Local Elections Expense Limits — Issue No. 10 — Monday, December 15, 2014 (HTML)

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

2. Resolved, that the Committee meet in-camera to consider its draft report. (Mike Bernier, MLA)

5. It was moved by Jenny Wai Ching Kwan, MLA, that, as a result of the consultation undertaken by the Committee, it was noted that a substantive number of submissions indicate that contribution limits and donation source are central to the principle of fairness; the Committee therefore requests that consideration be given to expand the mandate of the Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits to include consideration of these matters.

6. Resolved, that the Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits approve and adopt its report as amended today and further, that the Committee authorize the Chair and Deputy Chair to work with committee staff to finalize any minor editorial changes to complete the supporting text. (Marvin Hunt, MLA)

7. Resolved, that the Chair of the Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits deposit a copy of the Committee’s report with the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly; and further, that upon resumption of the sittings of the House, or at the next following session, the Chair shall present the Report to the Legislative Assembly at the earliest available opportunity. (Linda Reimer, MLA)

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
Mandate of the Committee	147
Committee Report to the House	149

J. Tegart (Chair): Good morning. I wonder if I could have a motion to move into in camera. Moved by Mike Bernier, seconded by Marvin Hunt.

J. Kwan: I’d like to move a motion, and I think a copy has been circulated to all the committee members. The motion reads as follows: As a result of the consultation undertaken by the committee, it was noted that a substantive number of submissions indicate that contribution limits and donation source are central to the principle of fairness. The committee therefore requests that consideration be given to expand the mandate of the Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits to include consideration of these matters.

Madam Chair, if I may speak to the motion for just a moment. I think that central to the issue that we’re discussing, which is how to ensure that elections address the principles of fairness, the principles of neutrality and all the principles that we have accepted from the community…. This one piece is outside of our mandate, but it has, in my view, substantive implications in impacting those principles.

To that end, I would like to move this motion and make this request for consideration. It’s not a recommendation, because I don’t think we’re in a position to recommend a change in this mandate. It’s simply a request for consideration — to see whether or not the committee would be able to look at these matters so that we can actually, as best as we can, address this issue holistically.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Selina here. I’d like to speak to it as well. My concern is that these issues came up as part of the concept of fairness. There were so many voices that we heard that, as they talked about fairness as a principle…. In order to achieve that, and if we were, ultimately, to achieve that, yes, expense limits would be critical to achieve fairness. But there was definitely concern, and examples were provided where we wouldn’t be able to achieve fairness if there was no consideration of donation limits and who was providing these donations.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, if we want to achieve fairness, we ought to be working towards that end. This alone may not help us get there. For that reason alone, I think this is worthwhile to provide feedback to the Legislature. In exploring these principles, there’s an element that ought to be considered to help us achieve that goal.

I think the way that it’s been worded basically asks the Legislature to allow us to consider this going forward. I don’t think it’s a difficult ask, but I think it’s one that’s reasonable given what we heard.

M. Hunt: I note that in our report — pages 1, 2 and 3 — we begin with the statutory context upon which this committee was formed and we were tasked. The last paragraph of page 1 notes that in 2009 there was a joint provincial-UBCM task force to recommend improvements to the local government election process, which then led to a white paper in 2013 and a public consultation process that went on through 2013, which ultimately led to the legislation of May 2014 with the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act.

I would note that the issue of donation sources was covered by the recommendations and by the act in what we refer to as disclosure, which has been done various ways in various communities over the years. Now this was formed into one process that will be done by Elections B.C. That is taken care of by the campaign financing act.

I’d note that contribution limits, I would assume…. Since it was a white paper — it was two years of consultation in the process — I would expect that that was brought up and that the committee at that time made their recommendations through the white paper, through the public consultation.

I would suggest that possibly what we have here are some people who were not satisfied with the result and have tried to raise the issue a second time. I would suggest that because the committee was tasked with dealing with election expenses, those who were opposed to that did not come to speak simply because the descriptor of our committee, in its title as well as in our terms of reference, did not include that.

I would suggest that it has been considered by the previous task force, and they have made the recommendations which are now in legislation.

L. Reimer: My understanding is the same. The Local Government Elections Task Force, which UBCM was a part of, did a lot of public consultation prior to coming up with their recommendations. We’re really here today
[ Page 148 ]
looking at expense limits as a result of the recommendations that came out of that group. Those recommendations did not include contribution limits and donations source.

I would like to see this committee stick with its mandate, which was a result of the recommendations that came out of the Local Government Elections Task Force and honours what they recommended for local government elections. So I won’t be supporting this.

M. Bernier: I think what’s really important to recognize is that staff did a great job putting this together, because throughout the report there are many times that it’s mentioned that…. We heard quite a few times that the contribution limits were mentioned by the people who came and presented. So it’s already captured in the report. As we put this forward, it will be stuff that people will see. They’ll hear the overarching theme that some people had when they came forward.

As was mentioned, I was on the UBCM executive when a lot of this stuff was discussed. We specifically, through the white paper — I know, all of the discussion from the local government standpoint — narrowed it down and said: “This is what we want to focus on.”

When it comes to the transparency aspect, whatever spending limits come in and whatever expenses are expended will be covered off under the transparency through the disclosure.

S. Sullivan: The thing that I’m thinking about is that when you do go out to the public and you have your mandate clear, the people who show up have a certain assumption. I think it respects the people who have come — that this was the topic that we were dealing with. If you start to go beyond that….

