to serve the poor?

The reason for government existing is to do better for the poor so that society as a whole is balanced, like a company, not like a…. I hope I answered your question.

Seeing none, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to present today.

We’re going to invite Kerry Morris to come forward. Joe Heilman’s not here yet, so we’ll go to Kerry. Any time you’re ready, Kerry.

K. Morris: Thank you. Kerry Morris — I was the challenger against the incumbent mayor, Darrell Mussatto, of the city of North Vancouver. I’ll tell you in advance, I’m neither homophobic nor a criminal. I’ll deal with those matters last.

I have no expectation that this process will resolve campaign finance, and that’s not meant as an insult to any of you. The fact of the matter is that those that make substantive donations for a purpose in this process reward those that are in power to make the decisions. The system works. Just look. So why would I change it?

That’s the fundamental problem, because the money necessary currently to run a successful campaign almost compels people to sell their votes at the table by accepting donations and pledging performance at a later date in exchange for that. And that’s a tragedy.

But there is a solution, and I don’t believe the solution actually lies within campaign finance limits, because there’s always a way to breach those limits, and it’s virtually impossible to track. As a first-time candidate, what I witnessed was overwhelming. You’d need a police force just to keep track of all of the breaches that were going on in just my jurisdiction. I don’t think you are going to be able to resolve it by limiting finance. That’s my personal opinion.

I think the solution lies within a modification of the act, wherein any candidate that succeeds where a donor comes before a municipal council is compelled to recuse if they’ve taken more than $500.

What we’ve got in our jurisdiction in recent times are contributions to campaigns that have exceeded $78,000 by one donor alone, who acquired a 400 percent lift on FSR, floor space ratio, for their building, Now, $78,000 — and $75,000 of it came in one cheque — is a lot of money. No one can tell me that there isn’t a quid pro quo, and anybody who does deserves to be the chief electoral officer of Disneyland. It’s just not reasonable.

The idea is that every elected official has a moral compass that compels them to do the right thing and ignore the donation. Bullshit. It’s not true. They will not do the right thing. The human being is not designed that way, that they will forget a $75,000 donation. It just doesn’t happen. In fact, it doesn’t happen in much smaller numbers.

The system that compels the individual to decide the conflict and recuse is the source of the problem. So take it out of that individual’s hands and compel any decision that comes before a council from a donor to have the recipient recused. The system will fix itself almost immediately, because they won’t get anything for their money. If you take away the benefit that they’re buying, they’re not going to squander their cash. They’re not stupid.

If they made a donation and they couldn’t get anything for it because the person they supported couldn’t vote, then they’d be less inclined to make any donation, because they wouldn’t want someone who supports their vision to be neutered. They’d want them to be able to vote. By giving the money, they’d be taking that vote out of their hands. You don’t have to limit the finances. You have to compel a moral compass by law.

The benefit? The donor would be unable to purchase any direct value through campaign donations. Donors would be unable to hide donations by using employees or relatives. Developers and unions can still donate to election campaigns but not for the purpose of securing a specific benefit. If the recusal is mandatory, so that the determination of a conflict will not rely on the moral compass of the elected official, it’s self-correcting.

Most of the campaign donation data necessary to confirm recusal is already compelled for disclosure under existing legislation. Donors will be unable to buy favour. Financial support for a candidate will actually alienate the candidate and his ability to effect benefit upon the donor.

I believe that that should compel not just the naming of the individual who makes the donation but the employer of that individual and what that employer does, so
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that there is a quick and dirty cross-reference to say: “Oh yeah. That guy made a big donation, but he works for a developer. Hmm. Interesting.”

Then if somebody wants to contest it under the rules, they can say: “Was that part of the regular pay, or did they get a bonus which they just passed directly through?” It’s a simple mechanism to fix this problem.

Now I’m going to paint a picture where there is, in fact, no law. I would seek a modification to the act which compelled any candidate running for higher office federally or provincially to recuse from decision-making at the municipal government level in relation to matters brought by a donor to the federal or provincial campaigns, both during or after the election cycle was complete.

What we had in the city of North Vancouver was a $78,500 donation by Onni. If you flip the page to the last page of what I’ve given you, you will see that on April 22 RPMG, the parent to Onni Development Corp., made a $75,000 one-time donation to the NDP.

Now, in the particular case of the individual affected here — Mr. Craig Keating, president of the NDP party…. If you look at the balance sheet down the side, you will see that Mr. Keating, from all of the developers doing business with the city of North Vancouver, until that $75,000 donation, received 100 percent — in fact, more than 100 percent — of the money being donated to the NDP. The money flowed either directly to him as a direct contribution from the NDP party, or it flowed through the NDP party to the constituency association, which then wrote a donation cheque to him.

All of these moneys, all but $54,000 of $142,990 in donations in that election cycle, flowed back to Mr. Keating. What we ended up with is a 400 percent lift on FSR in the city of North Vancouver for a single project at 13th and Lonsdale. And the $75,000 donation showed up 40 days after the FSR was approved — against the wishes of virtually every resident in the city of North Vancouver, save and except the four that voted for it.

Now, this is a provincial matter because this was a provincial campaign. When we filed a complaint with Elections B.C., they said: “Gee, Mr. Morris, unfortunately, there is no law that says that you can’t sell your municipal vote at the table for a provincial campaign donation.” I call that a hole in the law, and Mr. Keating fell through it nicely. He acquired a massive provincial funding donation for the party in exchange for the slate’s vote for a project. This was wrong.

But those same developers have recently funded his re-election campaign in this municipal cycle. Those developers provided the rooms that they conducted their call centre activities out of, and they funded massive quantities of money.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): The context for this meeting here and this opportunity is to talk about municipal election expenses, rather than sort of making what I’ll call accusations, whether they’re founded or unfounded at this point. I think there are appropriate places to take that information. I don’t think this committee is the place for that kind of conversation. I don’t think any of us are equipped to deal with that.

I’m just wondering if you might want to speak to election expenses and how you think this committee ought to be addressing that and taking a look at the principles. That would be much more focused and helpful.

K. Morris: The act, as it’s placed before candidates today, has no teeth. We ended up filing complaint after complaint after complaint on advertising, on expenses, on activity. In each case when we filed that complaint with the province, they said, “You must file your complaint with the RCMP” — on signage, or whatever it happened to be. We were then directed by the RCMP to the courthouse, where we were directed to the Crown prosecutor, who directed us back to the registry, who refused to take an information.

We had election signage that did not conform with the act, but nobody did anything about it. We had placement of signage, which is a municipal matter, but nobody did anything about it. We had paid city employees standing in city hall handing out lists of slates outside the advanced polling station doors, and nobody did anything about it.

All of these things were, in fact, done while employees were on the regular payroll at the city of North Vancouver, which covers election finance. How do you do that and not have anybody take any action?

J. Tegart (Chair): I certainly am hearing that there are a number of issues and a number of places that have responsibility for those issues. Based on the principles that we’re looking for…. Can you tell me what the basic principles, based on your experience that you had this last election, that we should be considering when we look at those relationships between candidates and electoral parties, electoral organizations, and between third-party advertising? Are there some basic principles that you can share with this committee that you think would
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help guide us as we look at election expenses, which is our mandate?

K. Morris: The election expenses, in my opinion, should be reported in real time. We posted ours on site so that everyone could see them — not expenses, but donors — and you knew the source of the money. Other jurisdictions began to do that towards the end, too, as did Vancouver city’s candidates. I think both of them did. I think that as a compelled requirement, would be a good start. Even if you don’t draw a limit, you at least have an informed, or potentially informed, voter electoral group that can see if there is influence being acquired.

As I said before, I don’t think you’re going to be able tie a rope around campaign finance in such as way that does it any justice. I think the real solution is to compel recusal.

L. Reimer: Thank you very much for taking the time to come and speak with us today.

I understand what you’re saying. You feel that instead of having campaign financing rules, we ought to mandate moral conduct. One of the things that we’re looking at — and it is related to expense limits, and you haven’t touched upon it — is third-party advertising. Third-party advertising takes place independent of the candidate. It could be anybody supporting a candidate, but the candidate has no involvement in it. That’s the definition of third-party advertising.

I’m just wondering what your thoughts are on election expenses for that sort of advertising — if we’re going to have expense limits.

K. Morris: Well, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have expense limits. I think we should. But I think that the nature of the system is one that people will get so cute that they’ll find workarounds. There simply aren’t enough police to police it.

In terms of third-party advertising, we had a great deal of third-party advertising in our jurisdiction. It didn’t conform with the rules. It related to slates, which put out that advertising. They weren’t an electoral group, but they were all of the candidates working as a group on a common advertised document that would then be donated to them after the fact by a developer who owned that particular advertising medium. Yet it was camouflaged that the ownership of that medium was in fact a developer who was pushing that slate because of the benefits that would accrue after the fact.

If you’re going to go down that road, I would say: compel those mediums to disclose their actual ownership and tie to a development organization as part of the publication so that a reader knows that this document they’re looking at — whatever it is — isn’t an impartial third party. It is, in fact, someone or some entity with a dog in the race.

L. Reimer: So in the campaign financing act that we passed last spring, third-party advertisers are required to register and disclose — just to let you know that.

Do you have any comments regarding principles that we ought to be looking at between electoral organizations and candidates? Should candidates be given all of the expense limits? What should the relationship be between expense limits for electoral organizations and candidates? Do you have any thoughts on that?

K. Morris: I don’t have a solution for it. We had the issue. We had commonly operated call centres, where the donor moneys were coming in to one or two individuals and then flowing through those candidates for the benefit of the balance of the slate. The numbers aren’t yet known, so I can’t comment on how much they moved.

If they look like a slate and they act like a slate, then I think there should be a campaign limit that is lesser than an individual or independent, because there are synergies which arrive as a result of cooperative advertising. If you’re going to push yourself as if a party or a group that is bound at the hip, then you should be compelled to forfeit some of your spending authority under the act.

J. Tegart (Chair): I’ve got Selina on the speakers list. We’re out of time, but I’ll let Selina ask her question.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): If I can. I’ll just be really quick. Again, I thank you, Mr. Morris, for coming before us. I have the benefit of having some Internet and was able to sort of go back and take a look at some of the dynamics that were happening in this last election, so I’ve read up on some of the issues that you’ve raised. I understand that you’ve apologized for a whole number of things that have happened, that went on and carried on during the election time in the city of North Van.

I’d like to invite you to take off your hat for a second, if you will, around what had transpired for you in North Van. If you can for a second, put yourself in our shoes around the kinds of things that we ought to be considering for the entire province and large and small communities. I appreciate Linda’s queries around some of the challenges that we’re looking at. If you could just turn your mind to expense limits for just a moment — broad-based, not specific. You tended to focus on donations and where they were coming. That’s not the focus of this committee.

If you could just think about expense limits and what would have been helpful in terms of making sure that everyone had access — not who’s contributing but how much people can spend. Have you given any thought to what it is that people can spend or ought to be able to spend in a local election and what principles we ought
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to consider when we think about how much anyone can spend? Not where the money is coming from but just how much we can spend.

K. Morris: I didn’t do a great deal of apologizing. I could spend some time on that, but I’ll leave it alone.

K. Morris: The issue of expenditure is one of comparisons for me. If you look at Richard Walton when he last ran a mayoral campaign, he spent $6,500 and ran in a competitive environment. Mike Smith did the same thing — $4,500. We, in that same election cycle, had a mayor who spent $52,000.

If you stare at the majority of our candidates in this election cycle, they’ve claimed orally to have spent somewhere between a low of $2,100 to a high of $20,000. If you’re taking in well and good above that, then I think you’re out of reach. I don’t think that a municipal campaign should have any need to spend more, in most geography, than something less than $20,000.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay. We’re out of time. Thank you very much for your presentation and for taking the time to be here today.

Now, Mr. Heilman is stuck in traffic. So we have Brenda Locke, who’s here today, and we’re going to move Brenda up. We’re thankful that you came early, Brenda.

