Local Elections Expense Limits — Issue No. 14 — Thursday, March 26, 2015 (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. 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
Campaign Financing and 2014 Disclosure Statements	177
K. Archer
N. Western
L. Sawdon
Public Consultation Process	184

J. Tegart (Chair): Good morning, everyone. The first item on the agenda is a briefing from Elections B.C.

K. Archer: Good morning, Ms. Chair, Ms. Deputy Chair and the other members of the committee. I’m pleased to appear before you this morning to provide an update on the 2014 local elections and to share some of the experiences of Elections B.C. as we administer the campaign financing and third-party advertising provisions for local elections for the very first time.

I’m joined today at the table by Nola Western, deputy chief electoral officer, funding and disclosure. Also joining us is Louise Sawdon, who is the manager for local elections campaign financing.

I’ve got some prepared remarks. Nola will supplement those with some observations on the 2014 local event, and then we’d be pleased to take your questions.

I know your terms of reference are limited to forming recommendations on expenses limits. So we’ll focus on that issue and not dwell overly on other matters regarding our administration of the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act, or LECFA.

Elections B.C. was pleased that the Legislative Assembly saw fit to legislate a role for my office in administering and enforcing campaign financing and third-party advertising for local elections in British Columbia. We consider it a vote of confidence in the work that we’ve been doing at the provincial level in this field since 1995.

I note that this committee has identified four key principles on which its recommendations will be developed. Those principles are fairness, neutrality, transparency and accountability. In my view, these are all very commendable principles, and transforming these principles into operating procedures will be the key challenge for this committee.

Certainly, election expenses limits, if set at an appropriate level, are universally considered to enhance fairness in democratic elections. In Canada levelling the playing field through expenses limits helps make the constitutional right to run for federal or provincial office accessible. Although that right doesn’t extend to local elections, anything that makes candidacy more accessible or otherwise increases democratic participation should be encouraged.

Election expenses limits at the provincial level were first established in 1995. For both political parties and candidates, they were based — again, at the provincial level — on a complex formula that included the number of registered voters in the relevant electoral district, the size of the electoral district and the density of the population. That was the first formula in which election expenses limits were applied provincially.

We don’t know how the amounts or formula were determined back then, and I don’t believe Elections B.C. was involved in the policy analysis for election financing parts of the Election Act. In 2008 the Election Act was amended to create flat-rate expenses limits, adjusted for changes to the consumer price index, for all candidates regardless of their electoral district and for all parties regardless of how many candidates they ran.

Those flat rates are clear, easily understood and widely known, enhancing the transparency of the elections to which they apply. In fact, compliance with the provincial elections expenses limits has been good. There have been no charges laid for overspending, although there have been a few isolated cases of overspending in which penalties other than charges have applied.

I believe there are several reasons why compliance is so high. First, the expenses limits themselves are transparent and easy to understand. Second, in addition to publishing them in the B.C. Gazette, as required by the Election Act, Elections B.C. also publishes them on our website and advises every candidate, political party and third-party advertising sponsor in writing of the limits.

Third, although the regime relies to a large extent on self-reporting, the public and opposing candidates are vigilant and do not hesitate to notify us of perceived irregularities. The consequences of exceeding the expenses limits are severe. In the case of third-party advertisers, of course, it’s ten times the overexpenditure.

The limits themselves appear to be aligned with our culture of campaign spending, and we’ve not heard that they are too low. Certainly, the candidate campaign period limit of $73,218.39 for the 2013 provincial general election would not be considered sufficient in the United States. But our campaigning culture is quite different than that of our southern neighbours, which brings me to the principles of neutrality and accountability.

Neutrality, as described in your December 2014 report, is unique to the local election environment. I understand that you want to ensure that an expenses limit scheme be neutral in that it will not encourage candidates to run with an elector organization nor discourage them from doing so. Now, accountability through transparency, particularly involving tracking and reporting of candidates’ election spending, should be balanced with neutrality.

Under the current provisions of the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act, and unlike the provisions at the provincial level, there are no attribution rules between elector organizations and their candidates. That is,
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nothing in the act requires an elector organization to attribute any of the election expenses it incurs to promote a particular candidate to that candidate’s election expenses disclosure statement.

This results in some major candidates reporting zero election expenses because all financing transactions go through the elector organizations. For example, the elected mayors in the cities of Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey all filed zero contribution and expenditure disclosure statements.

