Local Elections Expense Limits — Issue No. 15 — Monday, March 30, 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

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	187
D. Chesney
H. Fathers
M. Woods
K. Morris
B. Hayne
G. Schoberg
S. Casson
R. Fortin
S. Bohus
D. Pitcairn

J. Tegart (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Jackie Tegart. I’m the member for Fraser-Nicola and the Chair of this committee, the Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits. This committee was appointed by the Legislative Assembly on February 24 to make recommendations on expense limit amounts for candidates and third-party advertisers during local elections.

This is the second part of a two-part mandate. During the last session of the Legislature the committee made recommendations on 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 committee completed its first report in December and recommended that fairness, neutrality, transparency and accountability be principles which may inform the development of legislation on expense limits for candidates, electoral organizations and third-party advertisers.

The committee’s current review of expense limit amounts for candidates and third-party advertisers builds on that previous recommendation made by this committee in its first report. The committee will be submitting its second report to the Legislative Assembly by June 12, 2015.

Today’s public hearing is part of our review of expense limit amounts. We’ve heard presentations from the Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development and from Elections B.C.

On March 13 we launched a consultation process in order to gather public input on expense limit amounts in local elections. A provincewide media release was issued, calling for presentations and written submissions. We announced at that time that regional public hearings would be held at a number of locations throughout the province to hear from stakeholders and interested citizens.

A call for submissions was placed in provincial daily newspapers. Key stakeholders, including candidates in the 2014 local elections, were invited to participate by making a presentation, providing a written submission or responding to our on-line survey. The deadline for written submissions is April 17.

Last week, due to a low number of registrations, the committee cancelled some of the regional public hearings that had been scheduled. Hearings in Surrey, Kamloops, Vancouver and Victoria will proceed. Presentation spaces remain available at all public hearings, and conference call options are available.

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 made 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): I’m Selina Robinson, MLA, Coquitlam-Maillardville.

J. Tegart (Chair): Thank you. With that, I will now turn over the floor to our first invited presenter, and that’s David Chesney.

In November 2014, this past civic election, I was successful in attaining a seat on White Rock council. This was my sixth election campaign, illustrating that, if nothing else, I am tenacious. In fact, there were two by-elections in there that somewhat clouded the issue of how many times I actually had to try.

In 2005, when I made my first decision to run for council in White Rock, it was not to fulfill a dream of being a politician or holding civic office. At a very young age my father instilled in me: “Dave, if you’re just going to sit back and criticize something, we really don’t want to hear what you have to say.” At a very early age I learned to roll up my sleeves and dig in.

To be very truthful, my beautiful little city by the sea…. I was upset about some of the directions that it was taking, so I set off on my first campaign. I have a large background of 30 years in the marketing and media industries, which served me very well.

I realized that because of the small geographical footprint of White Rock, I would probably be able to, literally, walk from one side to the other, top to down, and knock on as many doors as possible in the allotted time period, which is exactly what I did.

It afforded me a tremendous opportunity to meet and talk to so many great people within my community on a one-on-one basis. Also, with a limited budget, I was
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able to, basically, be in the running against all other candidates. Again, this was due to the small footprint that I had to cover off with the signs.

I have financed all six of those campaigns, basically by having a fundraising dance and selling a few liquid beverages, and a bit of money out of my pocket enabled me to be very much in the game. As a matter of fact, I was always very close to being elected.

In the last by-election and the last election I would have been the next candidate that would have been elected. So I knew that I was right there, knocking on the door. This final 2014 election, I was successful. So I’m not here as a sore loser. If anything, I’m here as a sore winner.

I have had a problem with slates, coalitions and a large group of individuals running under one banner. I believe, especially at the civic level, it would be much better to have a wide cross-section of people coming together. The ward system might be something to be considered.

The sheer money to run in Surrey…. From what I’ve been led to believe, to simply sit down at the table and mount any type of campaign, you’re looking at six figures to be able to cover off an area that big with signs and to put together a team to be able to make any kind of impression on the voters of Surrey. That’s a tremendous amount of money.

In my particular riding of White Rock I spent, on average, $4,000 to $5,000 each election campaign and, as I say, this past election I was successful. Conversely, a coalition of individuals that ran in White Rock — four of them were elected; two incumbents and two new members to council — had a budget of $90,000. To put that in perspective, there’s quite a disparity between the two numbers that I’ve just presented to you. As a result of that, I see that we really need to do something about trying to limit spending.

The other aspect that I would like to address here this morning is…. And again, I don’t intend to single out one particular organization. If we look across the map, at least in the Lower Mainland, developers have played a tremendous part in the election of civic politicians.

One would think — and I know many people are very surprised to find out — that if I, hypothetically, was to have taken $5,000 or $6,000 from a developer, the natural assumption is that if that developer appears before council, I would have to recuse myself as a conflict of interest. That’s not the case, and I think that’s something that seriously needs to be addressed as well. This may, in fact, inadvertently put some kind of limit on what types of moneys certain organizations are able to contribute.

We do know that the lowest turnout at the polls is at the civic level, which I’ve often found quite surprising in that the most immediate and the quickest action that’s going to affect your governance and your personal life is at that civic level. I think if we have more of a broad spectrum of individuals running at the civic level, as opposed to slates…. I understand in the provincial and the federal just the insurmountable amount of money that it takes to run a campaign, but at the civic level I really do think that’s where we need to make some changes.

As I say, the ward system keeps coming back to me with an area as large as Surrey, and some would say: “Well, then, perhaps the person from South Surrey would only be interested in South Surrey issues.” Is that a bad thing? I don’t know. I think that if we get the right collection of people, we could certainly develop some kind of guidelines.

In closing, I would just like to thank the committee for taking the time and offering the opportunity. I wish more of my fellow candidates and the civic membership population was here to speak to you today, but I would welcome any questions that you would have of me.

M. Hunt: Considering that you’re from ward 7, can you give me the history of ward 7 as to why ward 7 separated and became its own autonomous municipality?

D. Chesney: Well, I believe I can. Leading up to 1957 — and I grew up in the Gilford area of Surrey as young boy — most of the development was in the northern district of the municipality. What I’ve been led to believe from reading the history is that the residents of ward 7, White Rock, felt that they were unable to get simple things like street lights, roads paved. They felt that they were basically being ignored down in the southern region, and all the development, all the population was in north Surrey.

For that reason, then, I think it’s rather an interesting piece of history that we seceded from Surrey. From what I can understand, basically, the paperwork was done, submitted to Victoria, and if I have the story correct, I believe somebody kind of blinked. Next thing, we were on our own.

M. Hunt: Friday to Monday is how…. It was introduced Friday, royal assent Monday, but the question that we’re looking at is the tension that happened in the ward system that created the fragmentation.

Shifting to modern day, dealing with the issue of your expenses, you said the ballpark of four to five.

M. Hunt: Can you give me what you spent? We haven’t pulled it out yet. We certainly can. That’s not a problem. You’re under $5,000. The municipality is under 20,000 people, correct?

M. Hunt: And you are satisfied that in those dollars, for that size of municipality…. Well, obviously, you won.
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You’re satisfied with those dollars for that size of municipality?

D. Chesney: Yes, very much so. Again, the geographical nature of White Rock does allow someone to put the shoe leather on the asphalt, so to speak, and very quickly be able to come in contact with the majority of residents.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for taking the time to come and present to us. I want to follow up, sort of, on Marvin’s questions. Part of our challenge is to figure out: what should an expense limit be? What should it look like?

You mentioned, for your community, it would seem like $5,000. I’m going to take a look and see what others spent and who got elected.

You also commented on geography. I’ve been to White Rock. It’s pretty contained. There’s easy access to the entire community. Do you think we ought to be looking at geography as part of our formula as we look forward?

D. Chesney: I don’t know how you could take that out of the equation. As I say, if you look at an area just to the north, where we’re sitting today in Surrey, at one point in time, I believe it was the largest municipality in the British Empire It’s a huge land mass.