B. Locke: No, I’m not going to hand you any more paper. I used to do this, and I know what happens to the paper. Just saying. It’s okay.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay, Brenda. We’re ten minutes for presentation, five for questions. We’re a little bit flexible around that.

B. Locke: Perfect. Good to see some of you here. Well, it’s good to see all of you here.

My name is Brenda Locke, and I’m a former MLA and minister of state. I’ve run twice provincially and twice federally. This year I actually ran in the local government election. I really do appreciate the work that the committee is doing and will be doing to produce a more democratic requirement for election expenses.

At the outset I will say that my concerns are specific to my experience running for local government in a large urban centre, and I can’t comment on what it must be like in a smaller or more rural community.

I would also like to state that the democratic and ethical conduct, and the perception of democratic and ethical conduct, by the Chief Electoral Officer should be a key concern in considering fiscal issues as well. Specifically, I believe that it is inappropriate and perhaps a conflict for city clerks to be the Chief Electoral Officer for cities. That’s a premise that I want to start off with to sort of set a ground.

City clerks work directly with, and have relationships with, sitting councillors and, for better or for worse, have perceived relationships and favouritism with candidates and slates. City councillors remain as city councillors during their election. So on a day-to-day basis they’re working with that city clerk. Even during the election writ period they’re working directly with the clerk.

In the case of the provincial government, only executive councils, as you know, remain active during a writ period. In contrast, MLAs stand down during the writ period. City councillors don’t. They continue to do their job and interact directly with the employees of city hall, including the clerk, and represent the city before the public. That in itself, to me, is a conflict, real or perceived, but it also lends itself to making demands that may be financial.

For example, during this local government election in Surrey, zoning came before city council during the writ period that was tabled because an investor or one of their slate donors didn’t approve of the specific situation. Transportation issues also were impacted in different ways because of city council working with groups that may or may not be supportive of their position.

Again, that may be real, and it may be just perceived. In any way, it’s a concern to the public.

I, for one, was never sure if the information that I gave to the election officer, the city clerk — my nomination paper, including my endorsers, and my bio — were not given directly to the mayor or any of the councils or the members prior to them going public. Even the fact that I had to go to the city council office, which is where the clerk’s office is, to put my papers in felt inappropriate to me.

In terms of third-party advertising specifically, I am perplexed as to how it is different when the city of Surrey puts ads in local papers advertising things like Diwali, Thanksgiving, Remembrance Day, Halloween and other
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events all inside of the writ period and all highlighting the name and picture of the incumbents running for the election.

During the election writ period all was paid with taxpayer dollars, of course. This is a significant benefit to the incumbents, and the costs are not recorded. They’re not recorded as third-party or as campaign expenditure, even though it is still in the writ period.

In Surrey in this last election, the BIA, for example — which is, I guess, a product; the city endorses it — ran ads during the writ period on CKNW, saying what a wonderful place it is to come and invest and be a part of Surrey, and we have this great big building, and all the wonderful things. Again, that was not a filed third-party endorser. So I just wanted to raise that as an issue.

There is not a level playing field when incumbent candidates have full access to all of city resources because they are active during the writ period. I recommend that local government have the same rules as provincial governments — that they cannot do any advertising, I think it’s one month before and during the writ and then a couple weeks post–election writ period.

City councillors and incumbent candidates — they get to use their city cell phones during the writ. They use them actively during the writ, for their election expenses. They are not recorded. They use their city computers. They use all of the stuff that they have. In Surrey they have home offices set up, so they have all of that access.

I also firmly believe in accountability, openness and transparency in dealing with election financing. Currently that isn’t the case with local government election financing. While there is a requirement that the election finances are reported, the checks and balances in proving and providing that information, in my opinion, is weak.

I support caps on advertising for candidates — mayor and council and trustees. The ability for the incumbents to raise money is significantly increased, and it seems that the per-candidate cost is determining, in many cases, the outcome of the election, especially when the sky is the limit.

Further, if you look at the last election, for example — so the 2011 local government election — Surrey First was, at that time, the only slate that ran. Every single one of the mayor and councillors all claimed the same amount of money, $676,283 — hardly open disclosure. In the case of — as you guys all know, and so do I — provincial and federal elections, we are all independent, and we all have to declare our finances separately.

Because there are no hard-and-fast rules around local government spending during an election, liberties are taken. I would humbly suggest that inaccurate accounting of the expenditures of local government election are not even close to being disclosed, whether that is intentional or not, just because there are so many options for them to use for financing.

It would also make sense, therefore, to ensure that political societies or associations, however they’re done, have rules that are open and transparent so that clubs cannot be formed by political groups that are closed and not open to the public for funding scrutiny.

Again, for example, in Surrey, Surrey First is not a public organization. It is a closed society for members of the actual council and their family members. It’s not open to be a member of Surrey First. There is the ability for those societies, therefore, because they are closed, to manage their moneys in whatever way they see and deem fit.

I would like to add that I think it’s imperative that the process by which local government election donations be treated is similar to that of federal and provincial — that donation limits from persons and corporate donors are limited, that mandatory receipts with full disclosure are available, that there are limits on cash donations, that the CRA political donation deductibility is part of the picture so that you give a deduction to a donor, and that there are spending caps.

That’s pretty much it. Thank you very much for this opportunity, and I wish you well on your journey. This is a great job you’re doing.

M. Hunt: Brenda, in the midst of this past election how did you set up your campaign? You’re talking about electoral societies, those sorts of things. First of all, did you set up an organization for the group that you ran with?

M. Hunt: And it had the appropriate 15 members, so therefore, you were an electoral organization per se.

M. Hunt: Then all your money came into the electoral organization, rather than to the individuals.

M. Hunt: Just since you were suggesting that Surrey First declared theirs in this manner, how are you planning to declare yours — as the individuals, or because it went into the organization, you’re going to declare it as being the electoral organization’s income?

B. Locke: And it’s not a good way. In my opinion, it is not the appropriate way of doing it, because it should be individual.
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M. Hunt: Let me then ask the question — because you could have, ahead of time, set up yours in a different manner: how would you distinguish donations between you and those who ran with you?

B. Locke: Just like we do in a provincial or federal campaign, we would raise our own money individually. We pooled it. There were only two of us, so it was quite simple to do. We pooled our money. But we would have done it just like we did in a federal or provincial campaign, where moneys are completely separate. I raise what I need….

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for that very thoughtful presentation. You’ve actually raised a couple of issues that I really hadn’t thought about before, so I want you to know right off the bat that it was very, very helpful. I also wondered if we might receive a copy of your presentation.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): That’s fine. We’ll pull it from Hansard. I couldn’t write as fast as you were speaking, and there were some really valuable points in there.

I do have a question similar to Marvin’s that has to do with the relationship between the elector organization and the individual. Did you see, much like they have in the provincials and federals, that there are elector organization expenses that would get tied to the elector organization? There might be some expense limits to that. And then there’s individual. Did you see that they might be sort of separate, so much like that model?

B. Locke: Yeah, absolutely. We were such a small…. I mean, we were two people, so it was quite different in our case. Or not different, but….

B. Locke: Yeah, absolutely, and I think there were two other teams that ran in Surrey besides Surrey First and Team Surrey. They may choose to do their campaign financing disclosure differently, because it seems to me that they actually did use that model.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): If I just might follow up on that question, I’m trying to grasp what the relationship might look like between individuals operating within an electoral organization and what an expense limit might look like for those folks and then those who are not part of an electoral organization.

Should they have the same expense limits or different — one more, one less? Those are the kinds of things that we’re going to be struggling with — if you had some thoughts about that. I’m assuming that it’s the principle of fairness, which certainly, I heard you speaking a lot to — that that was a very important value for you. Do you have any thoughts about that?

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Yeah. If we were to do a dollar-limit cap…. Let’s take, just for argument’s sake, in a community like Surrey that $40,000 would be the limit you could spend as an individual. But if you’re two individuals running together with an electoral organization, does that mean it’s an $80,000 cap all told, or would it be 30 if you’re running and then the leftover to the electoral organization?

J. Tegart (Chair): We’re finding, as we go along, we have many more questions than answers.

G. Holman: Brenda, thanks for coming today. Kind of a related question about third-party advertising — I guess, two questions. First, should there be a separate limit for each third-party advertiser? And then if the advertising is explicitly in relation to…. Again, this could be a difficult call to make. It might be difficult to determine whether the third-party advertiser is explicitly kind of endorsing a candidate or not. They may be just advertising about an issue that’s so closely tied to a candidate that you kind of….

How do we come to grips with setting a limit, assuming that there should be a limit, on third-party advertisers? Again, if it’s advertising, say, explicitly in relation to a candidate. Should that somehow count as part of the candidate’s spending, or should that be something dealt with under a separate…?

B. Locke: Gee, you guys have some really good questions. It is ten o’clock. I should be awake.

I think there should be caps on third-party advertising. I don’t think that it should be denied, and I think it’s fair game if somebody wants to endorse.

Yeah, you guys are paid to do this. You’re going to have to do it. I can’t wrestle that one. I don’t know the answer to that.

I’m thinking of our experience here in Surrey, and I think that was one of the reasons why…. I don’t know if it makes a huge difference, but we’re a big city. I think
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there’s a difference between…. That’s another thing you’re going to have to wrestle. I don’t know the answer to that — with a smaller community versus some place like Surrey.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay. Well, thank you very much, Brenda. We’ve given you some food for thought, and you’ve also given us some food for thought.

I do believe that now we’re going to have Joe Heilman on the line because he’s stuck in traffic. I understand there have been a few accidents this morning. We’re going to recess for two minutes while Kate gets him on line.

J. Tegart (Chair): We have Joe Heilman on the line. Joe, thank you very much for taking the time this morning. We have ten minutes for the presentation and then five minutes allotted for questions. We’ll have you go ahead.

J. Heilman: Good morning, Expense Committee. I’m Joe Heilman, and I was a candidate for city council in the city of North Vancouver. Thanks for the opportunity to speak today.

Municipal candidates are currently accepting donations from organizations. When these donors are coming in front of council, typically, it’s kind of perceived that they look to receive award for their generosity.

My thoughts on this issue. You know, it’s kind of seen as being corrupt. My suggestion is that candidates be legislated to recuse themselves when donors come in front of them at council. Enacting arm’s-length legislation such as this would make organizations think twice about how much they’re contributing to candidates because then they cannot vote on their issues.

In addition to self-regulation, the playing field in elections would be levelled so the community could elect the right candidate, not the person who has the most signs or the biggest newspaper ads.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for being flexible and calling in with your comments.

I just wanted to ask you if you’d given any thought to expense limits and what sorts of principles would be important. That’s the mandate of this committee: to take a look at expense limits and the principles that should guide those recommendations.

First, do you think there should be expense limits, and what are the sorts of principles we have to consider?

J. Heilman: I don’t personally think that an expense limit is going to help the cause. Specifically, in Vancouver they’re dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. In small communities like North Vancouver we’re dealing in tens of thousands of dollars. So having an expense limit I don’t think is going to work.

And I think that the matter needs to be self-regulated — making it so that corporations are self-regulating themselves in how much they donate. I think there should be no expense limit. Donors can donate whatever they want to a campaign. However, when they come in front council, the candidates would be legislated to recuse themselves from voting on their donors’ issues.

Right now you’re just talking about incumbents. But let’s say none of the incumbents are running again. Let’s just take an imaginary community. None of the incumbents are running again, and you now have everybody scrambling for, let’s say, the nine councillor seats or seven or whatever the number is. Do you think that anyone can spend whatever they want, or do you think that we ought to have some sort of limit about what people can spend?

J. Heilman: Again, I think there should be no…. People can donate whatever they want.

J. Heilman: I think that corporations should be able to donate whatever they want to a candidate’s cause, with there being recusal legislated.