In each of these instances, the candidates ran under the banner of an elector organization, and all financing was disclosed through the statements of the elector organizations and not through the statements of the candidates. This does not uphold accountability, and in fact may also impair neutrality if individuals prefer to report through an elector organization and, hence, decide to run with an elector organization rather than to run independently.

Allow me to make a couple of comments about election spending in 2014. Elections B.C. does not traditionally do detailed analysis of the campaign financing data filed with us. We leave that to the media, to academics and to other interested parties.

I understand that such analysis would be extremely useful for your deliberations. Therefore, at the request of this committee, we have contracted with Dr. Patrick Smith, professor of political science at Simon Fraser University — you may know him as the head of the legislative internship program here at the B.C. Legislative Assembly — to analyze the spending pattern of candidates, elector organizations and advertising sponsors as disclosed in the 2014 general local election campaign financing statements.

Dr. Smith and some of his graduate students are working on the report now, and we hope to have an interim report by the middle of April, followed by a final report in the middle of May. I know that this timing may not be ideal for this committee, but there is a considerable amount of work involved, and I understand that it simply cannot be done more quickly.

However, based on the original information filed in the 2014 statements, we can tell you that there is enormous variance in spending between jurisdictions. In Vancouver, for example, with a population of 640,000, Vision Vancouver disclosed almost $1.6 million in election proceedings period expenses, and the Non-Partisan Association reported $968,000 for that same period.

The mayoral candidates for these two elector organizations both reported minimal or no expenses. Gregor Robertson of Vision reported zero, and Kirk LaPointe of the NPA reported less than $2,000 in election proceedings period expenses. So we can assume that their expenses were incurred and reported by their respective elector organizations.

The Surrey First elector organization disclosed almost $742,000, and the Burnaby Citizens Association reported $383,000 in election proceedings period expenses.

Elector organizations are largely limited to the Lower Mainland. There are only five elector organizations endorsing candidates elsewhere in the province so that comparisons are limited.

The one elector organization in North Saanich, with a population of 10,940, reported just under $25,000, and an elector organization in Kelowna reported election proceedings period expenses of just over $50,000 — twice as much in expenses, in a city with a population of 189,000, more than 15 times the population of North Saanich.

As for candidates, the level of election spending varied greatly. As I’ve noted, the successful mayoral candidates of B.C.’s three most populous cities all ran for elector organizations and reported zero spending, so their expenses can’t be analyzed independently.

In Victoria, with a population of 83,000, the successful candidate for mayor disclosed $61,000, and the unsuccessful incumbent incurred expenses of $109,000.

In Prince George, another medium-sized city with about 74,000 residents, the two mayoral candidates disclosed $40,000 and $46,000 in election proceedings period expenses respectively.

Nowhere near as much money was spent in the small municipalities around the province. For example, in Osoyoos, a town of 4,800 people, the highest-spending mayoral candidate, who didn’t win, reported only $1,300 in expenses during the election proceedings period.

The successful mayoral candidate in Courtenay disclosed $5,000. In Mission the elected mayor reported election proceedings period expenses of only $7,000.

There are outliers, of course. Sechelt has 9,986 residents, but its incumbent mayor candidate disclosed over $32,000 in an unsuccessful bid to be re-elected. At $16,500, his competitor incurred just over half that amount.

These examples illustrate the wide variance in the level of election expenses incurred by candidates across B.C. Dr. Smith’s analysis will provide much more useful detail for your deliberations.

Nola will now briefly describe Elections B.C.’s experience administering the financial aspects of local elections, and then afterward, we’ll be pleased to take any questions from you. So over to Nola.

Good morning. It’s a pleasure to appear before this committee once again, and I hope that you find our discussion today useful.

I’m going to address some of the issues that were posed in Kate’s invitation to us, but naturally, if you have other questions, we’d be pleased to address those.

Spending at the provincial level, as Keith said, has been limited since 1995, and it’s well-entrenched in our electoral process. For the most recent provincial general
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election in 2013, the expenses limit for candidates during the campaign period was $73,218, and no candidate exceeded that limit.

For the 85 elected candidates, the average spending during the campaign period was $50,809 — only 69 percent of the spending limit. The highest-spending MLA spent 99 percent of the limit, and the lowest-spending MLA spent only 20 percent. Eight MLAs were within 10 percent of the limit.

When you consider all 287 candidates that ran for the parties that have seats on the Election Advisory Committee — so that’s the Liberal Party, the B.C. NDP, the Green Party and the Conservative Party — the average campaign period spending was only $20,964.