To be able to cover off that wide an area, as I say, some people…. I’m not sure exactly how the figure was calculated, but past candidates in Surrey have indicated that it’s in the neighbourhood of six figures, $100,000, to even sit down at poker table. That certainly takes that out of the hands of the independent.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): So when we look at setting whatever that limit might be, we ought to recognize that a larger land mass and a larger population ought to factor in. I come from Coquitlam, so I’m thinking of Port Moody, which is similar in size to White Rock. It’s pretty contained as well. It’s got very clear borders. You can move though the community relatively quickly. Therefore, it should cost less than, for example, Coquitlam, which is probably four times the size — all that other stuff. Is that population base? Or do you see land mass as the…?

D. Chesney: I think both. I think the land mass definitely factors into it. One of the biggest expenses is signage, which is very expensive — and, of course, advertising, be it newspaper…. I don’t believe in this past election, though, past candidates in White Rock have spent money on radio advertising, which is cost-prohibitive, certainly, for anybody running on an individual basis.

M. Bernier: Just to put it back to yourself and what you saw in your election that you went though…. We’re just pulling up and looking at some of the stuff — how many people voted, and the ranges and stuff. Do you remember…? I don’t have it in front of us for you. What is your impression, then, for your municipality on the influential changes because of money that’s spent during the election? You said you spent under $5,000. Were there people who got more votes than you that spent double that?

D. Chesney: Well, to put that in perspective, and you will hear from her next, Councillor Fathers received the most votes and spent less money than me. But again, it’s brand awareness. Helen has served on council for two terms. She’s an incumbent, obviously. As we know, it’s very difficult to unseat an incumbent, unless they’ve really brought the ire up of the community.

The parallel with the White Rock Coalition, in that they spent $90,000, I think if you had my fellow candidates, successful and not successful, here today, they would tell you: “I heard loud and clear on the doorstep that there was no appetite in White Rock for slates or coalitions.”

That was almost the first thing I heard out of every person’s door that I knocked on. They wanted to know right off the bat if I was an independent, which I assured them I was. Yet when the dust cleared, two returning incumbents and two new members from that coalition that spent $90,000 were elected. I believe one of the other speakers today, with her forensic audit background, will give you a more detailed breakdown on the numbers of that.

I guess the old adage that you can’t change city hall…. Sadly, I think what we’re seeing now is that you can buy city hall. I don’t know how else I could account for that $90,000, being that I heard so strongly from the electorate that they had no appetite for slates or coalitions.

Now, either those people didn’t get out and vote…. As I’ve identified, we have a very low turnout. White Rock did bounce back a bit this time and probably got close to the provincial average, but that money certainly moved some people — enough people that the four of them were elected. I think that large amounts of money are proving that you can….

Really, as I say, with a marketing background, we’re introducing a new coffee or a new brand of breakfast cereal, and if you advertise something enough, unless there’s some terrible backlash or pushback, probably people are going to try it. I think that’s what we saw in our little town of White Rock with that kind of expenditure.

G. Holman: Thanks for your presentation. Just quickly, can you remind me how many people were running on the slate? That $90K would apply to how many people?

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay. Well, thank you very much for taking the time today to present to us. What we’re finding as we go out to community is that it’s not a simple problem, and there are all kinds of things that come into play. We really appreciate you taking the time to come and present.

D. Chesney: Well, as I said at the beginning, thank you very much for taking the time to host these meetings, and I wish you all the best.

H. Fathers: Thank you very much for holding this committee today. It’s really great to be able to speak to you, and it’s important for me to talk about election issues and election expenses, so I appreciate the opportunity.

My name is Helen Fathers, and I live at 1321 Lee Street in White Rock. I’m a third-term city councillor. I was first elected in 2008, then 2011 and 2015. All my campaigns have been financed by myself, and a big part of that is the sweat equity that I put into the community. I’ve always worked in community.

I started off in the service industry in the community, and I decided to run for office because I didn’t feel at the time that there was anybody that was representing myself. I never really expected to get elected first in 2008, and it was a bit of a shock when I did. However, I’m happy that I’m there.

I spent $3,797 on my last campaign, and I was fortunate enough that I did top the polls. I was very proud of myself to do that. It’s very hard to run a campaign alone, with a small amount of dollars. I put in the dollars that I could afford to at the time to run that campaign. It is not easy to run an independent campaign in any municipality that you’re in. I don’t imagine for a minute that it’s any easier in White Rock versus Surrey. I put the dollars in that I could afford at the time, and that’s how I ended up with the amount that I did.

It’s not easy to run against a group of individuals that obviously have more money, because more money means more advertising, more leaflets, more distribution of the material. It’s probably easy, although I’ve never run in that capacity, so I don’t know how that is. I’m only assuming that it’s easier to run with that amount of money.

Really, what I want to talk about is the conflict of interest. I find it really, really hard to take now that I’m at the council table. I’m sitting with other people that were elected that I know, when I look their campaigns, took money from developers and from unions and from other organizations. Those people sit in front of us and ask for things from council. I really don’t understand how they don’t have to declare conflict of interest, because they took money from…. As a member of council that didn’t take money from people applying to council for items, I don’t see how they don’t have to declare conflict of interest.

It’s evident to me that there is a conflict, whether it’s a pecuniary one or a perceived one, and there’s no conflict of interest that is being declared. I don’t think that’s just in White Rock. I think that crosses the whole board.

I think it would be a good idea to limit the donations from organizations. If we can’t say “no donations,” maybe we could say that a percentage of donations could come from X, Y and Z. Or maybe we could say that we could set a one-time amount for people who are running campaigns, just basically so we’re able to level the playing field. As I say, as an independent, it’s really not easy.

We have to make sure as levels of government that we’re appealing to everybody, all income levels, because that’s who we represent. You know, I’ve spent almost $4,000, but that could also be a huge amount of money for other people. How do we get to a point that we attract people who can’t even afford to put in $4,000? We have to make a system that is fair for everybody. The current system that is applied really only allows for people who have the monetary value and the means to be able to win a campaign, and it shouldn’t be on that.

Another thing that I have a real problem with is municipal employees and firefighters. Before I ran for office, the firefighters do interviews with all candidates. They ask us: “Do you support us?” It’s really hard because you don’t necessarily want the support of them, but you also know that they wage a huge campaign against candidates who don’t support them.

There’s a conflict of interest there. These are municipal employees that are paid for by the taxpayers, and they are asking candidates if they support them. The ones that say, “Oh, I’m not sure — maybe, or not,” they don’t support, and then they wage a campaign against them. Surely there’s something wrong with that.

As I said before, the playing field needs to be made more equal, whether that’s with an amount for everybody or a percentage amount that can be taken from developers or union workers. And the cross-section…. It just needs to be made more inclusive because we’re supposed to support everybody, and currently the system isn’t enabling that.

I guess those are my points, and if there are any questions, I’d be happy to answer any questions.

L. Reimer: Thank you very much for taking the time to come out and present to us.

The mandate of this committee is to look at expense limits, and so I’m just wondering if you feel that expense
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limits should remain as they are, whether they should be decreased, whether they should be increased. We’re also looking at a model where there would be a flat rate for communities of 10,000 and then per population after that to create an expense limit. What are your thoughts on that?

H. Fathers: Well, currently, as I see it, there’s no model. So it would be better, I guess, from my perspective, to decrease it and make it a one fee for all, or we have a percentage of the people that vote — like 50 cents per person that votes. There has to be a model that we can all fit into to make it an even playing field, because right now it’s really hard as an independent to get a seat on council.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I do want to clarify. We actually don’t have a limit right now, and that’s part of what we’re trying to do. We can’t increase or decrease. We have to come up with something. Your suggestion would be that a per-capita model would certainly be helpful, and then as an independent you would understand what your ceiling would be and could work towards that.

I’m interested in your concerns about where donations come from. I think Linda pointed out that we’re only given the mandate to explore expense limits. It sounds like you have some concerns about where donations come from. If I understand correctly, you would prefer that union and corporate contributions would not be permitted at local elections. Is that something that you find?

H. Fathers: Okay, if we can’t say that, maybe we can say a percentage. An overall percentage of your donations can be from X, Y and Z. Currently, what we have is huge corporations or developers or the unions financing the campaigns of the candidates who support them. For the average person out there in your municipality, they don’t even know that this is going on. It seems to me it would be a fairer approach to limit that, if we can.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): So you’re using the concept of fairness to recognize…. That’s what’s driving that — that it’s just not fair?