S. Sullivan: Thank you for your comments. I’m thinking about my own personal situation where the donor list would go into possibly the hundreds. What we do with our fundraising is we have a separate person raising money, separate from the candidate. In fact, I don’t know who the donors are. I don’t often remember who they are. There are lots of donors. I’m just wondering how practical it would be to recuse when, in fact, the fundraising team tries to not let me know who the funders are. It’s a technical problem of how I would actually do that. I’d like to ask your opinion.

J. Heilman: That wasn’t exactly clear. Can you maybe come a little closer to the speaker and restate that?
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S. Sullivan: Okay. The question is…. Because I as a candidate often don’t know who the donors are and the donors can be dozens or hundreds of donors, if I have to recuse myself from each issue, technically…. Just how would I go about doing that if I’d have to review the donor list each time an issue came up?

J. Heilman: Okay, I understand. I think that if there was a matter…. In the legislation that would be in there, I think that you’d have an amount. Certainly $100 wouldn’t…. I mean, you could vote on the issue, I guess, if there was $100. That’s not going to be a thing. But if it’s more than, maybe, $500 or more than $1,000, then that would certainly be enough to enact the recusal legislation.

L. Reimer: Thanks very much for taking the time to participate in today’s hearing.

Chances are we’re going to enact expense limits, and I appreciate what you’re saying about the recusal things.

My question is around principles that we might look at in setting expense limits between electoral organizations, their candidates, and also independent candidates, so those candidates that are not running in an electoral organization. Then, the same principles that might apply to third-party advertising — third-party advertising being people who are advertising completely independent of the candidates and their campaigns. Do you have any thoughts on any of those?

L. Reimer: Sure. We’re looking at the principles for setting expense limits for electoral organizations, for candidates that run in those organizations and also independent candidates as well as third-party advertisers. Given that we’re most likely going to set expense limits, do you have any thoughts around the principles that we ought to be looking at when setting expense limits?

J. Heilman: I’m sorry. The question isn’t clear, so I’m not able to offer an opinion on the….

L. Reimer: Well, as an example, some of the principles we’re looking at are transparency, accountability, accessibility, openness — those sorts of things. Should an electoral organization have higher expense limits than an independent candidate? Should candidates running for an electoral organization have less expenses than independent candidates? That sort of thing.

J. Heilman: Okay. I think I understand what you’re saying. Should a party have a higher expense limit than, say, an independent candidate? Let me think on that.

I suppose it’s possible, yes. However, I mean, probably having different legislation for the party as opposed to the candidate…. When it comes to municipal elections, it’s not really about the party, I wouldn’t say. It’s about the individual candidate. When the voters are voting for a…. You know, it’s the people who get the most votes, not the party that gets the most votes. So I think probably having it standard across the board makes sense. But of course, that should be maybe reviewed a little further.

J. Tegart (Chair): Seeing no further questions, we would like to thank you very much for taking the time to present today. I trust you are not driving while you’re talking to us on the telephone.

J. Tegart (Chair): Next we have Grant Rice. I do apologize to those of you who are waiting. We’re running just a little bit behind, but it’s a pretty important issue.

Okay, Grant. So a ten-minute presentation and five minutes for questions. Good morning.

G. Rice: Thanks very much, MLAs. You’re all MLAs, I take it, right? I don’t have anything to hand you. I just have a bunch of scratch notes to share with you. I’ll just start by saying that I’ve run for council twice, in 2008 and 2011, and I ran as an independent for mayor in just this last election. I have experience in being part of a slate and as an independent, so I can bring a unique perspective, perhaps.

When I looked at the scope of this hearing, I looked at expense limits, but there are some other things that go along with that. When you talk about expense limits, you also have to talk about donations.

Things that I looked at were other jurisdictions. In Quebec, for instance, they have a ban on union and corporate donations. Ontario doesn’t, but they have base limits and per-capita expense limits, which I think is a pretty good model. I think their limits are way too high, but that’s beside the point. The other thing is that individual cities like Toronto — I guess they’re probably similar to a Vancouver model, where they have their own charter — have banned union and corporate donations as well.

I think that for us, municipalities here in B.C., I would prefer an outright ban on donations from unions and from corporations. Now, I know that that doesn’t hit on the expense limits, but I think if you banned those two sources of donations, the limitations on the amount of money being raised would be directly affected.

First off, I think we should…. There was an interesting
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question that came up. I think it was Selina that asked it of a previous speaker: if you have expense limits for individual candidates, should those expense limits be times nine for the party, or should they be limited in another way? I think they definitely should be limited, because what happens currently — and I’ve experienced this in the last election here in Surrey — is that you have coalitions or parties of convenience in cash as opposed to shared ideology.

There were three slates — or actually, four, I guess, if you want to call it, the TeamSurrey slate that ran, Brenda Locke and Steve Gammer. They just got together because they shared ideology, and they raised money together. But some of the other teams, I would call them, were all over the map as far as where their backgrounds were from and whether or not they shared common goals or visions or values. These were done specifically for raising vast amounts of money.

M. Hunt: You should most likely not mention names but talk in theory of, you know….

I ran with one council candidate in two previous elections. We were a coalition of the left, and then she ended up teaming up with the former mayor, who was definitely right of centre. To me, the convenience was just in being able to run as part of a party to raise cash and not that they shared ideologies.

I think one of the problems is that in the absence of a ward system or neighbourhood representation in large cities in British Columbia, we have these coalitions of convenience that come together to raise vast amounts of money so that they can run in elections. For independent candidates, it makes it almost an impossible venture.

Having run as a member of a slate twice…. It has its drawbacks, and one of the things that I found was that oftentimes you have to take one for the team. In other words, you may feel very strongly about a position, but because you’re part of a team, you have to keep your mouth shut or basically massage your message to fit within the team’s message. That’s a problem.

The other part is that you’re often accepting donations from groups that you personally would not do. In the 2000 election I freaked out when I found out that we had accepted money from Gateway Casinos, because I feel very strongly about the social ills of gambling. So you’re compromising your own values at times in order to become part of these larger teams in order to raise cash to try and fight a party that has unlimited resources.

I think there’s this problem in that when you’re looking at the criteria that you’re looking at in the scope of this project…. Your on-line survey was looking at: how do you rank these? Level playing field was one. Transparency was another. I didn’t do the survey on line. I thought I’d better come here and talk to you folks, because ranking how these things are doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter.

I think the heart of the matter is that it’s almost impossible for independent candidates to run in large cities. First of all, you’ve got the power of incumbency, which you have to battle, and Brenda touched on that, that you have all these people that are highly visible. Their advertisements, their pictures are in the paper all the time, you know, in city-sponsored advertising, so you have to fight back. The other thing is you have to fight the fact that they’re raising vast amounts of money.

Expense limits are definitely needed in B.C. I think expense limits would not be as big a problem or as highly needed as it is now if we had neighbourhood representation. If we had neighbourhood representation, the fact of the matter is that I don’t think you’d need expense limits as you do now.

In the last election we had 35 council candidates running in Surrey. In a city of almost 500,000, you would have to knock on 140,000 doors in order to get your name out there. So the power of advertising in the mainstream media, which requires a lot of money and a lot of signage all over the city…. It puts independent candidates at a marked disadvantage — or even candidates of slates who can’t raise that kind of money.

We won’t find out for a couple of months, but I think that Surrey First and Safe Surrey will have raised probably close to half a million dollars each. Barinder Rasode’s team raised $200,000, I think, at the point just before they disclosed. For other individual candidates…. I won’t tell you how much I raised. It’s embarrassing. But the expenses — you can’t compete with that. I think it’s very important that we have expense limits.

Some of the models I looked at…. I think the idea of having a baseline…. You have cities of all different sizes throughout B.C. So have a base amount and then a per-capita amount or a per-voter amount. I don’t know what that amount should be. Eighty-five cents in Ontario, I think it was, is way too high. I think in Quebec it was lower. But the numbers that you see of how much money they spent is still….

I just wanted to touch on a few other things. The pooling of money for individual candidates as part of a party. I think that the cap limit should be lower than the sum of the total. That’s one thing. I don’t know what it is, what it should be, but I think the sum of the total…. Then you would discourage people from joining teams together for the sake of raising a lot of money, as opposed to sharing ideology.

The other thing is that I don’t believe party names should be on the ballots. That is something that I think would force voters to become more informed about where people stand on issues. Keep the names off the
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ballots. The party names should not be on the ballots. It probably doesn’t happen as much in small communities throughout B.C., but it does in the larger ones. I think that that’s a very important aspect.

For some reason, in the last election the individual donor names were redacted from the disclosures. It didn’t happen in 2008. It happened in 2011. I’m not sure what happened, if there was a change in policy or whatever. It may be just Surrey that did that.

The other thing is that if we don’t go to a ban of corporate donations, numbered companies should not be allowed to donate unless they disclose the directors’ names. We could end up with numbered companies from China or who knows where donating to people’s campaigns for running elections, because those numbered companies are just a number as they’re shown. The voters need to know who those people are that are donating sums of money to campaigns.

If I’ve only got a minute left, I think I’ll let you folks ask me some questions. I’m good.

M. Hunt: Grant, at the beginning you said you used the Quebec and Ontario examples of per capita. Then you went on, and when you talked about neighbourhood representation, you said: “In neighbourhood representation we don’t need limits.”

Quebec and Ontario both have neighbourhoods. You’ve contradicted yourself. So pull it back together and tell me which one you want.

G. Rice: We might not need it. It’s not that we wouldn’t need it. It’s just that we might not need it if we had neighbourhood representation. What they’ve done in those jurisdictions is they have…. The ward limits are way, way lower, because you’re basing it on…. Say if we had my idea of five wards in Surrey, with two councillors elected per ward. You’d have a voter baser of maybe 50,000 people per ward — 50,000 or 60,000 people per ward. Then you would have your base limit and your per-voter limit. It would be much lower.

The mayor of Toronto. His limit is over $1 million because he’s representative of 44 wards. But the individual wards, their limits are quite low. They’re not extravagant by any means.

M. Hunt: You talked about dealing with the individual, versus the team or the slate. Talk about your relationship between running for the mayor or running for council. What should that relationship, in limits, be? I’m assuming the mayor should be able to spend more money than running for council. Any thoughts on a relationship between those two?

G. Rice: Yes. I think that where these different jurisdictions have done that, the baseline is higher, and then, I think, maybe even the per-voter limit is higher, too, for mayor. If you had a ward system — in my dream world — the mayor would have to be elected throughout the whole city. Obviously, the limit should be much higher for the mayor.

M. Hunt: I did have to say two. One last one. On the on-line survey that you chose not to respond to at this point in time — hopefully, you will when you go home — there was a list of a bunch of qualities. You said that you didn’t want to rank them.

In saying that, are you saying that you think they’re all important — and, therefore, one shouldn’t be ranked about the other? Or are you saying that it’s just too much of a challenge? I didn’t understand what you meant by what you said.

G. Rice: I just don’t find those types of surveys helpful — ranking surveys. You’ve already predetermined what you think the criteria are, and you go: “Okay, here’s what it is. Rank these.” I don’t think that that’s helpful, really, as far as an exercise in finding out how to change the electoral system.

J. Tegart (Chair): Just for the information of the group, that came from previous consultations with UBCM and throughout the province. We’re building on work that’s been done over the last two years. In our efforts to assist people, we wanted to build on that work that had already been done.

L. Reimer: What are your views on how we should set third-party advertising limits? Should we make them a percentage of a candidate’s spending limit? What are your thoughts on that?

G. Rice: I don’t like third-party advertising in municipal elections. I think it should be banned.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for coming, Grant. Congratulations on just putting your name forward. Good for you. I had no idea.

My question is similar to Marvin’s, around the principles that were put out there. There was an “other” category — if there was a principle out there that we hadn’t thought about.

Based on just what you presented, the principle that kept floating up, for me, that you were talking about, was
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accessibility. Anyone who lives in the community and wants to step up and represent the community ought to be able to, and sometimes money becomes the issue. You talked about these “coalitions of convenience” — I thought that was a very interesting use of language — versus other principled or values-based groupings.