Third-party advertising sponsors at the provincial level are also limited during the campaign period — $3,000 in relation to a particular electoral district, or ED, and $150,000 overall. Both of those numbers are adjusted for changes to the consumer price index.

The $3,000 electoral district limit applies to advertising that can be clearly tied to a particular electoral district — for instance, if it names a candidate or if it names an electoral district or even if it refers to a political party that only runs one candidate, which does happen but is relatively rare.

The definition of election advertising includes what’s often referred to as issue advertising. It’s advertising that takes a position on an issue with which a candidate or a political party is associated. The definition is similar in the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act.

Of course, it can be difficult or impossible to ascertain if issue advertising is in relation to a single electoral district. Most issue advertising is subject to the $150,000 overall limit. Most issue advertising done at the provincial level is about provincial issues and not solely local ones.

Furthermore, these days advertising usually crosses geographical boundaries. Although an issue ad may be published in a local newspaper, that newspaper may be distributed across electoral district boundaries, and many papers are now distributed electronically or have digital editions, so they’re accessible from anywhere.

Although there may be cases where issue advertising relates to a single electoral district, we haven’t seen that at the provincial level. So the $150,000 overall limit applies.

For the third-party election advertising sponsors that participated in the 2013 provincial general election, the limits were just $3,138 and $156,897, and 224 registered third parties reported spending $500 or less. Only 62 reported spending more than $500. Of those 62, the average spending was $19,067.

Now to our experience administering the campaign finance rules for the 2014 local general elections. The financial disclosure statements for those elections were filed on February 13, and they’re now available on our website. As Keith noted, we do hope to have some detailed data analysis for you in the next few weeks.

Of the over 3,600 candidates, elector orgs and third-party sponsors required to file disclosure statements, 99.72 percent did so. All elector organizations and all third-party sponsors filed, and only 15 candidates did not file a disclosure statement. We’re very pleased with that.

Our staff are now reviewing every one of those statements for compliance with the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act, or LECFA. It’s apparent that in the past there has actually been little review or enforcement of the rules.

Even elector organizations who have participated in many elections and candidates who were incumbents have expressed some surprise at some of the rules that have been in place for many years — for example, the requirement to deposit all campaign contributions into the campaign account and not use cash contributions to pay for election expenses without first having deposited those contributions into the account. So it’s been a learning process not only for Elections B.C. but for new candidates and for experienced candidates as well.

To date we haven’t identified any truly nefarious violations. Most of the issues are minor, and we’ll be able to correct those by amending the statements to ensure that there is appropriate disclosure. Of course, for the next round of local general elections in 2018, we would expect the level of compliance around those small issues to be much higher, as we’ve got a much longer period to educate people.

LECFA is complex legislation, and it can be challenging to translate its rules into easily understood educational materials and forms. The disclosure requirements are extremely comprehensive in the legislation, sometimes even more so than the provincial requirements. As a result, the number of forms that are required by candidates, elector orgs and third-party sponsors are all greater than the number of forms for provincial players.

That said, most candidates at the local level did not have to complete all 17 forms. They’re not all relevant for every candidate.

Although LECFA has extremely detailed disclosure rules, there are some things in the legislation that might actually impair transparency and accountability. You heard Keith mention the elector organizations incurring expenses and reporting all financial transactions on behalf of their candidates.

Another example that could reduce accountability is the definition of a campaign contribution. A campaign contribution is defined generally as “the amount of…money, or the value of…non-monetary property or services, provided without compensation to a candidate or elector organization for campaign use.”

The section goes on to clarify that money, property and services are considered to be provided for campaign use
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if they’re provided for use in the election campaign or towards the election expenses of an election campaign.

An election campaign is over at the close of voting on general voting day. So any money, goods or services given to a candidate or elector org that are provided to be used after the close of voting on general voting day are not campaign contributions, and they’re not subject to the disclosure requirements.

For example, a restaurant offers to host a celebration or a thank-you party for a candidate after the close of voting. The restaurant covers all the costs of the food and drink. Although it’s clearly a gift in relation to that individual’s candidacy, it’s not a campaign contribution as defined by the legislation, it is not an election expense, and it is not disclosable.

Likewise, somebody could give a candidate money to be used to prepare, print and mail thank-you letters to their supporters. If those letters are prepared after general voting day, they’re not part of the election campaign, and again, the gift of the money is not a campaign contribution or an election expense and not disclosable.

The disclosure is quite different than the provincial requirements. In the Election Act the definition of a “political contribution” for candidates refers to something provided in relation to the candidacy, not something that’s just to be used in the election campaign.