M. Hunt: The six councillors that are on White Rock council. Can you give me the breakdown of independent versus…?

M. Hunt: The two of you that have presented are the two independents on council, and then there are the other four slates?

J. Tegart (Chair): Any other questions? I just wondered if what we’re looking at is a flat fee for under 10,000 population and then perhaps an incremental amount if you’re over 10,000. What do you think is a fair amount for the community that you represent?

H. Fathers: Can I just ask a couple of questions back first? Is the 10,000 for per capita, or would it be for the people eligible to vote? I guess that’s my first question.

H. Fathers: Okay. Well, that seems a little odd to me that it would include people who aren’t eligible to vote. I imagine it would be fairer to look at the people who are eligible to vote. That makes sense to me. And yes, if you have a limit and a cap on it, I think that that would make it an even playing field.

J. Tegart (Chair): Do you have any sense of what you think the incremental amount should be as we move up in population?

H. Fathers: Did I see 30 cents somewhere, that you said you were thinking about?

H. Fathers: I understand MLA Robinson’s point about the geography, because it’s a lot easier to run a campaign in White Rock versus Surrey just because of the sheer space. That would definitely have to be taken into consideration. There’d have to be some kind of formula that is factored into that.

M. Woods: Thank you for being here and for taking the time. It’s nice to see our government at work. I appreciate that very much.

My name is Margaret Woods. I live at 14170 Wheatley Avenuein White Rock. I was elected to council from 2002 to 2005. I ran for mayor in 2005 and didn’t make it. Then I ran again in the 2014 election and came in ninth of the councillors. It’s great.

As much as I try not to be, I happen to be a political
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junkie, and I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about. I’ve given you my card so you can see the kind of work that I do when I work for a living.

I would just like to, before I start, say one thing. When we talk about the slate in White Rock, the coalition, nobody has mentioned the fact that the mayor — although he said he wasn’t part of it — actually is part of it. When you add on the costs that he expended, it adds on to the $90,000 that the coalition spent. So we actually have an imbalance in council of five members of a slate — four councillors and a mayor — and the two independents.

I’ve kind of outlined some points to save a little bit of time. I realize that your mandate is very narrow with regards to limits or not limits on the spending. I’m sure lots of other people will give you ideas, but I would just like to speak about, before we get into that: who’s going to police it? What are the ramifications of a breach? Is it a slap on the wrist or a disqualification? I think all those things have to be figured into your next stage.

If we look at Elections B.C., what we went through in the 2014 election, any questions to them were…. Elections B.C. chose to interpret their responsibilities very, very narrowly. So I don’t think that’s a place where Elections B.C. should be.

Anyway, it’s been said — and many people believe it — that we live in a democracy, and it would be reasonable to expect that there is a level playing field. Now, we realize White Rock has 20,000 of population…. So 10,000 people are the voters, but only 3,500 actually went out and voted. I can understand where your committee would want to look at population and the geography.

It seems to me…. You referred to it earlier, about the fact of ward systems. There is such a thing as fair representation, and we see that at the federal level and the provincial level, where the boundaries are drawn and redrawn to make sure that the votes are spread around, like the representation is fair. You know, some people feel that wards don’t work, but it would help to answer the question about how we can make it fairer.

If you look at Surrey, my next-door neighbour, it’s such a large geographical area so that if there were wards, then the people who are running in this ward don’t have to spend enough money to buy signs for the whole of Surrey. They just need to buy enough signs for their particular area. I think wards would go a long way.

With regards to how that might relate to White Rock, we have two sides. We have East Beach and West Beach and Uptown. To have wards kind of doesn’t work, but I still think something needs to be done with regards to fair representation because our council just decided to eliminate question period, so the public doesn’t get to talk to council at all.

With regards to oversight, who’s going to oversee the election process and the spending limits? I think that is a job for the provincial government. When the Community Charter came into play, what I saw was a provincial government saying: “Hands off. We’re going to give it to the community. You can toss them out after three years.” Well, it’s now four years. But once people get into council, they make rules and regulations so that the incumbents have a preferential view, and there’s a bias there.

We talk about what recourse the population has, people have. The only recourse that we have is the courts. We talk about election limits. The public doesn’t have any way of going through the courts unless they’ve got a lot of money. There’s no accountability there.

With regards to donations — and I don’t hate to say it — we should be looking at excluding development and real estate, anybody in the real estate industry. We should not be allowing donations, nor should we be allowing them to be on council, because they have an inherent conflict of interest. The job of every council deals with land — land and people. Therefore, there should be some type of limit there. We need to make it fair for everybody else.

I agree with Councillor Fathers when she talks about excluding the donations from city organizations. I’m not just talking about monetary donations. We’re talking about in-kind.

We have the firefighters, who feel it is their democratic right to go out and campaign. Now, when you have firefighters going and knocking on people’s doors and talking about response time and, gee whiz, if we were to join Surrey — which was in the offing, you know, to have Surrey take over our fire department and kind of combine there….

It’s like you’ve had firefighters out knocking on doors and little old ladies and little old men worried about a 50-second response time change. So they have a conflict of interest, that they’re paid by the city, they work for the city, they work for the people and they are not…. They have a conflict when they are not working for the people, when they are out campaigning and doing political work.

With regards to the electoral groups, they get to spend their money any way they want. If they have excess funds, they can do what they want with it. They can return it or whatever. But there’s an opportunity, and we saw it in White Rock. The coalition had an extra $12,000 more than that — maybe $15,000. They returned it to one developer so that now they can say, “Well, we didn’t get any money from them,” and the fact is that they’re coming back to council with a big project going.

What should the cap be? I guess that’s the answer. What should it be? There has to be, and what should it be? We just heard from Helen Fathers. Helen Fathers spent about $3,800, and I worked that out. All my numbers on here are just approximate, but I figured she spent about $1.10 per vote cast compared to almost $30,000 that the coalition — when you include the mayors’ donations as well….

Helen Fathers topped the polls more than everybody else for $1.10 per vote. The coalition spent almost $30
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per vote. Is that fair? Is that realistic? It is nothing but a bought city.

You’ll hear. We talk about the ward system and why White Rock kind of decided to go their own way. Well, there are many, many people in the community talking about: “What are we doing here? Shouldn’t we be part of Surrey?” I’m hearing that all the time.

I would just like to suggest that, when you’re deciding population, whatever, it should be how many voters there are in the city, because to say 10,000 would be, like, the whole population. White Rock doesn’t come near that. We’ve got 20,000, but we really are a small, small city.

I would just like to put that to you — that it should be population. If you want to do a dollar per capita, it has to be restricted because the city of Surrey…. I don’t know how many million people you have there, but that’s an awful lot of money. A dollar per person doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you’ve got a big population, then you do.

M. Hunt: I see from the disclosure that you spent, what, $7,700 in your election.

M. Hunt: Let’s compare your election to either one of Chesney or Fathers. You’ve obviously spent more money than them. How did you strategically choose to spend your money versus how you think they spent theirs?

M. Woods: Well, I strategically spent more because I spent more on signage. I wasn’t able to…. You know, my plan was to work all summer — you know, go door-to-door knocking — but life kind of interferes with plans, and I didn’t get to do a lot of door knocking, so I chose to spend more on signage and not a lot on advertising — mostly signage.

M. Hunt: To continue that, then, is it reasonable to suppose that if we look at different ones’ expenses, we have to also factor in time, although it’s not factored as an election expense? Yet, by the same token, we have had Chesney, for example, suggesting that he knocked on almost every door.

He put that time factor in, so therefore, his expenses would be…. You know, trying to weigh out the numbers, we would say his number is going to be a low number versus somebody who’s too busy, and therefore the limit would need to be considerably higher. Do you think where you spent is closer to where a limit should be in a place like White Rock, with 16,000 voters?

M. Woods: Well, in a perfect world, I would suggest that I should have made it my priority. Circumstances were such that I wasn’t able to. But I guess if it was a perfect world and I didn’t have to do my other stuff — I have clients and all that kind of stuff — then I should have been out knocking on the doors.