I’m going to push you a little bit, if you don’t mind, on this. Was that just an accurate assessment — that accessibility and fairness into the system sort of rise or float to the top of the principles that we’ve been asking people to rank?

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay, well, thank you very much, Grant, for the presentation. We really appreciate that you took the time today.

J. King: I’m Jason King. I’m the treasurer for the civic Non-Partisan Association in Vancouver, the NPA. Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee on behalf of the NPA.

As in our previous submissions to the Local Government Elections Task Force, the NPA continues to support principles and practices that enhance transparency both during and between elections. We recently ran an election campaign focused on transparency and believe that open and accountable government is a critical priority.

The NPA sees the addition of expense limits as a critical component of fairness and transparency. We take the position that the Local Government Act and/or the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act should be amended to include election spending limits. We also encourage a clear, incremental and predictable transition to the new system of expense limits well in advance of the 2018 municipal elections.

In terms of how election expense limits are set, the NPA believes that a one-size-fits-all solution will not work. Municipal politics are very different in Vancouver than in some other areas in B.C., and the lowest common denominator will not serve any jurisdiction well.

We believe that the model for expense limits should vary depending on population and geography. We support a model that provides a base expense limit and adds an additional amount per elector when the population exceeds a base population as established by the legislation.

We also support the idea of using the consumer price index as a simple, fair and predictable way to adjust the spending limit on an ongoing basis. The CPI is currently used to adjust the limit for provincial elections in our province, and this has proven to be fair and effective.

It is also our view that there should be an expense limit established for mayoral candidates and separate expense limits for candidates seeking other positions. The formula, the base rate plus additional amount per elector, provides this flexibility to be used in an at-large system or a ward system. If a candidate is seeking a position in a ward system, then a base rate plus additional amount per elector formula should work if the formula is tied to the number of registered electors in a specific ward.

The same formula of base rate plus additional amount per elector can also be used for school board elections. If the school board electoral area spans more than one municipality, the per-elector amount can be calculated by using the school board’s list of electors for that area.

We also believe that if a mayoral candidate is seeking office and is affiliated with an electoral organization, the electoral organization must be part of the mayor candidate’s filings and have its separate filing that is clearly tied to the mayoral candidate. This would ensure full transparency for both the mayoral candidate and the electoral organization.

As an electoral organization, the NPA recognizes that during an election campaign the candidates from our organization would be involved in joint advertising or bulk buying of materials such as signage and brochures. The legislation should permit both independent candidates and electoral organization candidates to apportion costs on a pro rata basis.

However, we do feel that there needs to be proper legislation to prevent expense limits from being deliberately circumvented or manipulated — for example, through multiple electoral organizations working together in order to create a higher spending threshold through what is effectively a single campaign.

Current legislation contained in the Election Act of B.C. provides a mechanism for political parties and candidates to apportion costs. Similar wording in the Local Government Act or the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act would address this issue.

In terms of third-party advertising, organizations and individuals, the NPA endorses the position taken by the task force that any expenses incurred by third-party advertisers should be subject to expense limits and full disclosure. We believe there should be a level, clean playing field for political parties and candidates, and the same expenditure rules and limits should apply to all other third-party organizations or advertising sponsors.

We firmly believe that it’s crucial that these rules ensure third parties are genuinely and completely independent and cannot collaborate or share data, strategies or costs with political parties and/or candidates.
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There must be proactive transparency, and the rules for circumventing the act must have significant penalties and must be enforced. Voters deserve to know who’s paying for campaigns designed to influence them.

During the course of the recent municipal election in Vancouver there was some degree of controversy and discussion around the real or perceived propriety of large donations from single sources. We therefore feel there is a need to review the rules around union and corporate donations, particularly for entities that conduct business with the city. We also feel that any elimination of union and corporate donations should coincide with tax receipt status for electoral organizations equivalent to that for provincial or federal government levels.

In terms of overall donation limits, we will leave it to the committee to determine what they believe is in the public’s best interests. However, we do believe that any contribution limit and financial disclosures must encompass affiliates and directly associated entities of the donor as defined by normal legal definition. As a step further, we believe that exclusions for disclosures for donations under $100 should be removed and cash donations should be eliminated entirely.

All transactions should be by cheque or electronic transfer in order to ensure appropriate recordkeeping. Donations coming from holding or numbered companies should also include proprietor or board information to ensure further transparency and identify who’s behind these entities.

Rules should also be implemented to compel candidates and organizations to provide their disclosures in standard formats that are easy to analyze and use. For example, disclosures should not be provided in formats that are deliberately difficult to analyze, nor should it include misrepresentative charts, figures or messages. Disclosures should be designed to disclose information, not to deliver political spin.

Furthermore, we believe that all funds, services, items-in-kind and secondary volunteers from corporations, unions and non-profit organizations to political organizations should be included in reporting not only during the campaign but between the campaign period. We support the implementation of strict rules for periodic reporting in-between elections — for example, annual or quarterly reports.

We are also in complete agreement with the emphasis the Local Government Elections Task Force white paper placed on enabling a role for Elections B.C. in compliance and enforcement of campaign financing rules in local government elections.

As stated in the white paper, Elections B.C. would enforce the limits as part of its role in enforcing campaign finance rules. We strongly support this move, along with further moves to bring local elections under the control of Elections B.C.

As we noted in our previous submissions, Elections B.C. has developed a professional, highly regarded electoral finance branch that oversees the disclosure of election contribution and election expenditures and enforces the compliance of the Election Act of B.C.

Elections B.C. is also responsible for communicating and training political parties and candidates about the rules and legislation contained in the act. This system works very effectively at the provincial level, and we see no reason why the existing structure would not work well if the scope were extended to the local level.

Elections B.C. has capacity, experience, respect and credibility, and we believe it should be responsible for overseeing the reporting and compliance of the Local Government Act and the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act as well as housing and publishing the centralized donors list of all parties and individuals.

As we stated in our previous submissions, most municipalities have neither the staff nor the experience to oversee the reporting and compliance of rules pertaining to civic electoral finance, and asking them to do so risks creating real or perceived conflicts. We have significant concerns about the ability for any election in the province to be conducted with both full impartiality and the appearance of impartiality when the administrators conducting elections report directly or indirectly to elected officials.

Having Elections B.C. oversee municipal electoral finance laws would provide consistent, clear and comprehensible rules throughout the province. In a worst-case scenario, localized development and administration of civic electoral finance rules creates increased risk of real or perceived politicization of city staff. At minimum, it puts local elections officials in a very uncomfortable position of setting the terms by which their direct or indirect managers are elected or re-elected.

Having Elections B.C. oversee municipal electoral finance laws would provide consistent, clear, comprehensible rules throughout the province.

Finally, we believe that the Election Act of B.C., the Local Government Act and the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act should be standardized and harmonized on an ongoing basis, with civic electoral finance legislation and other relevant provisions mirroring provincial legislation. This will provide consistency of process, clarity of rules and a clear understanding of the penalties for non-compliance. It would streamline the process for communicating with and training political organizations and candidates, especially given that many candidates and campaigners are active at multiple levels of politics.

In summary, we support implementation of modern, consistent, transparent and impartial rules for municipal elections.

G. Holman: Wow. This is very thorough, really helpful. Obviously, you read the terms of reference of the committee. You even got to some of the trickier questions we’ve been grappling with and putting back to folks. Thank you for that.

Just a couple of…. On the third-party advertising, you support the notion of a separate limit and full disclosure. Any advice on the principles on which to base a dollar number? How do we come to grips with that as something to think about or provide a response on?

I asked another presenter previously: would you consider a third party almost like a separate voice, like a separate candidate? Would that inform you in coming up with a dollar limit? I mean, that’s an example of what…. And I don’t know if that makes sense or not. How would we come up with a limit? Of course, again, it depends on the size of the…. A third-party advertiser in Vancouver clearly has a much bigger task, and therefore more dollars, in order to kind of achieve the same getting out to people as in a smaller community.

J. King: I don’t envy the commission on trying to come up with a limit for third parties. I think it’s a difficult thing to set. I think the idea of seeing them as an independent candidate of sorts is one way to go. I think that there needs to be some sense of an overall set limit for a given candidate or an organization. If you set it just as a set limit for one individual or do it on an individual basis, you could have companies that…. They set it up under separate companies, but really, it’s one organization or one group that’s doing it, and they’re sort of circumventing the rules.

I think that whatever formula you come up with, you need to be keeping a total dollar amount in mind that you don’t want these third parties to go over. I think that it could, again, give the perception to the electorate that there are all of these third parties that are heavily influencing the election that aren’t running for office and that have great sway over what happens. You need to set very strict limits and be very cautious of the level and involvement of these third parties.

Thank you very much for making your presentation. It was very comprehensive. It’s great. And it’s a thick read. I’m grateful that you’ve given us something to sort of chew on here.

I’ve got two questions. One has to do with the fact that…. I appreciate in Vancouver it’s very much a party system that has developed there. If you can turn your mind a little bit to, as we think about them, expense limits and the relationship between electoral organizations and folks who run independently. I’ll just put that one out. How do we look at expense limits so that it’s an even playing field? I think, generally speaking, that’s a value that pretty much everyone that we spoke to sort of holds.

The second question — I’ll just put them both out there — has to do with…. You make a comment that we need to review the rules around union and corporate donations. What recommendations do you have, if that’s the case? When we review the rules, what would you like…? It’s not what we’re considering, but I’d be interested in hearing if that’s something that we should continue allowing, or is that something that we should sort of pull out of local elections?

J. King: Yeah. I’ll take the second one first, I think. Our position, and our candidates’ positions, over previous years has been that they desire to eliminate corporate and union donations. As I stated in the statement, in the event that that takes place, there definitely needs to be tax receipt status given so that…. It’s difficult for individuals and campaigns to raise money when corporations and unions are taken out of the equation. There need to be real incentives for individuals to step up. That would be our position on that.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): The first one is about the challenge that comes when you have an electoral organization and an individual and how do we….

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): If we’re going to be looking at expense limits, what’s the relationship like between those two entities, the individual and then the electoral organization, around expense limits so that it’s an even playing field?

J. King: Yeah. Again, it’s difficult. I think that there needs to be…. I do believe in a level playing field between the two groups. I do think that electoral organizations, just by their nature…. They’re more costly to run. There are more requirements on the electoral organization. In the event that it’s not completely even, I wouldn’t want a gross disparity between the two, whereby an individual that wanted to step up on behalf of the community felt that they weren’t able to compete with an electoral organization just because of the dollars that were accessible to the electoral organization.

M. Hunt: Yes, Selina has caught my one question, on the independents versus slates. I would like you to think on that one some more, and maybe if you come up with an answer…. I would like to get from you a sort of proportional notion, and if you don’t want to do it, that’s fine too.
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Let’s focus on Vancouver for a moment. If the limit — and we’ll just use the arbitrary number of $40,000 just for the sake of argument. Okay?

M. Hunt: So $40,000 wrapped up in a slate of eight candidates is a whole lot more money than the independent running with $40,000. But obviously, you’re not going to turn around and sit there and say: “Well, if you run in a slate, you’re allowed $40,000. If you run as an independent, you’re allowed $300,000.” Then, you’ve also got how many are in the slate and all those kinds of numbers.

Also added to that is, of course, the issue of multiple-jurisdiction slates — which you have in having parks board, school board, council and the mayor’s chair — so that you have even more members to accumulate. By the same token, you also have more expenses in the city of Vancouver.

Do you see, in your concept of this, the accumulation of those limits for those in slates? Therefore, as a result, in Vancouver the gross number that would be allowed for a slate would be considerably larger because you have parks board and school board to add as well.

J. King: I think my answer is yes, but it’s not a firm yes. I think that the individual amounts do need to be considered when putting them together in a slate. Yes, does the electoral organization have more strength in numbers? But I don’t think that you want to necessarily start taking money away from the electoral organization that’s trying to move a slate across the line by having much stricter limits for the electoral organizations.