We don’t think that having local election expenses limits apply to communities of different sizes poses a particular challenge for compliance or enforcement. For three general elections provincially, there were different expenses limits for different electoral districts, different expenses limits for parties that weren’t running candidates in every electoral district, and I’m not aware of challenges in compliance or enforcement because of that.

I think there might be challenges in establishing effective limits if candidates continue to be able to run in more than one jurisdiction at a time. There were 30 candidates in these past local elections that ran in more than one jurisdiction. Unless they are somehow restricted to one spending limit — and perhaps the policy analysts at the ministry have addressed this issue; I’m not aware of it — they would have separate limits for each jurisdiction.

Since name recognition is so key when you’re running for election, any advertising or campaigning for one office is bound to benefit the campaign for the other office, especially in cases where candidates run for jurisdictions that overlap geographically, like a municipality and a school district. It may actually motivate more candidates to run in more than one jurisdiction.

Likewise, elector organizations may be incented to run what are called straw candidates, because they may be able to increase their spending limits for every candidate that they endorse. By emphasizing the elector organization in their advertising rather than the straw candidates, that advertising will benefit all candidates of the elector organization.

Again, of course, if there are jurisdiction limits for third-party advertising, it’ll be challenging to identify which jurisdiction the issue advertising might apply to, so the overall limit is likely to apply in most cases.

A challenge that applies equally to the provincial and the local models is the broad definition of “election advertising.” Since it includes advertising that takes a position on an issue with which a candidate or political party or elector organization is associated, it can be easy for some organizations to inadvertently conduct election advertising.

It’s become apparent that there are many local by-elections and assent votes held throughout the province during the year. In fact, we’ve already had one by-election. Two more will be held in April and May, and there’s a fourth that must be called before the summer. There are also three assent voting events occurring in April.

With so much local election activity, there’s an increased risk that organizations could inadvertently conduct issue election advertising. If the penalties for overspending follow the provincial model, they’ll be substantial. Organizations could find themselves subject to significant financial penalties for advertising that was completely unrelated to an election.

In such cases the courts will be petitioned for relief, and they have granted such relief provincially. But it creates a greater burden on the administrators, on Elections B.C., on organizations that may not consider what they’re doing to be election advertising and, of course, on the courts.

Overall, our experience implementing the requirements of the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act has been a positive one. Obviously, it was challenging to manage such a significant change to our mandate, which impacted virtually our entire office. But we did it thoughtfully and methodically and, we think, extremely successfully. The public and the clients have sent us many, many notes and e-mails expressing their thanks for our service. We have a wall upstairs full of them posted.

We truly appreciate the willingness of the staff at the Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development, who shared their expertise regarding local elections generally, and the outstanding level of cooperation we received from the Local Government Management Association, the local chief election officers and the other local officials.

L. Reimer: I’m just wondering if we’re going to get copies of their presentation.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): We have not been advised of any written materials.

N. Western: We don’t have written materials, other than what we’ve just read.

S. Sullivan: That was very interesting information. You’re right. Hansard would have it.

A question, generally, on these kinds of initiatives. Has there been any evaluation done on the impact of implementing these kinds of measures, like a reduction in…? I believe we’re meant to address corruption. Has there been any observed reduction in corruption? Has there been a different kind of candidate that has been able to come forward and get successfully elected because of these? Who have been the winners and the losers? What have been the impacts on campaigning?

I only have an anecdotal hunch about one of the impacts through the federal limits. What I’ve noticed is that there has been more strident campaigning, fundraising. You can’t raise money from a large source, so you cut out philanthropists, who generally are a positive influence on all campaigns. They have a history of donating to causes because they are very well motivated. I think there are two types of large donors. One is the players, who have a stake in the game, and the other is the philanthropists, who clearly have the well-being of the polity in mind.

I have noticed, I believe, an increase in stridency and extreme appeals in order to generate a large number of smaller donations. So I’m just wondering. Has anybody ever taken a broader look at the impacts of these and seen if there have been positive or negative results?

K. Archer: I can start, Sam, in responding to that. Perhaps Nola has comments as well.

Certainly, there has been some academic research done on election campaign and political party financing in Canada over time. There have been many changes, both at the federal level and at the provincial level, in the financing environment that political actors are dealing with.

I think for the first century or so of Confederation, it was a fairly unregulated area, where there were very few disclosure requirements and very little in terms of expenditure limits or contribution limits. I think the first big wave of change in this country took place in the 1970s with changes to the federal election financing act, which provided for full disclosure of election contributions and political party financial contributions.