M. Hunt: That’s what I was trying to do — to get that feel for numbers. Thank you.

G. Holman: Margaret, thanks for your presentation. Just a question about limits for mayor versus council candidates. Do you think it’s appropriate that the candidates for mayor would have a higher limit? If you do, do you have some sense about what the…? Say it was some kind of dollar per number of voters or population formula. Do you think the mayor spending limit should be higher? Can you give us some idea of what would be a fair proportion or ratio?

M. Woods: I, personally, don’t think that the mayors should have a higher limit than the councillors, because when it gets down to it, the mayor has one vote. Of course, the mayor is supposed to be representing the whole population, the same as all the councillors, if we’re not in a ward system, representing the whole population. It’s just another vote. The fact that he gets more money if he wins — that’s the benefits of being the mayor. But I still don’t think that the mayor should have a higher limit.

M. Woods: Thank you very much for you taking your time and coming to this side of south of the Fraser.

K. Morris: Should be more than enough. I’m not going to bore you that much. But I am going to examine your terms of reference, which you specify in your website as being that the committee “is conducting an examination of expense limit amounts for candidates, including, but
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not limited to, the general relationship between limits for the various offices and for third-party advertisers in local elections.”

In essence, you’re looking at all the expenses. I’m going to ask you to consider something a little outside the box, and that is the expense that the community suffers post-election for the promises made to get elected.

In our particular case, our community, mayor and slate made some fairly hefty commitments, one of which hit 60 days after the election, which was a 300 percent lift in FSR in our community for a particular developer, which, on that particular building, resulted in not a single resident in the area supporting it, and yet it was….

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Madam Chair, point of order. We’re here around the expense limits, and I’m wondering if the speaker could speak just to expense limits rather than to decisions made by council.

K. Morris: I’m talking expense limits. This was an expense that the community has now suffered because it is a 300 percent lift on the OCP. We, as a community, suffer that burden. We got nothing for it but all the expenses that come….

J. Tegart (Chair): We are specific to expense limits during the election, okay? So the people of the community make a decision, and then that group makes decisions after that. Our focus is on expense limits during election time. We’d really appreciate it if you could….

K. Morris: But your terms of reference are wide enough. As I’ve quoted them on the front page of my submission to you, it includes the expenses incurred. Mr. Robertson, as an example, in the city of Vancouver, made a commitment to maintaining certain contracting-out levels, which is a matter now before the courts. In that sense, he spent money on an election, and those moneys are now going to affect every resident in that community. That’s a hard expense.

J. Tegart (Chair): We are focusing specifically on expense limits that are spend during the election campaign time.

K. Morris: I would argue that that is an expense spent during the election campaign.

J. Tegart (Chair): I would argue that that’s an issue that people vote on, and they support or don’t support that candidate based on that issue. To me, that is not an actual expense during the election time.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay, and that’s okay, you know. That’s why people get to vote.

Now, in addition to those expenses, there are expenses made, in your vernacular, during the election cycle. As an example, our city hall promoted and supported incumbent candidates, so what we had was city staff on Twitter and on the website promoting the incumbent mayor and councillors, having them attend PR events that were, for all intents and purposes, election-based events.

Now, those people had a benefit. That’s a hard-dollar cost, to put together a rally to get people out in that way and to get the approval to have that locale. In most cases we were denied access to certain public areas to do campaigning — like TransLink’s site at the SeaBus. Yet the mayor got those — with a gaggle of RCMP officers, as an example.

City hall had a sign bylaw policy: we were not allowed to have signs on city streets. We were not allowed to have them within five feet of the curb. The city owns those racks. So how does a non-incumbent get access to those? Well, the mayor had access to all those, in violation. He got a special from the election officer, from the city clerk. Those are hard-dollar costs. How did you get them?

We also had city staff standing in city hall, handing out lists of names to vote on election day. Those are costs that the average candidate cannot ever buy because they’re a breach of the law.

Now, people made complaints. As the other speaker referenced, the complaints to Elections B.C. were unanswered because, they said, they had no teeth to pursue a complaint. They admitted on several occasions that the complaints were valid and that they were a breach of section 143.

They said: “Go to the RCMP. Report the complaint. It’s a valid complaint.” So we went to the RCMP and reported those complaints. They had to do with election expense, election signage — things that were being done that were a hard-dollar cost to compete with and illegal. What we ended up with was the RCMP saying, “Go to the courthouse,” and the courthouse saying: “We can’t handle it. Go to Elections B.C.” In essence, we had no place to go.

I wasn’t the only one. There were half a dozen people in this loop, where we couldn’t get a result.

Now, you’ve asked what the limits should be. I believe that the limit should be a maximum of 50 cents per registered voter for the position of council and a maximum of $1…. I think there should be a variation between council and mayor. I believe that those variations should exist because, independent of what they get paid, the job of mayor is a much bigger job.

It’s a full-time job as opposed to a part-time job. I believe that in many communities, a part-time job for a councillor is becoming a full-time job, the truth be known.
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In terms of a full-time job for the mayor, the skill set necessary to do the job — financial management, public speaking engagements that run from morning till night — require that the person applying for that position sell themselves and sell themselves, I would argue, a lot harder than the standard councillor.

I think a limit variation is required, but I think $1 per registered voter is a maximum. I, for one, exceeded that number. I don’t think, in a perfect world, that anybody should. At 50 cents, the vast majority — I think, in fact, all of our council candidates — would have fallen within the 50-cent window.

I do not think that bringing people in from outside the community in an unpaid environment should be allowed. We have external influence to our local council. We had Burnaby call centres. People, on the phone, admitted they didn’t live here, but they were plunking a particular candidate.

I truly believe that if an external participant is participating in the process, their time should be quantified and included as part of the financial limit. Internal residents, I don’t think…. If they want to give $100,000 of their time going door to door, I think that’s their right, as a resident, to influence the democratic process.

I don’t think city hall staff should be involved in the election process at all, on either side, and there was a great deal of that.

I also want to draw you to the fourth page of my submission, which goes back to the teeth in this act. We in our particular community have a mayor that’s sitting on $17,300 that he took in excess and didn’t spend and has not remitted in accordance with the act. There is another hole in the act as it relates to expense. Anyone can take in vast quantities of money. They can spend them on any item they wish, and if that item is saleable post-election, they can sell it, and they can keep that money. Furnishings…. Whatever it happens to be, it’s found money. It’s theirs to keep.

In these cases, where these slate members took in virtually all of the money they spent and more — because their max cap was in the order of $500 to $600 of their own money and they ran their campaigns on everyone else’s money — given that they’re all in excess, this is just pure dollars that they’ve kept. What we don’t know is what they bought, used in the campaign and then sold.

M. Hunt: My question is this. You ran for the mayor’s chair, and you’re suggesting $1 per voter. Your voters are 37,000 voters. Therefore, both you and the mayor spent more than double the amount that you’re proposing. I’m looking at your expenses. I’m just trying to figure out where…. From the expenses that you did, how would you cut that in half? Do you think you would have a real campaign?

K. Morris: Yes, I would have had a real campaign. First off, I spent nearly a year in advance, running. I didn’t go door to door, but I held 22 town halls throughout the community. In each case, they were town halls on specific issues that tried to cater to those particular footprints in the community. They had a great deal of material, and I had a great deal of time to go door to door. That has a huge value.

I believed that what I needed to do was to have a storefront, because our mayor was conducting his campaign from the mayor’s office, which is a hard-dollar expense for somebody else. A lovely, new, $40 million-plus facility — how does a non-incumbent compete with that presentation? It’s tough.

I went out and I rented a retail site for 90 days, and I had a first-class presence to compete with his presence. Would I do it again? I think that I wouldn’t have to if I ran again because I’m well known now. It’s probably a requirement to have a storefront, and that is an excessive amount of money.

The developers gave my competitor free space for the campaign period. I had to pay for mine, and I bought nice space. Could I have paid less? Yes. I wouldn’t have gone as high-profile as I did go.

We had a great many issues in the campaign, so I bought an ad in every single North Shore News newspaper edition for just under three months. They weren’t big ads. They were topic-specific, and I thought they paid. But I wouldn’t go as heavy again, because I don’t think they paid enough to warrant what I put out.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): My questions are along the same lines as Marvin’s. I’ve pulled up the disclosure statements. For the successful mayor, his expenses were $88,000, and yours….