I mean, again, it’s a balancing act. I don’t envy the commission on trying to come up with a formula that works — that is seen as both fair and workable for both groups.

J. King: Yeah. No, I understand. I don’t know that I can give you a good answer.

J. King: One thing I would add is that in Vancouver, I think all three main electoral organizations — or, if you include the Greens who ran a much shorter slate, four — short-slated. Not one of the organizations ran a full slate of candidates.

That alone would take some of the money away that would be coming to the electoral organization. You know, an electoral organization would have to weigh the pros and cons of the extra money versus the benefits of short-slating and getting their members across the board. I mean, there are pros and cons no matter how you look at it.

M. Bernier: Thanks again. To echo a lot of the comments, this was very comprehensive and gave us a lot to look at. Just one quick question.

Of course, we’re trying to look at how we can make rules or regulations around this or policy that’s going to represent British Columbia, recognizing the differences right across the province. One of your comments that I haven’t really picked up from others before, though, too strongly, was to eliminate the cash donations.

M. Bernier: So can you give me an example or the reason why you would see that as quite important? I know you talk about recordkeeping. I think it’s what you said. I’m just going to mention that, because in smaller communities a lot of the fundraising is passing the boot around. It’s the toonies and the $20. If you’re running a $500 campaign, that’s really important sometimes.

J. King: I hear you. But I think that we can’t use the smallest jurisdiction as the basis for how we move forward. I think that when you get into larger jurisdictions — whether it be Surrey, Vancouver or where have you — there’s the perceived view that if cash is being handed over, it’s not being tracked and it’s not being followed correctly. I think, more than anything, we want to ensure a high level of transparency.

I mean, there was a lot of talk in the Vancouver election about dark money — money in between elections from groups that were not having to be disclosed during campaign periods, etc. I think the more you remove potential areas of…. Whether they’re conspiracy theories or if there are things actually taking place, I think the more you remove from that to give confidence to the voters that things are being conducted fairly and transparently, the better your chances of getting more voter engagement — feeling that they’re actually having a voice and having an effect on the election.

M. Bernier: If I could just follow up, then. In between elections is a totally separate issue, I guess, but valid point. Do you see a lot of money, then, in the larger cities in, like, the $50 bills just floating across? Is it a big issue that we think…?

J. King: The vast majority of the money that came in to us was obviously via a cheque or money transfer, and most of it via cheque, so no, it is not an issue where we’re seeing large sums of money coming through by cash. But again it’s a transparency issue. People assume that if cash is trading hands rather than cheques or money orders, somehow that money is going to the wrong place or money is coming through that shouldn’t be.

More than anything for us…. While we haven’t ex-
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perienced anything in the last several elections with the NPA that would suggest that there’s necessarily a problem with cash, again I would go back to the perceived view of the elector that somehow money could change hands that shouldn’t or money could get into the system that shouldn’t, as a result of cash.

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

J. Tegart (Chair): Good morning. We have a ten-minute presentation and five minutes for questions. If you’d like to go ahead.

S. Oh: Thank you. I’ll make it five minutes, if you don’t mind. Local elections expense limits. It’s just very interesting. I enjoy the sense of breathtaking adventure and surviving, but it’s not the simplest, what we see — all these election campaigns. I don’t know.

I became a vegan in 1999 for two reasons. I love animals, and the second reason is global warming, climate change. I saw these people. The excessive signs, excessive newspaper ads and the name tags — those are made from plastics or metals. I don’t know that those types of expenses are necessary. For example, if you spend over $200,000 in an election campaign, that’s over two years of their salary. So how can they recover? From whom?

If somebody gives you a large amount of donations, there are always conditions attached. Actually, in my case, the church suggested to me they were going to advertise. “Why don’t you give me…? You know, write down about your campaign, and we are going to advertise in the paper.” I didn’t accept that, because if I accepted that, they’d then force me to come to their church. But likely I’ll go to that church, so I refused. They were kind of angry with me about that.

I don’t believe in accepting large amounts of donations or even small amounts of donations. I think they should disclose.

As I say, I love animals, and they are doing contradictory…. They say they want to protect the environment and they want to protect the trees and all those things. But what they do…. Those signs. We are not talking about 100 or 1,000 signs. I heard some people, like 20,000 signs. My suggestion is that from now on all those signs, the campaign materials, should be biodegradable materials.

They destroy our environment, so that’s, I think, very important. Definitely they should start to use all those biodegradable materials. Beyond the excessive signs, the newspaper ads, the name tags made from plastics, metals — those are a poor choice for risking the environment, pollute the environment, destroy ecosystems. It is not necessary, absolutely.

Wherever they go, they can see the signs. When you see the newspaper, they can see the person, mayor or whoever — candidates advertising they are good, even if they’re not. But if you see that again and again, all psyched up, people I know, when the voting day comes.

I spoke with them. Well all other candidates…. They are working with the money for lawn signs, newspaper ads — with the campaign managers and all those things, name tags and access to brochures. But I didn’t do any of those.

Also, I suppose I wanted to have an experiment. Because people say, “Anybody will be better than current mayor in township of Langley,” and I saw myself…. I was running for mayor, and I spoke with people. For example, if I spoke with ten people a day, nine of them said they’re going to vote for me. Not because I will do well, but because they don’t like so much the current one, so they are going to vote for me.

But then again, the signs started to pop up on the lawns wherever you go — and the newspaper. Of course, when you see that again and again, like for example, designers trying to sell their clothes and the children cookies. They advertise on TV. Those are very expensive. But those people know how to control the human mind.

That is exactly what happened. I was surprised. I was sure I could be elected, but those signs everywhere…. I decided not to put up a single sign. I was working only two weeks, by myself, speaking with the people who go there, so I wanted to find out.

Another strange thing was Vancouver. Vancouver needs transportation. I noticed those mayoral candidates talking about transportation and those things. But these people are imitating them.

In the township of Langley, I walk myself. Wherever I go, I ride the bus, so I knew that most of the time those empty buses…. You know, two or three people are running around. So I actually think it should be the other way around, because the Vancouver candidates talk about transportation, they are imitating. But I noticed at two different locations in the township…. The one location is Willoughby. It definitely needs transportation — none of them there.

McMillan Island, the First Nations — there are 60 children and some seniors. They can’t walk properly. There they needed the bus. The No. 62 bus goes in that area anyway, but for whatever region, the bus doesn’t stop at one more place, so I think that is very cruel, unkind. If they work with the First Nations, they are going to generate revenue and give them what they need.

I saw they needed transportation and the sewage system. The sewer goes there anyway, you know — only about two metres. But why they wouldn’t have that, heav-
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en knows. So a sewage system for the First Nations.

The street lights. There are young girls there too. So I saw they needed street lights, but they’re totally forgotten. I believe children need equal protection, equal education, equal transportation, whatever they may be. So those things, to my great consternation…. I can’t believe it. Those are only about 100 metres away. It’s so close. Why don’t they do those things? Because if they work with First Nations, as I say, that will generate sustainable revenue, but he can’t think.

Also, I heard the mayor was a police. Of course, the mayor’s job is to make strategic plans, and the budgeting — those kinds of things. So I surmise that, you know, I can do much better than this. Actually, then, at the polls, of course, behind me with the parties…. Definitely, you know, it would be overwhelming. But now it was a very good experience, and also, of course, I saw that the treatment of First Nations — absolutely no need and unnecessary.

Yes, they say they are going to protect…. You know, they love any…. They want to protect the tourists — those types of things. Yet again, they really don’t know the deep meaning of what they are saying, because in order to protect the tourists and the environment, they have to change their actions.

Less eating meat, for example. It is highly, you know, not necessary. For example, factory farms. One of the candidates was advertising in the paper. Every time when I saw that… Is it necessary? I think I can see the reason, in the near future there will be no factory farms.

You know, they want to protect the tourists, but how about anyone help our children? Thank you.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Ms. Oh, for making the presentation. I really, really appreciate you coming before us. You certainly shared with us the experience of what it was like for you to run in your community, which is always helpful to hear.

I’m wondering if you’ve considered or thought about…. It sounds like competing financially was difficult with other mayoral candidates — that they had money to do a whole bunch of things. If you’ve thought about, you know, if that’s the most important thing for us to consider as we move forward about developing expense limits. Is that the most important thing for us to think about: to make sure that anyone can run regardless of, sort of, money. Is that, would you say, the most important thing for us to think about?

S. Oh: I thought about that too. I believe a true democracy allows equal opportunity. It was an equal opportunity. I think I was fortunate to have lost all my votes in 2013, not because I was guilty. The judges ignore the legal, factual, conclusive evidence, so this was, you know, I was almost like…. I saw those judges needed the retraining, especially all the high-ranking ones.

This election campaign, I think the government should pay local election expenses to all the candidates an equal amount, so that they will have an equal….

Seeing none, thank you very much for your presentation today, and thanks for coming.

Thank you very much for coming today. We apologize that we’re running a little behind schedule. We have ten minutes for presentation and five for questions, so if you’d like to go ahead.

H. Colbert: Good morning, Chair, Members, staff and guests. Thank you for convening this important committee. My name is Hazen Colbert or Hazen Colbert. Both pronunciations are accurate. It depends on where I am in the country, as you’ll hear in just a minute.

I live in the district of North Vancouver, and I ran for district council this year. I financed my entire campaign myself, save for a $200 donation, from my father and my barber allowing me to leave about ten business cards beside his cash register.

My campaign was my first. It was educational. I used to own property in the province of Quebec, which qualified me to vote for municipal elections there. This is no joke, but the phrase that was used was: “Vote early; vote often.” Yes, I thought Quebec was a free-for-all until I moved to British Columbia. This is the Wild West of municipal election government.

At the conclusion of the election I was left with a number of thoughts. I offer them to you, based on anecdotal examples but leaving out any names.

My first thought was: “What is the market value of services donated or provided to a candidate?”

One fine candidate stated in their campaign literature that they were independent. They also stated that they were responsible for administration of a survey conducted in person in the district some months before the campaign period. This person was indeed the public face of the survey. It was the launch of their campaign.

It was indeed my experience that the survey was in fact conducted — but not by the candidate. The survey was actually conducted by an employee of an agent acting on behalf of at least two real estate developers, one of whom
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at the time had an application in front of district council for consideration.

The survey was conducted over a period of several months out of a storefront in a shopping mall owned by one of the developers. The good candidate was positioned as the public face of the survey. But I lived across the street from that shopping mall, and I was there virtually every day. That candidate had far less involvement in the survey than that third-party employee.

I wondered how such an extended campaign process, going back at least nine months, can accurately be assessed a market value and reported. And even if assessed a market value, it would seem to me that detailed particulars would also need to be reported, much like the notes found at the back of a financial statement.

My second thought was: “What does endorsement of a candidate mean in practice, and how should professional services be assigned a value?”

A good candidate relied on the assistance of an employee of a member of the provincial Legislature. We had no way of knowing whether this employee’s assistance was as a volunteer on their own time or under the direction or advice of the MLA or possibly under the direction of the provincial party. Did the employee of the MLA use constituency resources and assets, including voting lists, to campaign for the good candidate? We simply don’t know. Was the employee of the MLA the proxy endorsement of the MLA? Again, we don’t know.

What was the economic value of the employee’s assistance? There was nothing wrong or irregular about the process. I can’t see any rules that were violated. But how does that process get assigned a market value and get reported? It would seem, as a bare minimum, that such assistance should have guidelines such as clear public disclosure.

Third, what is truly an electoral organization in practice, and how much economic value should it be allowed to contribute to one campaign in one jurisdiction?

One good candidate was endorsed by CUPE, and I am to understand that the endorsement came with a direct financial contribution. I don’t know how much money was involved. It might be very small. But it was still worrisome that the union of the employees for which the successful candidate must negotiate salaries and benefits has paid an incentive to occupy a seat.