That went a considerable way to providing a better understanding for voters of the kinds of support that candidates and political parties rely on.

I would say that at the federal and provincial levels there have been different philosophies around whether it’s appropriate and useful to focus on limiting expenditures or on limiting contributions.

In some environments, of course, there are very rigid limitations on contributions, and I think those have been intended to address the issue of corruption that you had alluded to in your question. By limiting the amount that any individual or organization can contribute to a party, presumably a candidate or an electoral organization or a party would feel less encumbered by the requirement to raise funds from individuals or organizations in significant amounts.

In other jurisdictions, that seems to have been less of a concern. The focus is less on reducing contributions and rather on putting expenditure limits, which have the effect of making it less compelling for a candidate or an electoral organization to raise significant contributions from small numbers of donors.

Certainly, at the provincial level one might see British Columbia being contrasted quite significantly with the province of Quebec. In the latter instance there are very limited contributions that anyone other than a voter may make. Even the contributions of individual voters are very limited, whereas in the British Columbia experience at the provincial level, the focus has been less on contribution limits and more on expenditure limits.

Whether there has been analysis that has been more evaluative in the way that you’re suggesting — that has tried systematically to measure the degree to which one has been influenced by contributions — I’m less aware of that kind of research. But I know that there are different philosophical starting points for whether regulations around election and campaign financing should focus on the contribution side or the expenditure side.

M. Hunt: I just find that an interesting one because if we’re dealing with the issue of corruption and we look at what’s going on in Quebec, obviously, whatever they’re doing there hasn’t dealt with that issue. But that’s beside the point, and that’s not what we’re here for.

You had said that this professor at SFU was going to be doing analysis. My question is: what analysis is he going to be doing? I don’t know what parameters they’re working with and how he’s going to determine what he thinks is useful information for us.

For example, if we use Surrey — since that’s the one I’m most familiar with — I find it interesting that now, because of the potential of disclosure, the candidates have all hidden behind the electoral organization, whereas up until this past election what we all did was we divided the total expenses by the number of candidates, and we would make our disclosure, for example, one-eighth or one-ninth of this total number. We disclosed everything, and we were one-ninth of it — that type of thing. I find
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it interesting that instead of going that route, they’ve all said zero.

The question is going to become: is this professor going to be working at dividing that in some way, shape or form into the individual candidates so that you can actually do an analysis between the independent candidates and those who were candidates under an electoral organization?

K. Archer: The context for his analysis was that I had a phone conversation — I think it was last week — with the Chair and the vice-Chair with the request that Elections B.C. undertake some systematic analysis of the expenditure data that we’ve posted. After consultation with our staff, it was clear that we don’t have the capacity to do that. We just don’t have the staff members with those skills.

We subsequently received a specific set of questions, guidelines through Kate’s office, through the support of the committee, in consultation with the Chair and the vice-Chair, and that has formed the basis of our discussion with the faculty member who has now been contracted to analyze the data from that starting point. I assume that that communication could be made available to the members of the committee, but I’d leave that to the Chair to respond to.

J. Tegart (Chair): Maybe, Kate, you could share the parameters that we’re looking at.

The analysis that we had requested Elections B.C. assist us with would include the following: average, median and range amounts spent by mayoralty, council and school trustee candidates in jurisdictions under 10,000, over 10,000, under 100,000 and over 100,000 — in total and on a per-capita basis; third-party advertisers in each jurisdiction, regional district; electoral area directors; Vancouver park board commissioners; and Islands Trust trustees.

In addition, we noted that it would be helpful to have a comparison of spending between endorsed and unendorsed candidates, incumbents and challengers, elected and defeated candidates. We also noted the unique circumstances with elector organizations, such as in Vancouver and Surrey, and would appreciate any separate analysis by elector organizations, recognizing that their collective expenses would have to be attributed to all elector organization candidates.

That summary is a result of discussions with the Chair and the Deputy Chair and, in essence, is the scope of the request as it currently stands.

M. Hunt: Then my question is going to become: what attribution guidelines did we give? Or did we give no attribution guidelines?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): No, we did not provide any attribution guidelines.

M. Hunt: For example, take the three largest municipalities. The answer is going to be zero. How can you compare the mayoralty candidate at zero to the independent candidates with their numbers? Obviously, there’s got to be some process of attribution going on in here.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): You’re quite correct. We did not provide guidelines to that degree. But we did recognize, by way of the communications with Elections B.C., that some type of separate analysis would have to resolve the complications with elector organizations and attributed candidates. I would presume that Dr. Smith and his team will give some consideration to how to best assess the unique circumstances in those cases.