K. Morris: No, they’re not, actually. He’s under-reported his expenses, because he’s….

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Okay, I’m just going according to the disclosure, so if you could let me finish….

K. Morris: Let me tell you. He threw a final event, which isn’t even recorded.

Yours was $80,000. I pulled up 48,000 as the population of the city of North Van.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Off the electorate. Okay. I want to go back to Marvin’s question, because I think you had suggested 50 cents to a dollar per person. If that’s the case, let’s say you went for an electorate that’s 36,000 — here, it’s 48,000 — and you spent $80,000.

What number would make sense for your community as a mayoral candidate? Let’s say a dollar per person, 48,000. Could you still mount a campaign? Or would you prefer something around the neighbourhood of $80,000?

K. Morris: We were taking on, in my particular case, a candidate who is well financed and well supported by the development community. In a typical election in the district of North Vancouver, the last time we had a contested election, the mayor spent $6,500 to get elected. The last time the district of West Vancouver mayor was contested, he spent $4,500 to get elected.

In that same cycle the mayor of North Vancouver spent $50,000 to get elected. I knew, in taking on this challenge, I was going to have to spend a great deal to dislodge the developer backing, so I committed my own resources to that cause — $72,000 of my own money — and we pulled in $8,400 of donations.

We sent thousands upon thousands of donation dollars back, because I posed a limit of $300, and I only took money from people who lived in the community or had a business in the community. In that sense, I could have cut my expenditure significantly. I chose not to.

The cost of mounting a valid campaign I believe should cap at a dollar for a mayor and 50 cents for a councillor.

J. Tegart (Chair): The next group to present is Surrey First. If you wouldn’t mind coming forward. The process, of course, is a ten-minute presentation and five minutes for questions. Good morning.

B. Hayne: Good morning. First of all, Madam Chair, thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. I’m Bruce Hayne with Surrey First, and I’m joined today by Steven Casson, who is our treasurer at Surrey First, and Gord Schoberg, who is our financial agent and has been for several election cycles. If I could, I’d like to start by reading our submission to you so it is read into Hansard, and then, of course, we’ll be here for any questions that you may have.

Elections represent a special opportunity for citizens to express their will, and municipal elections allow the public to weigh in on the issues and the decisions that most affect daily life. The 2014 Surrey municipal election was a watershed moment in the reversal of a decade-long decline in voter participation. Voter turnout was the highest participation in recent memory.

Election rules are essential mechanisms to ensure that there is a level playing field while also taking into account the challenges of modern political leaders in reaching out to the public saturated with private sector marketing messages. Surrey First has given great thought into what our experiences have taught us, and we offer this submission as our contribution to the second stage of the local government election reform task force.

As a bit of a background, one of the 31 recommendations in the May 2010 task force final report was to institute an election spending limit to ensure a level playing field for a diverse range of political players. Some of the challenges facing the task force included crafting a policy that considered many conflicting forces including, but not limited to, the different sizes of community; rural, suburban and urban realities; independent candidates versus electoral organizations; and the need to provide sufficient resources for election campaigns to be heard above the din of the consumer marketing landscape.

Some of the early insights developed through the work of the task force were the support of a formula-based spending limit that accounted for population disparities from 80,000 to 600,000 people. Furthermore, support for the provincial government to be the deciding financial regulator was consistent with other jurisdictions. Finally, the need to address third-party spending was addressed and implemented in time for the 2014 municipal elections.

It must be stressed that the final report of the task force…. Efforts must be made not to reward or punish candidates for the decision to join an electoral organization. Surrey First’s experience is instructive in that regard, since the very existence of a slate was often a hotly debated topic with the media and in discussions with the general public.

Surrey First prides itself on a model of a diverse team that works cooperatively together — a change of pace from the antagonistic attitude seen in nearly every other city council and, indeed, at other levels of politics. A conscious decision was made to campaign as the team has governed — in other words, as a cohesive, united team.

This impacts issues like spending, in that this was not a mayor’s campaign and eight council campaigns but one staff, one advertising budget, one office and one spending report. An example of this is reflected in the fact that Linda Hepner did not file any expenses on her own, as virtually all her activities and expenses were indistinguishable from an effort to get the entire team elected and vice versa.
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I’ll just stop and point out that this is also in accordance with what Elections B.C. has required us to do as a slate. We can speak to that later as well.

Conversely, running as a team brought its own challenges. In nearly every debate, independent candidates sought public support by pointing out that membership in a slate was, in fact, contrary to the interests of citizens, and negative coverage or challenging issues affecting one candidate directly hurt every other candidate. This is an important part that will be addressed later in this report.

The Surrey First team experienced firsthand the challenges in campaigning in a media-saturated world and in a rapidly growing urban environment. Advertising in multiple local newspapers such as the Now, the Surrey Leader and the Cloverdale Reporter, as well as ethnic media from Indo-Canadian radio to Chinese language newspapers, is required to reach citizens equitably.

Erecting and maintaining signs in the face of vandalism, sending out direct mail with increased postage from Canada Post, maintaining a staff that could accurately research and fact-check issues as part of keeping the public informed of the team’s record in office and ensuring that all promises were as responsibly vetted as possible creates cost centres that are not easily understandable to the general public or media who have not seen the daily realities of campaigning in one of Canada’s fastest-growing municipalities.

There’s no doubt that the ultimate arbiter of public support is a vote of the public, but the ability to engender the trust of donors is, in itself, one indicator of serious and responsible campaign organization. Surrey First recognizes the necessity of implementing a fair and balanced campaign spending limit, but such a limit should not be so draconian as to play to the lowest common denominator. Being seen as worthy of financial contribution is a standard all candidates reach towards, and the ability to do so successfully should not be construed as a negative.

In exploring suggestions, Surrey First could offer the task force…. We examined all three levels of government for insight. It is common for election spending limits to be built around a formula centred on the size of the voting population. In 2014 Surrey had 287,940 eligible voters or 57 percent of Surrey’s population. Based on similar percentages and factoring in population growth, Surrey First estimates that the 2018 election in Surrey will be 545,906 citizens with 308,448 eligible voters.

The federal formula for election spending limits is $2.07 for the first 15,000 voters, $1.04 for the next 10,000 and 52 cents for every voter above 25,000 when it comes to each Member of Parliament, with an additional 70 cents per voter for each of the federal parties. This formula, when applied to Surrey’s expected 2018 voter base, would produce a cap of $188,842 per candidate.

It should be noted that this is for a 36-day writ period. When pro-rated for a 45-day election proceedings period, it would produce a per-candidate cap of $236,053 for Surrey First’s eight councillors and mayor. This would create an election spending limit for the entire team of $2.124 million. This amount excludes any additional amount for the elector organization out of respect for the task force’s wish not to provide any disadvantages to candidates who run independently of an electoral organization.

Another instructive measure is what the B.C. government deems appropriate spending limits on its own elections. Accounting for both the writ and the immediate pre-writ period, the B.C. government allows local campaigns to spend approximately $146,000 on each of the seven provincial ridings in Surrey, for a total of $1.022 million. Adjusted for the 45-day election proceedings period, this comes out to $821,250 or $2.87 per estimated 2013 voting population.

Perhaps this would be an opportune time to address the issue some may be bringing that there should be a large disparity between the spending limit for mayor and for councillors. In fact, Ontario uses a population base formula that makes this distinction, with the mayor receiving only a $2,500 increase in cap limit compared to councillors.

Mayoral candidates in Ontario receive a base of $7,500 plus 85 cents for every voter, compared to $5,000 plus 85 cents per voter for councillors. If Ontario’s formula were adopted directly in Surrey, each council candidate would receive a cap of $267,180, with the mayoral candidate allowed to spend $269,680. Thus Surrey First’s total cap limit would be $2.4 million.

In summation, Surrey First supports the idea of election spending limits to provide a level playing field, while also recognizing that modern-day elections are expensive affairs that provide an opportunity to communicate important ideas to the public and should not be handicapped to the lowest common denominator. An ability to inspire support and raise financial contributions is one important aspect of public campaigning.