It is simply not possible to be fully objective when someone puts money in your hand. It seems that a token donation of $50 might be appropriate but not thousands of dollars. Again, I’m using my own anecdotal example. We don’t know how much money was involved. I’m not suggesting at all that this was similar to the issues in the city of Vancouver.

Perhaps, to make things fair, there could be a requirement that if a candidate receives money from an organization such as a union, the union should actually be distributing an identical amount of money to each of the candidates.

In addition, it appears the candidate was endorsed, in all practical ways, by a provincial political party, so much so that on election day the party’s phone banks were used to encourage people to vote, in the usual way such phone banks are used on election days. Are there guidelines for this activity? Was the party an electoral organization and bound by rules? Were the rules followed? And what’s the economic value of that phone bank?

I’m left with four recommendations. First, the definition of an “electoral organization,” the definition of an “endorsement” from any organization and the definition of a “contribution” from any stakeholder must be broad enough to capture any person or organization’s activity for which the practical and, for lack of a better phrase, boots-on-the-ground behaviour of the organization is indeed an endorsement.

Second recommendation. There should be separate limits on both direct financial campaign contributions and contributions for which the market value must be determined. Flowing from that second recommendation is that when the market value must be determined, if any one contribution is expected to exceed a threshold…. I’ll use $200 as an example of a threshold. If one contribution exceeds $200 or the total contributions are expected to exceed $1,000, the market value determination should be made by a qualified arm’s-length party, independent of both the candidate and the contributors making campaign contributions.

Finally, the campaign period and the need to assign a market value to donations should not only be the immediate time period running up to the election or running up to the nomination but also in the activity that took place in some months back — perhaps it’s six months, no more than 12; perhaps somewhere between six and 12 — where the candidate may have benefited from or has referenced or relied on potential endorsement-type activity as part of their campaign.

Thank you for listening. I’ll endeavour to answer any questions that you might have.

M. Hunt: You use the concept of a period of time before the election period. The problem in local government, of course, is that you don’t have as clearly an election writ period, except for nominations. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I’m going to give it as an example, and you can say yea or nay. That would be: if we were dealing with expenses in the election year, in the year of the election, would that cover off the territory that you’re thinking?

H. Colbert: Certainly, that’s a scope that is worth discussing, yes. That’s workable.
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S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. It was actually very well thought-out and laid-out. I do have a question about expense limits and the relationship between individual candidates who run on their own in an elector organization. You talked a lot about donations, the donation end. But we’re thinking about expense limits, although I do appreciate your comments about donations. We’ve been hearing a lot about that.

When you think about those running as a slate or with an elector organization and those who are running as individuals, how do you wrap your head around the relationship between any expense limits that might appear for both? Should the expense limits…? If there are four people running on a slate, should it be four times what an individual is? Or should there be an adjustment made because they’re running as a group? What do you think about that?

H. Colbert: I don’t know the complete answer to that question, and I would actually suggest that more research needs to be done in that area, not just from the good work that you’re doing here but also the good work that the staff can do with respect to seeing what the best practices are in other communities across Canada.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): So if I tell you that there are no best practices…. We’ve done the research. We’re creating something, so we’re asking for your opinion. We’re not asking for, you know, based on your…. You have experience in the electoral process. We’re trying to keep things spare, so how do we act on that?

H. Colbert: You’ve mentioned that much of my presentation had to do with donations. Some of what I said actually also applies to expense limits. The reason I didn’t talk so deeply about expense limits is that I didn’t want to….

One thing that is clear to me is that I think that if someone uses their own money and their own resources, their expense limit could well be set at a different level than if they’re relying only on donations. For instance, if somebody does all the work themselves — literally building signs themselves, building their website themselves, a lot of those types of things — there has to be a somewhat different view of what their expenses are versus someone that actually has paid staff doing the work. I’m not quite sure how to address that. I think, as I’ve said, it requires some additional research.

You’ve asked me a really good question. You know, if you have a white piece of paper in front of you and you have to fill it in and there are no best practices, then I think that what we try to do is we set some guidelines for the next municipal election but we leave ourselves room to learn from those guidelines. We establish some guidelines and only fill in half the page so that based on the experiences after the next election, we can then edit those guidelines and we can perhaps add more. That’s how I would approach that problem.

J. Allen: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for taking time out on a beautiful Saturday morning, with the sun shining and the Grey Cup celebrations, to look after democracy in B.C.

I’ve come down from Harrison Hot Springs this morning. I’ve submitted this written memo, I suppose, on these issues. If it’s okay, Madam Chair, should I read through it first and then take questions?

J. Allen: Thank you. My name is John Allen. I come from the village of Harrison Hot Springs. I’ve been in local politics for 40 years — even worked with Marvin on a few things — as mayor, councillor and regional district director. So I’ve got a fair bit of experience on this. I’m now a senior citizen, and I’m old and grumpy and outspoken.

J. Allen: No, I’m a really bad politician, actually, because I didn’t get elected last time around — something I’m quite proud of sometimes.

Anyway, I hope you’ll be open to considering a comment about an elephant in the room. I would like to address an issue which is, I believe, corrosive to the democratic electoral system. It involves the sponsorship and financing of candidates but is outside the box.

The box in this case is the time frame arbitrarily imposed on the reporting period for campaign financing activities. While thinking outside the box is generally considered admirable, actions taken outside the statutory box are against the spirit of the law and against the general public interest.

Some time ago I had occasion to attend a function where other mayors were present. One evening I had a chat with one and asked him what had got him started on his political career. He was very candid, and I was quite surprised at what he told me. I’ve no reason to doubt his honesty in telling me this story. Though we were having
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a social drink at the time, he was by no means suffering from a loose tongue. Indeed, he seemed quite proud of the scheme, his part in it and what it had achieved.

He told me that he was approached by an organization of which he was a member and asked if he was interested in becoming an MLA one day. When he expressed interest, the organization laid out its long-term career plan for him. They reminded him that he would be expected to remain loyal to the interests of the sponsor and act in their interests when placed in any position of power or influence. Accepting these terms, his grooming started.

First, he was elevated within his organization and appointed to committees and sent off as a delegate to conferences, etc. Next he was proposed for any community-based committees which came up. Then he was sent to SFU to take courses in how to get elected, including public speaking, rules of order, etc.

His sponsor then bought him a new wardrobe of clothes, including a suit, topcoat, good shirts, etc. — all worth almost $5,000. He was also given an annual allowance of around $5,000 which allowed him to attend every public event in the area, including dinners, shows, charity functions, etc., and to buy drinks and socialize so that he could build a personal network.

When it came time for him to be run as a candidate, he was promised and was given the support of all the people who were members of like-minded affiliated organizations. In a blue-collar town this was a considerable block of votes.

By the time they were ready to run him, they had spent a lot of money grooming him. All of the above activity and expenditure took place before the campaign reporting period, so none of it was reported. When he succeeded in getting elected, only a modest campaign expenditure was reported. His sponsoring organization did not show up on his list of contributors, even though they had been his financial benefactors for some time before.

He may even have had some money left over from earlier sponsorship to set aside and pay for his campaign, but as this was received by him before the reporting period, it wasn’t revealed. He didn’t need much of a campaign during the election period, as all the heavy lifting had been done before the reporting period started. During elections he always had a very vocal cheering section present at any meeting.

On election he started his climb to the MLA position. As a councillor and mayor, he never revealed his sponsorship but was clearly keeping his part of the bargain. In any negotiations for labour contracts, he strongly supported a brotherhood and helped grow the workforce and payroll costs of the municipality.

Unfortunately for him and his sponsors, the wheels fell off. He wasn’t well suited to the high life, and he succumbed to some personal temptations which caused him to disappear suddenly.

I was surprised that he told me all this, as I am not known to be closely affiliated with the labour movement and have been targeted by them while bargaining on the public’s behalf. I can only speculate that he missed the class where they would have told him not to reveal all this to anyone.

His revelations caused me to look on all other politicians with a jaundiced eye and a little suspicion. How many of them, I wondered, are plants acting for a sponsor to whom they have sworn allegiance? How could they reconcile this with the oath of office, which requires them to act in the public’s interest?

In looking around at other politicians and perusing their career paths, it seems quite clear that many of them have followed a career path which starts out at the grass-roots level. As their public profile grows, it becomes easier to be elected and to be elevated up the ladder.

While this might be a perfectly natural and organic process for some, others may be the beneficiaries of well-organized schemes to ensure their success. Large doses of artificial fertilizer — in this case, money — will certainly help overcome any naive or organic competitors.

This review is about municipal politics, but perhaps this municipal level should be viewed as a mere stepping stone to the Legislature or parliament. Other stepping stones are school boards, parks boards, credit union boards and similar organizations which can give a future MLA a better public profile.

The immediate danger at the municipal level is that those sponsored by organized labour can dominate a council and grant fat contracts to their brethren, which the rest of the public has to pay for. I’m not suggesting that they are all acting in a conflict of interest and should excuse themselves from all labour discussions and votes, but there is a possibility that their loyalty to their sponsors outweighs their loyalty to the electorate.

We’ve recently seen the Geoff Meggs chat with the Vancouver union, which appeared to promise job security in exchange for civic campaign money. Interestingly, that also revealed that more money would flow to Vision from higher up, probably the B.C. Federation of Labour. It seems pretty clear that there is a master plan at work here which places labour-friendly or totally loyal people in high places.

Our parliamentary democracy comes from England, and we should perhaps look there for any weaknesses in it. During the Cold War the left, represented publicly by the Labour Party, planted moles in government and the security services. Bright young people were recruited at universities like Cambridge and groomed for public office, either elected or appointed. The name Kim Philby might ring a bell. Because many of them became privy to state secrets, which they leaked to Russia, they were dubbed as spies.

Recent revelations have made it clear that others who occupied high elected office were also loyal to offshore
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handlers, though few charges of treason were ever laid.

If there’s any parallel to be drawn from the above comparison, we should be very worried about the role which municipal politics plays in our selection of our MLAs. If the municipal stage of a political career is being used to plant MLAs in Victoria who have divided loyalties, perhaps we have a responsibility to clean up the municipal level and prevent it from being used in this way.

Municipalities, credit unions and the like have been effectively used by the NDP as the farm teams for the provincial and federal parties. While I must admire them for having the creative gumption to do so, and the organizational skills to carry it off….

J. Tegart (Chair): John, we’re going to ask that you address the principles under which our mandate is. If you could keep your comments to that.

J. Tegart (Chair): We’re looking for the principles in regard to third-party advertising and the relationship between candidates and electoral organizations.

J. Allen: I thought it was campaign financing and local expense limits. Strictly advertising?

J. Tegart (Chair): Third-party advertising and the relationship between candidates and electoral organizations — at this phase of our work — and expense limits, yes.

J. Allen: Well, I don’t see how I can simply edit what I’ve written on short notice like that. If you give me some time, perhaps I can try and…. Are you offended by the fact that I’ve used the names of parties or people? Is that part of the problem here? I’d be quite happy not to use those names if that’s what you find objectionable.

J. Tegart (Chair): At the very least. We would prefer not to have parties and….

J. Allen: Well, okay. I’m not sure how to proceed. I’m feeling censored here, because these are my concerns, and I think they are relevant to campaign financing.

J. Tegart (Chair): If you can leave the party name aside and address the principles that we’re looking for within our mandate, that would be extremely helpful.

J. Allen: Well, I’m sorry if my comments have offended anybody, but I’m just reflecting what I’ve observed — and my concerns about this. I think it goes…. I guess what I’m saying is that you in fact have put a little limit here that says you don’t want to talk about the role of the municipal politics in relation to how it fits into provincial or federal politics.

J. Tegart (Chair): If you wish to speak about the relationship that you see at a municipal level versus a provincial level, we’re asking that you stay within the mandate of the committee. But if your concern is in regard to electoral organizations under influence at a municipal level, then I would ask that you keep it to a very general concern about that, rather than naming parties.