We did flag it as an area for some consideration, but we did not provide specific guidance as to how the data should be interpreted.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I know that Sam talks about philanthropy, and others will talk about bankrolling, so I think it’s just a matter of perspective in terms of how we understand contribution limits.

I’m interested in the 30 people who ran in more than one district, because if that’s a challenge in the legislation, we may have to have a conversation about that. Do we know if any of those people actually got elected?

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): You know, you could anticipate that when people read through the opportunities to increase their expense limits, as we move this piece forward, that might actually become sort of the unintended consequence. We may have to take a look at that. We might want to include that perhaps as a recommendation coming out — that this is a potential loophole that we would need to go back and take a look at and address.

It would be helpful to have a little bit more information about those 30 candidates in terms of: how did they run, and what did they do? Just a little bit more description about where that arose.

I can certainly think about…. Coming from Coquitlam, with three different municipalities and one school district and two newspapers that serve the three different municipalities, plus two villages, you could theoretically run
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in every single municipality and in the school district and have this massive war chest of expenses to continually hit community members with. So I would like to see that eliminated from the legislation.

J. Kwan: Just building on that, there is a question of those 30 people in terms of the positions that they ran for. I’d be very curious to know: how much did it overlap, and what was their spending like in each of the positions that they ran? It would be good to sort of just get a frame of that.

Perhaps it could be that the candidates that ran in those circumstances were mostly just throwing their name out. So maybe there wasn’t a lot of spending associated with it. We don’t know. It would be good to get a scope on that, as well.

From that, it would be good to categorize them into the size of the municipalities so that you get a sense of if it’s the large municipalities where that tends to happen or if it’s the smaller communities where that tends to happen. That will also give us, I think, a bit of a frame in looking at these kinds of issues.

I do apologize for arriving late this morning. There was the Inclusion B.C. breakfast, which is my critic area, and I was at that event earlier this morning.

K. Archer: I certainly appreciate the interest that members have in that kind of an analysis of those candidates. As the discussion began to evolve, the analysis that you’re seeking seemed to grow a bit. I’ll be in conversation with Dr. Smith to get a sense of whether that type of analysis is something that he intends to make a part of his report.

Certainly, in a much more limited way, we could provide the committee with an indication of who those candidates are and where they ran. Then, if there’s some subsequent analysis, that would likely be something that the data analysts could examine in more detail.

G. Holman: I apologize for being late. I don’t have nearly as good an excuse as my colleague.

In terms of the electoral organizations and the attribution question, we’ve already recommended that the candidate limit would apply to the electoral organization. I know I’m not putting that properly, but essentially, we’re kind of wrapping them up into the same kind of declaration. So do we really care about attribution if we’re recommending that, in effect, it’s essentially going to be one limit anyway? Maybe I’m not understanding this. That’s one question.

I wanted to ask Elections B.C. In terms of the third-party limits which are in place provincially, I didn’t hear…. Maybe you said. Do you have apprehension about those kinds of rules applied locally? That aspect of expense limits does seem kind of more complicated to me than some other issues.

Just a final question: has Elections B.C. thought about the cost implications of administering the new rules when they come down? Have you begun to think about that at all in terms of your budget requirements in order to properly administer and enforce the new rules?

K. Archer: On whether there’s going to be additional costs for us, it’s hard to know, in the absence of knowing what those rules are. If the rules simply ensure that there are new ceilings in place, then the additional requirements will be on the enforcement side rather than on administration — you know, preparing candidates and electoral organizations to disclose. It’s possible that there could be some additional compliance costs, but we haven’t done any analysis of that at this stage.

In terms of whether the third-party spending limits cause us any concern, I think what Nola was indicating in her comments is that there is a potential concern about getting caught up inadvertently in a limitation for a third party that is advertising when a local event is taking place.

If someone is doing provincewide advertising, for example, and suddenly a local event provides limits on what could be spent within that local jurisdiction, there is a risk that for a third-party advertiser who is running a provincewide campaign, there could be some overlap with that local event. That local event could pose some risk for the third-party advertiser. That’s, I think, what Nola was referring to.

By way of analogy, that’s what happened provincially, in which a third-party advertising sponsor was running a provincial advertising campaign at a time in which a provincial by-election was called, and that provincial by-election provided a very severe limitation on the amount of expenditure that a third-party advertiser could expend. The amount that the advertiser spent exceeded the limit by a very substantial margin.