Surrey First has sought comparative examples at the federal, provincial and municipal levels and has sought to live up to the spirit of the task force 2010 report calling for a population-based formula adjusted for B.C.’s 45-day election proceedings period and constructed in a manner that does not provide additional funds for elector organizations — for example, by omitting the 70-cents-per-voter spending space at the federal level or the provincial-party spending level, which has boosted the per-voter formula to about $5.95 in B.C.

At the same time, the task force was clear that candidates should not be punished for seeking to work cooperatively with other candidates. It is Surrey First’s experience that it is impossible to accurately separate spending between the different candidates and that any spending limit imposed in the future should allow candi-
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dates to combine their respective spending limits as they combine their campaign activities.

Based on the model adjusted for the estimated 2018 voting base, Surrey First has demonstrated that other spending limits create a range of $2.124 million, using the federal spending guidelines, to $1.022 million, using the B.C. government’s spending formula. Simply adopting the province of Ontario’s formula for municipal spending limits would produce a Surrey cap of $2.4 million for a full slate. Consistent with the 2010 report, Surrey First agrees that any such spending limits are inflation-adjusted to the CPI.

Whatever decision the task force comes to, Surrey First strongly urges the final position not to be inconsistent with what a conservative estimation of the federal spending limit has produced, what the B.C. government’s own rules are regarding provincial elections and what a comparative province has deemed appropriate, as noted in the task force’s own report.

M. Bernier: Sure. I’ll jump in first. First, congratulations on your election.

I hope you can appreciate some of the challenges we have as a task force here, when you look at some of our mandates, specifically around trying to find fairness. I’m curious about your insight on this, then. Obviously, you have a different experience from others.

When you look at those numbers that you put forward — you know, $200,000 to $300,000 for a candidate on some of those numbers that you were saying — how would we be able argue that it’s fair? When we look at other candidates that are only in the means…. When I look around Surrey, they are spending $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, $10,000 — who are not part of a slate.

From a task force, from our group, how do you suggest that we would try to make the fairness aspect of finding a limit that is attainable for anybody who chooses to run so we don’t get into the situation where the only attainable way of ever considering running for an election would be to be on a slate?

B. Hayne: Well, I would say, first of all, that being able to raise funds in the political process is a sign of a good organization, of responsible spending in a campaign. So that ability to raise funds should not be hindered. Some candidates, no matter how hard they may try, can only raise $3,000 or $4,000. That is unfortunate. But I don’t believe that it should hinder those candidates that are able to raise significantly more funds than that in the election process — to be brought down to that level, quite frankly.

I do understand your dilemma with trying to find an area that would be appropriate. Certainly, at the provincial level, just during the writ period it’s, I believe, $73,000 per candidate — plus, of course, their spending at the provincial level and at the party level for all the big-ticket items, like television and radio, and so on. If we look at $73,000 times eight in Surrey, that’s what the….

Independent candidates at the provincial or federal level run into those same issues, I would suggest.

M. Bernier: Yeah, and that’s fair comment. The only follow-up I have is a little bit changing, but you were talking about the reporting.

You have in your submission that it’s really hard to break down what each candidate said, but then we look at other electoral organizations that actually just divided equally by six or eight or however many are running. What is your point on that that you say might be problematic? If this group was to say, “If you spent $1 million divided by ten people, it’s $100,000 each,” and report it that way, what’s the dilemma that maybe you would face doing that?

G. Schoberg: Well, in campaigns past, that’s exactly what Surrey First did — just divided it up. This time around Elections B.C. instructed us to lump-sum all of the costs in the electoral organization filing. That’s because each candidate didn’t open their individual bank accounts. In essence, it’s the same thing. It just was lump-summed this past election cycle.

M. Hunt: To the delegation, my question is dealing with large municipalities. We had this come up in our first round, when we were dealing with principles. It was brought up specifically with the city of Vancouver. I’m not going to question that Surrey is exactly the same, because when I look at your disclosures, there’s a tremendous disparity between your election expenses and your election writ or whatever word we used up at the top of that — election proceedings period, I think it’s called, or something like that.

We’ve got a difference between election expenses, which was your column A. Column B was election proceedings period expenses. The comment was made, and Vancouver was dealing with it. You have exactly the same thing. Which one should we actually be dealing with when we’re dealing with large municipalities?

Obviously, as an elector organization, you’re doing a lot of work — polling, all sorts of things like this — that’s outside of the election period that all has to do with the election period and everything that’s going on in the election period.

By the letter of the law, you’ve done it right. I’m not making any accusations as far as your books not being accurate. I’m not saying that. Please don’t anybody suggest that I’m thinking that. All I’m doing is talking about the disparity between when the money is spent…. Yet by the same token, it goes together.
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My question is for your comment on whether we should be dealing with election expenses when we’re dealing with the large elector organizations in large municipalities versus that 45-day writ.

S. Casson: Well, that’s a difficult question to define, really. When we’re planning our elections, we’re thinking six to eight months out. There’s some polling that goes on in addition to that time. So we are incurring a lot of expenses during that time, but those carry over. Some of the benefits would carry over to that 45-day period. It’s hard to say the actual expense of the writ period, with the pre-45 versus the post-45.

I found it very interesting that they actually changed the format to that, because it was really more of a balancing act, just cutting it off. I wasn’t quite sure at the end of the day exactly what Elections B.C. was trying to extract as the information from us and what they really wanted to report. The costs are what it actually costs us to run that election. It’s arbitrary, at the end of the day, just based on the date that it was paid, which column it goes in. I’m not sure how meaningful that information is at the end of the day — what you spent for that 45-day period.

G. Schoberg: Can I just add a comment to that? First of all, I was pleased to see that Elections B.C. has taken over the administration of local government financing. There were a number of harmonization points between how the provincial financing is handled and how the local government is handled. Certainly, for me, it makes it a lot easier, having touched on both.

There were a number of expenses that were incurred by Surrey First prior to the election proceedings period, which were allocated into the election proceedings period — things that were incurred before but yet were of benefit during, in essence, the campaign. Those were allocated, as they are provincially as well.

There’s a lot of similarity, Marvin, between how the provincial costs are handled — in essence, like a pre-writ versus a writ — and how the local government costs are handled.

J. Tegart (Chair): I’ve got Gary and then Linda, and we’ve got about two minutes.

G. Holman: Thanks very much for your presentation. I was interested in your comment about the limit for the mayor versus a councillor. You seem to be suggesting as a group, really, that there be a slight increase for the mayor. But in your view, there’s not a rationale for having a large difference in spending limit between somebody running for council and somebody running for mayor.

B. Hayne: In our analysis of what takes place in other jurisdictions, we found that Ontario did have that slight bump for a mayoral candidate, but really, it was relatively insignificant in the overall spending limit.

The way that we as a slate, if you will, go about our election campaigning is that we pool all our fundraising and we pool all our spending. There really isn’t any…. We simply couldn’t differentiate anything over and above what the mayor spent versus what we as council candidates spent, because it was just all done together. All the ads included all of us. All the brochures included all of us and so on and so on. There really was virtually no difference in what was spent on our mayoral candidate versus any one of our eight council candidates.

L. Reimer: Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedules to come and provide your feedback on this.

One of the items that we’re looking at for expense limits is third-party advertising. Just wondering if you have any thoughts around that.

B. Hayne: It’s my understanding that there were third-party advertising limits brought in to this past election. Were there not?

L. Reimer: The ability for third-party advertisers to register and disclose, yes. But the actual limits for spending were not, and that’s part of this committee’s mandate.

Certainly in the Surrey experience over the last several election cycles, it hasn’t been a big issue. There aren’t a lot of third-party spenders in Surrey. I realize that may be quite different in Vancouver. But certainly here we haven’t had much in the way of third-party spending. But certainly, since they have to disclose it, I think they would be doing it at their peril if they were trying to overly spend and change an election outcome.

S. Sullivan: I wanted to ask…. In Vancouver as compared to Surrey, I was hoping to get your feedback. The two largest electoral organizations…. They spend a lot of time debating whether to run full slates or short slates. The argument is that short slates will…. You can maybe minus two. You will get a higher quality of candidate. The quality tends to drop off toward the end. Also, it’s better for democracy. You don’t end up with single-party states. If it’s a wild swing in public opinion, you’ll get a complete, full slate.