J. Allen: Yeah, okay. As I said when I started, I tend to call it as I see it, and it’s hard to ignore the fact that we do have party politics at all levels. If I’m supposed to not deal with that, then let me move ahead and see if I can go ahead without it.

J. Allen: I’m no admirer of Liberals, Socreds or NDP as parties. To make it clear, I’m not partisan on this. I’m not a member of any party. I do not approve of the party system as such — the way it currently works. I’m not taking shots at the NDP here. In fact, I’ve expressed admiration for their ability to get organized more than others.

J. Allen: All right. Well, I’m skipping…. Okay, right. We make the naive assumption that all the politicians, upon election, will stick to the letter and intent of their oath of office and will always, without exception, act in the public interest. We should acknowledge that this does not happen and stop pretending that the oath of office has any real value in ensuring good government. The party system alone destroys it.

Anyone accepting a nomination from a political party accepts the party whip and agrees to vote as directed by the party. So how can one vote one’s conscience or judgment if that vote has already been sold to the party in exchange for election and the continuing benefits of office, such as salary and job security? The few politicians who eventually rebel and throw off the obnoxious yoke
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of party discipline do not fare well as independents or as defectors to another rival party. There’s no effective test for loyalty.

All elected officials take an oath of office which should preclude them from acting in a way which helps their sponsors. But if that councillor or MLA was selected by a party which had a stranglehold on a riding, the election itself was almost redundant. All the candidate had to do was to smile sweetly for a couple of months, and the party did the rest. The new MLA was not really chosen by the people but by the backroom people who orchestrated his elevation to high office. Taken to the extreme, elected officials become mere employees of the party.

I’m reminded of a BBC radio interview I heard in Britain. I think it was last year. The Member of Parliament was explaining his personal finances. He had been selected by a party and agreed to become a candidate on the party’s terms. The party paid for everything to get him elected, and on taking office, he turned over management of all his finances to the party, including assigning to them his MP salary and all expenses.

The party took all his income and expense allowances for office staff, accommodation, travel, etc., which added up to the equivalent of about $400,000 a year. From this, they paid him a modest living wage and gave him a room in a lodging house with other party members. The party made a significant profit on the deal, which was then used for any party political purpose they wanted. In effect, the public was financing the party. The money which was supposed to go to the MP to give him the financial security to be independent and free from influence peddlers had been diverted directly to those people.

I share this as a cautionary tale. It illustrates how badly the remuneration of elected officials can go wrong if we are not vigilant. Your vigilance is required to ensure that the municipal level of B.C.’s governance is not used to contaminate the higher level of government.

I could go on at some length about the damage done to democracy by a dysfunctional, adversarial party system. I would dearly like to be able to prevent it from contaminating civic governance, but I’m afraid it’s too late for that. The best I can hope for at this stage is that your committee will grasp the mettle and make strong recommendations for measures to limit their influence at this level.

Civic government has a primary responsibility of providing services to properties, such as roads, sewers, water, etc. It is basically a housekeeping function. Anything you can do to keep the focus on these very local responsibilities will be helpful. Severing the connection with the provincial and national parties would be a tremendous achievement.

In closing, I would like to state that I have never been a member of any party. I strongly disapprove of the backroom politics which skew and distort the democratic process so that the will of the people has become the will of a small handful of people being imposed on all the rest of the people. I’m very upset that the new four-year civic election cycle has been imposed and will only hasten the degradation of civic politics into the polarized politics which pervade Victoria.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Mine isn’t a question per se but just to get on the record and to correct the record that the NDP only elected two sitting councillors in this last election; the Liberals, I believe, there were seven or eight. So I just want to get on the record some correct information.

M. Hunt: I think actually all of us on this committee have all come from local government, so we can all be impugned in the negative aspect of what you said. But by the same token, I would suggest that for those of us that are here, since I have interacted over the years with different ones…. I can assure you that this is a very independent group of people that’s here. That’s certainly what I’ve observed.

But getting the context of what you’re trying to say — the challenge that slates and working together have in the electoral process — one of the challenges that we’re facing within our mandate is dealing with election expenses for independents versus slates.

Recognizing that there is an advantage of cooperation, working together in whatever form that may be, how would you see us making recommendations that would try to keep the playing field as level as possible in dealing with the fact of individual candidates choosing to cooperate together and work together to some degree on their elections and therefore be able to spread their money further? How would you turn that around into the spending limits of individuals versus slates?

J. Allen: Mr. Colbert before me expressed the same concern about the slates. It’s really difficult to distinguish between a slate and a party. When does a slate become a party? Is it a party, or is it not a party?

There’s certainly a great benefit to anybody who’s running on a slate with others, because you have the economy of scale for the marketing, for the campaign. You have the support of all the other people. Independents who…. I think, we have always assumed that people who are elected are elected to be independent.

I think that slates are part of the problem, because slates either become parties or become affiliated with parties or affiliated with the left or with the right. That’s
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part of the polarization that I see as being problematic. All I can do in the limited time that we have here this morning is to urge you to look for ways that can help the independent person who stands alone on his or her own merits and offers to serve the people — to encourage them to do so. Otherwise, it’s just going to degenerate into the left and right or whatever the slates or parties are.

I don’t have the answer for you. But certainly on the financing side, you should look very hard at the way the organizations are financed and reported and at what point they become a slate. You know, there’s a break point there, I think, in your legislation that says that there’s a dollar figure, that if a certain amount of money is spent, then it becomes an organization. Maybe you ought to review that number.

M. Bernier: Thanks, John. Another point — I guess a question — going off, I think, a big part of the theme of what your presentation was: at what point do you become a candidate? To your comments about progression of people supporting, moving somebody along…. I guess I’ll just quickly jump right to the point.

When we’re looking at the expenses, at the expense limits and the recording of all that, at what point, then, do you think people should start declaring the support, monetary donations, etc.? Maybe it’s even in-kind. At what point do you think that they should actually start declaring that as a candidate?

To your example, you could have somebody for, maybe, years that’s moving around, which I would probably argue is a natural progression for most of us in this room because we all come from mayor or council backgrounds too. But back to that point.

J. Allen: Well, John Kennedy said that the morning after winning an election he got out of bed and started running towards the next election. With the four-year cycle…. I think that when you had an annual election, things were much more fluid and change was much more organic. The independent, I think, had a better advantage of succeeding in the annual…. Well, it was annual municipal elections, with half the council every year and half the council the next year. That was a very active thing. The public was engaged.

People were always accountable, and they were always campaigning. They knew that either they were going to be on the ticket at the end of the year or they would be accountable for what their colleagues had done for the year.

I think there’s been a loss of accountability because of the four-year election cycle. Well, it went to three. Now it’s four. I think that will tend to favour slates and organizations and parties and tend to not favour the independent because really, the election for 2018 has started, and people will now start positioning.

Although somebody said there was no writ, there doesn’t have to be a writ, because it’s mandated as every four years. So the writ has been dropped. Four years from now there will be municipal elections. Get ready.

G. Holman: Thanks, John, for the presentation. Much of it was around concern about undue union influence at the local level and, I take it, in terms of contributions. Unfortunately, our mandate is around expenses. Do you have similar concerns around corporate influence at the local level?

J. Allen: Very much so. I think that the recent Vancouver election, although I’m saying it from afar, indicated that corporate finance is a very big issue, having been the victim of that myself. Even though I’ve spent many years in the real estate business, I’m no friend of the developers, and they’re certainly keen to support all their candidates who would be opposed to me. I see that as a problem. If it was possible to eliminate organized labour and corporations from election financing, I think that would be a good thing.

In the U.S.A. they’ve moved a little bit in that direction because they have the PACs, where the individual gets a tax break. There’s some government financing of candidates and campaigns to take off the pressure from corporate and other influence peddlers.

I don’t think that anybody should be able to buy an election. I think that the public, luckily for us, is cynical enough that they can recognize when an election is being bought and vote accordingly.

J. Tegart (Chair): Thank you, John. I am assuming that you have submitted your presentation.

J. Allen: Yes, I have, Madam Chair. I apologize for any offence caused by mentioning any particular party. As I say, I admire those who are very well organized. I just think that it’s not a good idea for the democratic system.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay, so we’ve reached the end of our people who have registered, but I understand there’s a gentleman in the audience that would like to present. If you’d like to come up, the process is a ten-minute presentation and five minutes for questions. If you wouldn’t mind introducing yourself, that would be great.

E. Diano: Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Enrico Diano. I am an immigrant here in Canada — not so new. I have been here for about 50 years in Vancouver, paying taxes, and I live there in Vancouver still today.

I’ve been involved in politics a little bit here and there. I’ve been participating at the federal level, the provincial level and the city level.

We are just coming out now from the local elections, so I’m terribly sorry to see that there are very few people here listening to you guys, because this is an extremely
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important opportunity for everybody to communicate with the provincial government.

The province of British Columbia is in a fantastic position right now to step in and fix a lot of things that are done in the wrong way in the province of British Columbia. The province is a state, and the city is very much a creation of the state. There are several pieces of legislation that are governing the city. The Vancouver city charter, for example, is a unique piece of legislation for the city of Vancouver, but we have the Community Charter, and we have the Election Act.

You are really here to give us the opportunity of the people, and I thank you for this opportunity to convey a little bit to the floor of the Legislature what is really going on in the communities.

J. Tegart (Chair): Enrico, before we start, I’m just going to indicate that our mandate, at this phase of our meetings, is around election expenses. We’re looking for the principles.

I know that we’ve had lots of experience with municipal elections this fall. We’re looking for principles in regards to third-party advertisers and in regards to individual candidates and electoral organizations and expense limits.

E. Diano: Madam Chair, please give me the opportunity to ask all of you to go back to the Legislature and ask them to increase the mandate, to widen the mandate that you have. It is totally unfair to discuss only expenditures.

The ability here, in fact, is to put the emphasis on the funding, on the source of money. It is very easy to talk about expenditures, but it is very difficult to talk about the funding. The problem, if I may say, is with the funding. It is not so much with the expenditures.

However, you are going to go in the second stage, and the second stage involves the expenditures from advertisers. But this is the legacy with the source of funding.

My recommendation…. I am here. You can very well kick me out from here. I’m asking you, please, to go back and make sure two things: one, that the mandate should be wide open; two, that there is participation from the people.

This is the best secret kept in town. You are not spending any money for advertisement. It almost looks to me that you don’t like to have the people coming here and expressing to you what they feel. This is why I’m here. So please, if I have this opportunity to tell you….

The other one is to expand the period of time, at least for another six months. You should be able to advertise. You should be able to communicate with the communities. You should be able to go around the province of British Columbia and listen to the people of B.C.

That you are doing it between yourself here, where there are only a few people representing municipalities or the political parties — it is totally unfair. It’s not even touching closely the seriousness of the long list of problems that we have here.

If you want me, I am…. That is what I’m asking. But I have a lot of things to tell you. Okay?

You see, one of the problems that we have here is that people are reluctant to vote. They are not coming out and voting. It’s an extremely important, fundamental point of our democratic system.

The ability from your side is to try to involve the people to come out and vote. If you ask yourself why people don’t want to come out and vote, I’ll tell you one of the major reasons. The system is moving in the wrong direction.

Before the NPA and Mr. Sullivan here, it was basically known parties and associations in Vancouver. It was getting together, proposing people to be elected, moving up for the elections, dismantling, and it was over.

Now it’s moving toward a party system. Vision Vancouver is very much a party system with very strong influence from national parties like the NDP, provincial parties like the NDP, the unions — with huge amounts of money.

The independent people here — they don’t have a chance. Me, as an individual to vote, I’m wasting my time to go out and vote, because I’m totally under the control of the system.

You know very well, from your own personal experience, that the party system makes out of you the famous seal that says: “Yes, yes.” You are receiving a piece of paper on the table that is put together by the people in the back room, telling you what should be done because that is the policy of the party.