This was the case about two years ago in which the penalty for the third-party advertiser was about $3 million, and that advertiser had to go to seek relief from the courts, arguing that this was a campaign that was running independently of the by-election and that the by-election imposed limitations on them that they had not fully anticipated.

If there is a wariness, the wariness is — given what appears to us, already, in the very early stages of our role in this process — of a large number of by-election events and assent votes at the local level. Putting limitations on third-party expenditures creates some risk on the enforcement side.

G. Holman: The other question was: do we care about attributions if we’ve already recommended that we’re just kind of…? Electoral organization and candidate spending is always going to be subject to the same limit. Do I have that right? That’s what we have recommended.

K. Archer: If you’re asking whether we have a view on that, I guess my view would be that an individual looking at the disclosure data that’s provided by Elections B.C. likely has an expectation that by looking at those data, they’re able to compare what candidates are spending in competing for the same office in a local event in British Columbia.

At the moment that’s very challenging for an individual or data analyst to do. Candidates could have all of their expenditure included in the report of the elector organization, and there could be different views on what that attribution looks like.

Some people…. I heard Marvin Hunt say, for example, that in some jurisdictions the philosophy of some could be simply to take the total number of candidates sponsored by that elector organization and divide the expenditure by that number. Others could, say, apportion it differently depending upon the type of contest. A mayoral typically receives a higher profile, more prominence in advertising than a member of a park board, for example. Consequently, there should be a difference in attribution.

Those are fundamental questions that are going to be challenging to resolve based upon principle.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay, I have Marvin and Sam, and then we’re going to have to wind it up.

On the third-party one, Kinder Morgan is going to be a classic example. Was Kinder Morgan’s advertising working on their social licence to do a pipeline, or was theirs election expenses? That’s a real good one as to how that’s going to be dealt with. I think that’s the ultimate problem we’re dealing with.

On the multiples, I think it’s interesting, but that one will be solved really quickly by seeing what the numbers are. We know of individuals who ran…. For example, what’s her name used to be on the UBCM executive, from the Tumbler Ridge area. She ran for both the electoral area and for council in Tumbler Ridge. You get a lot of those kinds of ones.

Somebody running for school board and council…. But they tend not to be ones that spend a lot of money. Usually they think they’re somehow going to get it. I think the dollars and cents will show whether that one actually works or not. Again, once we’ve got the information, then we can start seeing whether it’s considered or….

S. Sullivan: Not a question but just a flag for Professor Smith. One of the big concerns is that there will be unintended consequences of the electoral guidelines. One of the most important initiatives that have gone on in the past few years, internally, in electoral organizations is the drive to try to get the electoral organizations not to run full slates.

There are many reasons for that. Two important ones are to keep the level of quality of candidate high…. The less candidates you get, the higher level of candidate you get. The other one is to prevent single-party states in the city. A swing one way or another could result in a full slate being elected from a single party. I have actually been on one of those.

You know, to see that people now, electoral organizations, will want to run as many candidates as possible just to get the spending room — just flag that to look at it.

J. Tegart (Chair): As you can see, the more we talk about it, the more information we’re seeking. We want to thank you very much for your presentation this morning and also for your willingness to provide information to the committee.

Our work is impossible, I think, without that information, and we really appreciate your willingness to coordinate that for us. The work is incredibly important, as you’re well aware, and we want it to be as fulsome as it can.

We did, as a committee, talk about the kind of information we needed. As we talk more, we explore more. Hopefully, today you go away with a little sense of where we’re at. We look forward to receiving that information and appreciate the timeliness with which you’re proposing to give it to us. Thank you very much for your presentation today.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes. Thus far, the public consultation process, as members will know, opened on March 13, and we’ve had a very good response by way of the on-line survey. So far, 126 responses have been received, and they are from every corner of the province. So we have good feedback through the on-line surveys from every region of the province and from smaller and mid-size and large communities.

I have some printouts from the database here if anyone is interested in an early sample of the distribution of responses that we’ve received.

In addition to the 126 on-line survey responses, we’ve also received seven written submissions from individuals who opted to send their thoughts in writing and not complete the survey.

Members will also note that the committee has, at this point, scheduled eight public hearings. We have had a proposal in recent days to also add to the committee’s
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calendar a final hearing here in Victoria on April 15. The responses to the pre-registration request for public hearings have not been strong in every location.

Thus far, for Surrey we have five applicants. For the next three locations — Terrace, Fort St. John and Prince George — no interest expressed at all to participate at the public hearings next week. Kamloops is currently at five; Cranbrook, one; and Penticton, one.