Then there are other arguments that people never vote a full slate anyways, and they always vote for at least one other party. Therefore, you’re voting against yourself.

Does that conversation take place in Surrey, or is that an issue at all for you?
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B. Hayne: It absolutely does. In fact, two elections ago we did not run a full slate. The reasons for that were varied, but it was decided not to run a full slate.

In the past two election cycles we have run a full slate. I think to your point, Sam, the electorate will decide on the candidates that they feel are best suited for the job and often do pick and choose amongst independent candidates.

We saw that. If you go poll by poll and you do the analysis of the election results, you find that it’s not just a tick for every person on the slate. Often there are independent candidates or candidates from another slate that move up poll by poll. I think it should be up to the individual slates whether they choose to run a full slate or not.

S. Sullivan: One of the concerns is that if you do have a regime that says you will get spending room per candidate that you run, there will be an effort then, or a tendency, to run a full slate in order to max out your spending room.

Running full slates will then also make it harder for independents as well. You see what I’m saying? I think if these kinds of rules go through, everyone will run a full slate in order to max out, even if they have to take some candidates that they wouldn’t want to take.

Just wondered if you had any thoughts on that, if that would be the incentive system that’s in.

S. Casson: I think that’s a very good comment. I think that certainly in Vancouver — and, more importantly, for us in Surrey — there’s been…. I believe the slate has brought good continuity in government. Surrey itself is a $750-million-a-year operation. I think there were some 30-plus councillor candidates running in the last election. Some people are very single-issue candidates that just want to get their point out. Others, I would say, take it more seriously.

Would that create more slates? It might very well, but I can’t see…. There’s more than just creating a slate to raise funds. There’s a lot of continuity. There’s a lot of like-minded thinking, a lot of discussion coming together on points and principles and a platform, and that would be very difficult to do just off the cuff, I would think. But I take your point. It’s well made.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay, we’ve got our conference call person on the line. Jenny has the last question.

J. Kwan: I’ll be very quick with my question. You mentioned that in all of your ads it’s the entire slate whose names are on it, right? Does that go the same for all of your leafleting, documentations that go out, signage and so on? Is that the same theory that applies?

Secondary to that question is: for all-candidates meetings and exposure to candidates, which is often very important, is it the case that every single candidate in your slate gets equal time and equal exposure?

B. Hayne: Thank you for your question. As far as the advertising is concerned, yes, all our advertising included all the candidates’ names and photographs, typically. The election signs had all the candidates’ names but just the photograph of the mayor, because having nine pictures on the sign just didn’t make sense to us. That was just from a marketing and graphics point of view.

To your point about the all-candidates debates, that really depended on the format of the debate. Of course, we didn’t control the formats of the debate. In some debates, for instance, you’ve got so many cards that each candidate could use, and once those cards were used, they could no longer speak to an issue.

That actually heavily favoured independents, because every candidate got, I think, six cards or something like that. In a slate where there were eight council candidates on the stage, they only allowed a slate to answer one question. We couldn’t possibly use up all our cards, and yet the independent candidates could speak to almost every issue. It just depended on the format of the debate.

J. Kwan: Sorry, can I just get one clarification? Then, on that basis, there are some candidates that get…. You mention that they get six cards per candidate. Are there some candidates that utilize all six, and them some that actually didn’t?

J. Kwan: Sorry, I don’t mean independent candidates. I mean within Surrey First.

B. Hayne: No. Typically, we all had cards left over at the end, but we spoke to the issues that we were most familiar with or that had most interest to us. For instance, if it was an economic development question or something like that, then I would typically take a question like that because I chair our investment and innovation committee and so on.

If it was a question on social housing, then perhaps another candidate — Judy Villeneuve or Vera LeFranc — would answer those types of questions because they are more familiar with that subject matter. It just ended up that we spoke to the issues as they arose.

J. Tegart (Chair): Well, thank you very much for taking the time today, and we really appreciate your input. We did allow a little bit of extra time because there were a lot of questions. Thank you for your written submission.

Our next presenter is Roch Fortin, and I do believe he’s on the line.
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J. Tegart (Chair): Good morning. We’re allowing ten minutes for the presentation and five minutes for questions, so if you’re ready to go ahead….

R. Fortin: My name is Roch Fortin, and I just ran for political office for the first time ever in my life in the municipal election here in Summerland. To be quite frank, I had no intention of running for political office before, but a great number of people approached me and wanted me to run.

With their financial support, I agreed to go into the process, and it was the greatest experience. I learned so much about the process, the people and all the intricacies involved if you want to be elected for political office. That means you’ve got a fairly inexperienced person here, but I want to share my experience with you regarding the financing part of it.

I personally believe that every time you have third-party financing involved, it’s pretty well physically impossible to monitor and to keep track of the exact amount of donations — not donations strictly, but in-kind donations — given to different candidates. I’ll give you two examples that I experienced myself that I learned later, not during the process itself.

For instance, a candidate was fully supported, in a sense, by the B.C. Federation of Labour. How do you quantify that? When e-mails and other information are forwarded to the B.C. federation members via e-mail to encourage or support a candidate in a municipal election, for instance, how do you quantify that on a monetary issue? How much is that worth? How hard is it for another individual who is not supported to present their position if, for instance, the B.C. Federation of Labour selects a candidate?

A second example would be, for instance, the group from Vancouver, Leadnow. It’s a significant lobbyist group involved in Vancouver. It took place in the election. They were a very strong participant in the municipal election here in Summerland. They did not deem to be required to be registered as a third party, as they said they were strictly working on behalf of another group, like the land swap group society in Summerland.

There’s no financial…. There’s, for instance, a mass e-mail, a very crafted e-mail, of information recommending certain candidates or suggesting candidates. It’s very hard to quantify how much value, how much money, that equals on advertisements or advertising.

R. Fortin: I’ll finish my submission regarding the limit. You can put any limit you want, minimum or maximum. One of the things that will be really hard, despite the rules Elections B.C. has in place right now…. It’ll be extremely hard to enforce any kind of maximum contribution to a candidate or by a candidate, because it’s really hard to quantify all the other help or the other information or the backroom work that is done by other organizations to support one candidate.

One solution would be strictly that any kind of donation in-kind…. It doesn’t matter if it’s an e-mail or a mass e-mail or supporting it to a website like the B.C. Federation of Labour’s. This should be quantified. It should be a grant donation in-kind and a dollar value attached if you put a limit on the maximum a person is allowed to expend on their election bid to a position.

There’s one thing I’ve noticed — it’s a bit negative at the end and to the process: it’s the fact that a lot of people have lost faith in Elections B.C., the investigative body of it, if an investigation is required. A lot of senior elected officials have mentioned to me and other candidates not even to bother, because they have no teeth, and the recourse associated with it is minimum.

Personally, just as a recommendation, if you decide to go with limits of a contribution, partiality should be in play. That means that if someone, or an elected official, is elected, let’s say, and some illegal activity has taken place, there should be something like immediate removal from office. This was one position.

M. Hunt: My first question, Roch, is this. Are you satisfied, with the amount of money that you spent on your election, that you ran a reasonable campaign in your community?

R. Fortin: Absolutely, I was. I felt that I had great support, and I received a lot of financial contributions. Without that, I don’t think I would have…. In this case, I finished second — as a newer person who had arrived in the community less than four years ago. The difference was less than 70 votes. There’s no way…. It would have taken me lots of money and time to fight the B.C. Federation of Labour or another party associated with it.

M. Hunt: My next question, in tying this together, is that it looks like this was actually a four-way race for the mayor’s chair. The top four all are very close in their votes, and the fifth one, of course, didn’t count, really.

M. Hunt: In the midst of that four-way, were they all equivalent campaigns, from your perspective — of the four mayoralty candidates?
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R. Fortin: Yes, actually, they were. I think you have to make a huge difference between urban and rural elections, and I think the rules should be slightly different. In the smaller rural area, name recognition means a lot of things — or families or other issues.