Please don’t bring that at the city level. We don’t want that at the city level. Is not necessary. We want a fully democratic system in action.

Now there are several other points I’d like to make. If we talk about the funding, there have been proposals from parties or from individuals. They’ve been talking, many of them, even in their policies — $2,500. Then — boom — comes out $2 million, $4 million, and there is no accountability.

We don’t know, really, the money. We don’t know how much money the individuals each spend, because we don’t know where the money is coming from.

Why do we have this system? Why don’t we come out, stand strong about our democratic system and really make a stink in this Legislature? The Premier has a fantastic opportunity here, the opportunity to step in and say: “Hey, we have a fantastic province here. We are moving ahead. We are so fortunate. We have natural resources. We have land.” All this is becoming a terrible business of rezoning, where there is fundamentally an incredible situation where basically the prices are moving up and kicking out the people that are residents in these cities.
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The municipalities have been coming up with the fantastic loophole, in my opinion. That is, they are selling zoning to make more money. It’s taxation without accountability. You waive the responsibility as a provincial government. You waive the responsibility as individuals elected in the province of British Columbia to correct these issues. This is why I’m here. I’m trying to somehow create some kind of a reaction from your side.

The mandate here is useless. The mandate must be changed. If you’d like to have a serious discussion, this mandate must involve the funding, the source of funding and how to control the source of funding. What we are moving to…. We are moving toward serious political corruption.

Please. It is happening in Canada. It’s been happening in Quebec. There is no accountability. This is why the minister responsible for the Charter should be right here, should be dealing with this.

It’s incredible that the mayor of a city can write on the back of an envelope and demand that, from three years, it should be moved to four years, their responsibilities. And the minister accepts that. In the Legislature there have been only two or three people that have been coming out and saying a word or two about it.

I mean, you are taking away my rights as an individual to vote from three to four years. And I don’t even have a say if you basically are there, voting as a group and supporting all this without the proper discussions on the floor.

This is not a democracy. I’m sorry. You have this opportunity now. You have a fantastic opportunity to go back and put your feet on the floor and say: “Hey, we are here. We have a serious problem. We need to solve it.”

There are many other things here. Why are the individuals not given a chance to be voted in? All the incumbents are able to make it. Individuals, very good individuals — few pick up the race for mayor. Why should the race for mayor be separate from the race for councillors? There are people that are running for mayor that are fantastic people. They should be back in the race for councillors.

For ability, there should be one race where the best one is going to be elected for mayor, and the others are back in. In relation to the number of votes, they are going to be councillors, because after all, the mayor is one vote, just like the same vote that the councillors have. So why do you separate them? Why do you waste an enormous amount of intelligent, capable resources there just because the system is not…?

There are so many things that could be done here, and it is in your hands. You have the opportunities. I’m not trying to give you this…. You know, we love you. We think we are in a fantastic position. Please don’t miss this opportunity. Don’t let us wait for another four years and try to solve problems that are accumulating, accumulating, accumulating.

If the minister from communities responsible for the Charter is not reacting, they should be. There’s something wrong in some place here.

The Premier is expending all the energies about the energy and natural resources. My God, we have so many problems here in the community. Why, after 50 years in the city of Vancouver, am I evicted, because I cannot pay taxes there, because all this is moving up? There are strong, beautiful homes, beautiful places all around me, and you guys don’t even feel the necessity of accepting it and doing something.

Why will my kids not be able to buy a house, because it’s too expensive? Why not? Isn’t that your responsibility? Why am I voting for you? I’m voting for you because I want you to be there to fight for me, but you’re not. Why not?

Mr. Sullivan, you have so much experience in the city of Vancouver. You have so much to say. You have been spending years in that city, and you know everything that is going on. Why do…?

E. Diano: I have quite a lot to say. I’m terribly sorry. I’m sorry to be emotional in this matter, but I’m trying to attract your attention. It’s not the usual tran tran thing that comes in from unions, from political parties and from backroom boys. There are people down there in the streets, people who are suffering because of the things that are not done properly.

J. Tegart (Chair): I would just like to say that our committee has a mandate from the Legislature. We are required, within that mandate, to look at certain things. The four-year term came out of consultation with municipalities and UBCM and community consultations for many years. I would just like to say that certainly lots of municipalities reach out to community. This isn’t one shot in the dark; it is based on a lot of work that has been done in the past.

Thank you. It is nice to see people who are passionate about democracy and what’s happening in their community.

E. Diano: It is my country; it is your country. If we don’t stand up and say something….

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I do have a question. I was trying to…. I was processing the messaging that
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you were delivering to us. It’s a bit of an unusual message, given the mandate we’ve been doing, so it has taken me a bit of a while to get here.

I do appreciate your ability to go beyond and think beyond the scope, particularly around the mayoral candidacy as separate from council. In the Netherlands that is actually how they operate. You vote for a representative, and then the council actually votes for their leader or their spokesperson. It has been done elsewhere, so I appreciate you raising that.

My question is about this…. You spoke mostly about donations and influence of outside entities. I wanted to just clarify with you around…. Our mandate is election expenses, but I want to just clarify for you that I understood correctly that your perspective is that that’s not…. What we’re trying to achieve is fairness — equal footing for everyone. That’s the principle. That’s what I heard you speak to, that principle, and that your concern is that if we only focus on expense limits and we don’t address donations, where the money comes from, we’re not going to achieve the end. That’s your primary concern.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I just wanted to make sure I understood that in your presentation. Thank you very much.

E. Diano: If I may say, we are humans. We all work a full day. We all try to feed our families. We all try to live with our neighbours. We are basically part of a machine, of a system. Artificial as it is, we are part of it. When you are donating to a party $1 million or half a million, it doesn’t make sense. Let’s face it. There is something in it that is totally wrong.

E. Diano: All the individuals, but then individuals should be limited in that too. In fact, I would like to suggest, if I may say, because this was done at the federal level, that the state…. Should they have a contribution in the elections? Right now what is happening is that you are not advertising what you are doing — totally unfair. You have an enormous amount of power people don’t even know about. Why don’t….?

E. Diano: No, I’m sorry. Marketing is much more than that. The people that are advising you are not really in it.

I have one little thing here, please. The ability is not only to try to have a limitation in the funding per se, but the ability is to assist in the marketing campaign, the general campaign, and assist the individuals so that they have the qualifications. They could be highly beneficial, because when these people are participating, they are donating to us, and we should be grateful for this.

I am grateful toward all of you — okay? — because you are participating in helping our system, our lives. What is important is that if you are limiting the money from coming in, the argument is going to be that there’s going to be less participation in voting because people will come out less to vote. I will argue that this is basically part of a marketing campaign.

In fact, there is a very important thing that could be done: the creation of an incentive. You see, people vote now. They are on the list. People vote, and they are classified: “I voted. I signed there that I voted. They know that I voted.” If they give me a coupon that is basically an incentive that I can deduct from my taxes that I’m paying, I’ll be having an incentive to come and vote. In other words, you have the responsibility not only to limit and so on but to bring in people to participate.

That is a very interesting innovation, and that can be done very well when you’re going to move in the advertising environment. For example, in the Olympics the advertising is sold because there’s an enormous amount of value. You could have a sponsorship here. You have the Royal Bank or whatever coming and sponsoring, and you could spend the money marketing and have people coming out and voting, but not the way you’re doing it now.

M. Hunt: Enrico, you have only come at the end of the meeting today. You have not been for the whole meeting.

M. Hunt: Fair. I know. That’s the problem with Surrey. But the reality is that you haven’t seen those that have been here before you. You’re only here at the very end.

E. Diano: I’ve been reading the ones that have been presenting the first time.

M. Hunt: People contribute, and then they leave. They don’t stay, except for one lady who has been here for the whole time.

But I would challenge your theory that controlling donations…. We’ll pick on developers for the sake of somebody to pick on. A developer could just as easily give 100 people $1,000 as giving $100,000. It still works out the
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same. Then I’ve just distributed through my employees. I’m getting the same thing. If we control the expenses, then they only have so much.

Let’s just use hypothetical numbers for the sake of Vancouver. Instead of having $2 million elections, you control the expenses and say that your total expenses will be $500,000. I don’t have to worry about somebody contributing $1 million, right?

E. Diano: I really thank you, sir, but there are a few things that can be done there, if I may say.

E. Diano: I know. You can kick me out any time you want to, Madam Chair. It’s up to you. But I’m trying to bring in…. I have 50 years in….

M. Hunt: Okay. Focus on the answer instead of talking to the Chair. Focus on the answer.

E. Diano: You don’t need to have that money given to the party or to the individual. If the union or if the bank, Royal Bank, or if the developers…. I have nothing against developers. This surprise you? I have nothing against the construction business. I’m very much pro-growth, and I’m very much pro–economic evolution in all this. So this would sound to you a little bit strange, but they can donate to a general fund that goes through the Election Act to the election officer, and the election officer can spend that money in a marketing campaign to involve people to vote.

They don’t need to give the money to the individual or a party and create a legacy where the guy from then on is going to have the opportunity to say: “Hey, I gave you $100,000. You’d better listen to me.” No, no, no. You see, I’m not saying that our politicians are corrupt, but you must try to avoid putting them in a position that is very untenable. That is where the fundamental mistake is.

Now, the other one is very important — that you are talking about the election day. I’m talking about the election period of time.

E. Diano: Now, with the evolution to the party system, they can donate the money ahead of time, and they can spend it for two or three years, building up their image and their ability to do fantastic things and impose what they’re doing on the will of the people.

Sir, in my environment where I live in Vancouver, they are knocking down beautiful homes. They are kicking out seniors from their houses. My son cannot have a house. I want you to do something about that, because the way things are done is wrong.

E. Diano: I thank you, Madam Chairman. Sorry if I’m a little bit emotional, but I’m trying to attract your attention, if I may say, because sometimes down there we have the feeling that you guys are not really tuned in with the communities.

J. Tegart (Chair): Kate, I wonder if you could bring us up to date on where we’re at with what’s come in.

The on-line questionnaire continues to receive a number of responses over the past few days. I think we’re up at around 200 responses now. In addition, the written submissions, which are submitted primarily by e-mail, tend to be a more fulsome summary of comments, and I think we’re up around 31 or so for written submissions at this point.

I have discussed with the Chair an option — that you could consider to have those written submissions as part of your on-line website, in order for others to get well-informed about the issues in front of the committee. So in addition to the papers that the ministry has prepared and that we have already uploaded to the site, if you agree, we have prepared the website to include the incorporation of these written submissions.

They would, of course, be the same as those you have already been able to review yourselves electronically over the past few weeks. If it’s in the interests of the committee, we’d be pleased to proceed with that early next week.

L. Reimer: I just have a question about that, about whether those who are making those submissions will be aware that their submissions will be publicly available.

We have been in touch to confirm that we have the permission of any individuals who have made a submission. Typically, those submissions would be deemed to be a public document at the conclusion of the committee’s process, but increasingly, parliamentary committees have taken the step, to support transparency in their deliberations, to seek and receive permission of individuals and organizations.

For those we have confirmed that they would like to have their submission available on line, we’d be happy to facilitate that next week.
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J. Tegart (Chair): Any comments from the committee in regard to that? Seeing none, then we’ll move forward with that.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): I’ll just advise that we have been in touch with staff in Victoria, who have confirmed that we have not yet received any other additional registrants for today. So although the meeting was scheduled to go longer, we have been able to check the e-mail information line there, and we do not have any other registered presenters for today.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay, so at this time we will adjourn the meeting. Thank you all for participating.

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4) Joe Heilman
5) Grant Rice
6) Jason King, NPA
Patrick O’Connor, NPA
7) Serena Oh
8) Hazen Colbert
9) John Allen
10) Enrico Diano

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:	Kate Ryan-Lloyd

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON LOCAL ELECTIONS EXPENSE LIMITS

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
LOCAL ELECTIONS EXPENSE LIMITS