In each of these locations we have had two rounds of newspaper advertisements and extensive e-mail communications through the local MLA constituency offices in the region. We’ve also sent e-mails to previous participants in the province and to recognized stakeholders. So we were hopeful to see a much more even response throughout those regional areas.

I should mention that of the two hearings that could unfold towards the end of your input process, the April 9 Vancouver hearing is currently quite low, but we haven’t done the second round of advertising in the Vancouver area. I’m hopeful that that will increase. To date, there’s a single person in Vancouver, but I’m fairly confident that that will change.

Then, on the Victoria hearing on April 15, we had a number of e-mails in our office asking: “Is there going to be a Victoria or a Vancouver Island hearing?” So we are in responses with those individuals. They haven’t confirmed that any of them would actually make an appearance. But given that the entire process would conclude by April 17, I think it’d be helpful to schedule the April 15 date.

In addition, members will know that we cancelled two meetings this week, at which we were hopeful to hear from UBCM and the B.C. School Trustees Association. Neither group was yet prepared with their presentation to come forward and present to you this week.

I’m hopeful, again, that they will have a chance to come before your committee before the close of the input period, April 17. Again, perhaps at either the Victoria or the Vancouver public hearings we could encourage them to expedite the processes that they need to undertake on their end to finalize their preparations.

One of the key questions, of course, for the committee, given the travel plans that had been made for next week, is to seek your direction on the public hearing update that I provided you — particularly, I would think, in the locations of Terrace, Fort St. John, Prince George and then the single witnesses in Cranbrook and Penticton.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I’m just going to speak and then run, because I’ve got a 9:30. My suggestion would be that where we have less than five people that we don’t travel, don’t burden ourselves and the taxpayer with going to all these different places. I’m also pretty confident that Vancouver will pick up as we get closer. I certainly endorse the April 15.

I did have a quick conversation with Sav Dhaliwal, the president of UBCM, who explained that one of the challenges they have is that because they speak on behalf of a body, their process for gathering their thoughts is a bit more lengthy, in that they need to consult with their group in order to represent their membership. I suspect it’s the same thing with school boards. I would like, even if they can’t make it to the ninth in Vancouver, that we would find some time on the 15th or the 16th to hear from those bodies. I think it’s really important.

J. Tegart (Chair): I’m going to take it that most of us are…. Kamloops is a yes; Surrey is a yes. The Vancouver and Victoria dates are on the calendar.

L. Reimer: I’m wondering, given that there’s only one in Penticton, if we would consider moving that to Kelowna.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes. There is a single registrant in both Cranbrook and Penticton. So our office, subject to your direction, is planning to call those individuals and invite them either to connect by way of conference call to any of the other public hearings. If they have an interest in a face-to-face hearing, we can discuss the logistics with those two individuals, who are now already registered.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay, so Kate will send out a new schedule. I know that everybody has scheduled their life next week, and we really appreciate that, but it’s a gift.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): What I would anticipate, then, would happen next week…. As previously planned, the meeting in Surrey — I believe it’s an all-day meeting from nine till three — will continue as scheduled.

Instead of departing that evening for Terrace, members will make their own way home, I presume. Or perhaps not, for the case of the Peace River South member. But on Wednesday we will have a revised travel plan to head to Kamloops, likely that morning.

I believe that the hearing begins at 4 p.m. in Kamloops. We’ll have a look and see — with the rejigged expectations now, in terms of connections via conference call and all that — if that has to be adjusted. Otherwise, we will aim to be in Kamloops for a start-up at four o’clock.

The flight was planning to take members to the next meeting location after the conclusion of the Kamloops hearing. I would presume at that point that the flight could be redirected back to the Lower Mainland that evening.

M. Bernier: Is it still cheaper to do a charter, then, or
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should we just be doing Air Canada if we’re just doing the one thing up to Kamloops and back?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Based on the travel considerations that we took into account with our planning, we have made charter arrangements. We will have a non-refundable charter fee that we will pay, but there are substantive savings at this point, given the change to the schedule. Air time has been reduced. The amount of fuel has been reduced. Airport fees have been eliminated. So there will be cost savings with this.

I’m thankful for the direction this morning. I’m thinking, as well, many of the hotel accommodations that we’ve prepared…. We’ll be able to cancel those without a penalty.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay. Well, thank you all very much. We’ll see you on Monday.

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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

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON LOCAL ELECTIONS EXPENSE LIMITS

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
LOCAL ELECTIONS EXPENSE LIMITS