If you had advertised that we were going beyond our mandate, then that would have brought out different people. I think it’s better to just stay within our mandate. That was what we went to the public with, and they should expect that that’s what we would be discussing.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): In response to what we heard from Sam and from Marvin in terms of, “Well, we didn’t go out with that, so we didn’t get response,” what that suggests to me is: “Well, why wouldn’t we hear?” If we were to include this, then we would have an opportunity to hear, because then it would be part of the mandate.

I think part of what, I guess, I’m worried about is that we have identified certain principles and that’s supposed to guide us. We have a principle here that came, that floated to the top in every single conversation, in every single presentation — the concept of fairness. Certainly, as we start thinking about these principles and how it plays out in a local election, understanding how donations are made and by whom has impact on this principle of fairness. That certainly became clear.

Going forward, should we agree to ask for consideration for this group to take a look at that, then that means that…. Fine; that would, I guess, change the mandate, and then we have the conversation with the community. Just because we didn’t ask for it, it doesn’t mean that we discount what people have been telling us. I think that that’s rather dismissive.

I think we’ve heard from people. We’ve heard from candidates. We’ve heard from elector organizations. This kept coming up again and again. We, I think, have a responsibility to feed it back to the Legislature, to say: “This is what we heard. This is what people are saying to us. We think this deserves a bit more consideration in terms of understanding what its impact would be on this principle of fairness.” Then we go forward and have that conversation.

To say that just because we didn’t invite them we should therefore dismiss all of this is also not appropriate. I think we’ve heard about it. Do we think we ought to act on what we’ve heard? That’s what this is about.

J. Kwan: A number of comments. First off, I do appreciate the work that UBCM has done — the people on the committee and the consultation that they’ve gone through. That said, with their suggested recommendations what appears to me through our consultation process is that there is a huge gap in addressing the issue of fairness in municipal elections — that being the issue of contribution limits and contribution source.

We heard examples where people presented to us to say that, in one instance, someone received $900,000 from one source by way of a donation. In another instance, I think someone mentioned that someone received $500,000 from one source for a municipal campaign. If you think about it, a reasonable person would think: “Wow, that is huge. That is enormous.” In some elections, that pretty well runs the campaign from that one source. Therefore, the implication of fairness is hugely challenged.

In talking about the perception of perceived undue influence and perceived conflict of interest, it just says it right then and right there. I think we have an opportunity in this committee to look at this. By the by, this issue was raised not by just one person or two people but rath-
[ Page 149 ]
er consistently from submissions — and, of course, the written submissions as well as the on-line submissions.

It’s a significant issue that is out there and has been raised again and again and again. For our work, we’re not going outside of our mandate; we’re respecting the mandate that’s been given to us, and our report is written as such — to respect all of that.

The report does reference, of course, the feedback that the community has given us, which includes this issue, but it does not address it. It does not take action around it. This gives us an opportunity to say that we think this is significant enough, and we agree with the submissions that have been provided to us, that it’s worth it for us to look at it in an expanded mandate. Therefore, we’re respectfully asking for consideration of that.

To address the point of us not having advertised that in our initial phase for the first part of the report, people are right. It wasn’t advertised at part of the mandate. But even then, people came forward and said: “This is an issue that you need to address.” They came forward in any event — again, not by one person or two people, but rather by a significant number of people. I think virtually almost all the folks who came and presented touched on this issue.

I think it’s reasonable for us to go back and make this request for consideration of an expanded mandate, and for us to consider this. When we go to the next phase of the work, this will then be advertised — so there’s no question, in that instance, people will then came forward.

In some ways, this is a part of the second phase of the report in any event, because we then are talking about specifics of contribution limits and all the matters that relate to it, such as third-party advertising, and so on. So it actually fits into that realm. It does not change the principles, which is what we’ve already done. It does not change that at all. In fact, it’s central to the principles that we have just adopted.

To that end, I move this motion in that spirit. I do hope committee members will consider supporting it.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): Just to clarify with those members on the line, was the request to have the motion recorded on division, or actually hold a vote?

As some members are on the conference call, I will read out the list of committee members. If members would be so kind as to advise me of their voting in favour of or against the motion.

J. Tegart (Chair): The next order of business is the motion to approve and adopt the report as amended.

M. Hunt: I move that the Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits approve and adopt its report as amended today, and further, that the committee authorize the Chair and Deputy Chair to work with committee staff to finalize any minor editorial changes to complete the supporting text.

L. Reimer: I move that the Chair of the Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits deposit a copy of the committee’s report with the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly, and further, that upon resumption of the sittings of the House or at the next following session, the Chair shall present the report to the Legislative Assembly at the earliest available opportunity.

J. Tegart (Chair): I would like to thank all the committee members and the public who took the time to present in phase 1 of this committee’s work.

Also, a special thanks to staff. We know that the timelines were challenging at times, and we really appreciate the quality of the report. So thank you to everyone who has done the work on phase 1 for the Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits. We’re looking forward to moving into phase 2. Thank you all very much.

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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

YEAS — 3
Robinson	Kwan	Holman
NAYS — 4
Reimer	Hunt	Sullivan
	Bernier

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON LOCAL ELECTIONS EXPENSE LIMITS

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
LOCAL ELECTIONS EXPENSE LIMITS