Based on the other unsuccessful candidates with me, they were just incredible individuals — lot of compliments.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for taking the time to touch base with us. I have a couple of questions. My first one is…. I know that the population of Summerland looks like it’s just over 11,000 people, which would put you over the 10,000 flat rate that we’re looking at.

I’m just really curious. From my perspective, coming from Coquitlam, you come from a small community. We would call 11,000 people a small community. What do you think the expense limits should be on a per-capita basis? What would be reasonable?

R. Fortin: That was my point. It’s what you count as campaign financing. It’s the outside factor that comes in. Personally, I probably can run with less money if…. Being a first time for me, for instance, campaign signs and other things were fairly expensive. For instance, Mr. Waterman, who won the election, used previous signs based on his signs from previous elections, which cut down some of his costs. I don’t know if you understand.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): No, I do. I know it was cheaper the second time I ran locally because I had my signs already done. I do appreciate that.

My next question has to do with this idea of endorsement. You have some concerns on how you quantify endorsement. Would you argue that if a sports council or a Rotary club just gave an endorsement — said, “We support this candidate” — you’re looking for some way to quantify that in some capacity as part of an election expense?

R. Fortin: I think that’s a little bit more…. I don’t think a service club…. I’m thinking more like the B.C. Federation of Labour, for instance, or that group Leadnow in Vancouver. These people are actively involved — for instance, even transporting people or involved in the election. It makes the process really unfair if you have a machine behind another machine that doesn’t report any expenditure towards the campaign.

Like, there’s no report of Leadnow or B.C. Federation of Labour on Mr. Waterman’s campaign expenditure for whatever. However, there are a bunch of black spots that have been kind of covered, and at the end of day, Mr. Waterman writes a personal cheque there.

I don’t want to accuse Mr. Waterman of doing anything wrong. That’s not what I’m saying. But I think there’s so much room in there to quantify those things.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): In our community it’s often the Sport Council that will endorse candidates, and then they send out e-mails. I think it can happen in many different capacities, but it’s just about convincing people to support and endorse.

I just have one more question. There’s third-party advertising. Was that an issue in Summerland? Were there some, sort of, third parties that were buying ads?

R. Fortin: Do you know what? Yeah, it was, on both sides. I think everybody is fairly familiar with Mr. Mark Ziebarth in 2008. Again this happened this year. He registered as a third party this year and did send some information supporting certain candidates, but he was registered.

In another case, another individual and organization were not registered and supported the slate of candidates. But there’s no…. It can’t be enforced. When an election is so closely contested, it’s very difficult.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): If I could just ask about expense limits for a third party, because we haven’t been hearing a whole lot about what that would look like. Do you have a sense of what the relationship might be like as we explore this idea of expense limits, what the relationship might look like between candidates versus a third party?

R. Fortin: Yes, I think it’s really important. I think, personally, it should be when you declare at the end of the year. For anyone, any organization, for instance, it should be part of the financial package. You have a good indication of…. You may not be done for the next election, but if you find a way to quantify it: is it worth money?

Is an e-mail from the B.C. Federation of Labour to all of their support group endorsing two candidates worth money? Is it worth value to a candidate, for instance, versus the other four or the other six or the other ten that are also running?

Seeing none, thank you very much for taking the time today to call in and give us your input.

R. Fortin: Thank you very much. It’s not a witch-hunt here. I’m just a first-time candidate — the first time ever running for politics. I believe in the purity of the election process, and it’s so nice when we play all at the same level. That makes a huge difference.

All right. We’re right at 11 o’clock, so we’ll turn it right over to you. Welcome.
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S. Bohus: Thank you for having me. I’m Stephen Bohus, with Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver. I presented in phase 1 as well. There will be a presentation coming shortly. I thought I would be projecting on one of these two projectors, but it’ll be out in hard copy soon. So just follow along with me, and I will tell you which page I’m on once the presentations are circulated.

NSV ran candidates in 2011. We chose not to run candidates in 2014, and one of the key reasons was the lack of finance reform — the reason why we didn’t run candidates in the city of Vancouver. In 2011 we ran on a $20,000 budget. One of our candidates got 19,500 votes, another about 18,000 votes. I think we had a significant outreach, but we found that the lack of finance reform is a huge problem.

If we look at the figures from Vancouver…. There are a lot of ways to interpret it, but all parties combined and all candidates combined spent about $6.48 million. That’s a huge amount. I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere in the world, but it’s astounding. If we look at this total, we just look at who is spending what, the organization Vision Vancouver spent 53 percent of this total. The NPA spent 37 percent of this total, and 10 percent was spent by everyone else combined. This is not a level playing field. And some of these figures are subject to interpretation, as you’re probably finding out by going through the disclosures — what you count and what you don’t count.

In the big picture, $15.58 was spent per registered voter, and $35.87 was spent per ballot cast. So I think we really need action, and we need it now. This doesn’t include the third-party advertising.

Now, I think one of the reasons we should be actually approaching this question is looking at how much money is actually required to run an effective campaign. If we look at the Green Party of Vancouver, they elected four representatives — they ran seven — and they accounted for about 2 percent of the total spending. The other electoral organizations in Vancouver to examine include COPE, OneCity, Public Education Project, Vancouver 1st and Cedar Party as organizations spending less than $100,000 — or around $200,000, in terms of COPE spending.

If an electoral organization such as the Green Party can spend about $128,000 or $100,000 to elect representatives, maybe that’s enough for a campaign in Vancouver. Really, the angle should be: how much money and how are the electoral organizations spending their funds, and how much is required? If we look at the big budget campaigns…. I’m just looking mostly at Vision Vancouver because they spent the most. They spent over $780,000 on hired staff, over $114,000 on research and polling. Just look at the figures both at Vision and the NPA and compare them to the other electoral organizations.

If we look at where the money is coming from, well, Vision accepted $1.9 million from corporate donations, $260,000 from trade unions and $554,000 from individuals. I’ll note that there was an individual contribution of $100,000 from a restaurant owner, and there were some very, very large contributions. That’s why we actually need the spending capped on the donations.

Vision elected 12, and really the question is: can money buy elections? The NPA spent $2.39 million, and they elected 11 — three for council posts. If you look at 23 out of the 27 posts in Vancouver, those are filled by the NPA or by Vision, and they spent 90 percent of the money. I will leave that to you to consider.

If we look at the proportionality of who got in and how many votes they got — and this is all in the graphs; I’ve got some nice charts — Vision actually received 31.8 percent of all combined votes for council. The NPA received over 32 percent — 32.7 percent — but they received three seats on council, for councillor seats. Vision got six seats on council for a lower percentage of votes, and the Green Party received one. So it’s not proportional in any way.

One of my graphs actually shows the breakdown of all of the party spending combined, and I’ve combined all the electoral organizations, with every single candidate’s spending from that electoral organization. So we have a complete picture in Vancouver.

One of the things about Vancouver is that to get elected to council, there was a threshold of 36,831 votes. Independents actually made up only 2.9 percent of all the votes, and the top independent was 8,197 votes. That was about 14.4 percent of the way to get elected. In Vancouver, independents, unfortunately, are not an issue. We have to solve the problem with electoral organizations. The last year that an independent was elected was, I believe, 1988, with Carole Taylor — a long time ago.

In the interest of time, if we look at Toronto, I think there is actually a very good precedent on the question of: should Vancouver be able to make its own rules? We think Vancouver should be able to make a more restrictive set of rules than the province and be given that option. That’s exactly what happened in Ontario, with Toronto making more restrictive rules on campaign finances. In Vancouver, the charter, we believe, should be amended to allow for proportional representation as well as the ward system or at large, as currently allowed.

The ward system is quite problematic with electoral organizations, but it does work well with independent candidates that we elect in Toronto.

We look at who endorsed…. I think this was one of the key questions with the committee. Do we consider the total of all the candidates in an electoral organization, or do we have a limit for an electoral organization?

I will argue that the electoral organizations should have a limit with all of the candidates combined into the campaign. This is why if we were just to set a limit of 25 cents per voter, it would give a candidate $103,944 to spend. Now, if you multiply that by, let’s say, a standard slate of 21 candidates, you’re looking at a figure of $2.183 million. So we’re still in the big-money range.
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Now, if we were to actually say that there’s a 25-cent-per-voter limit per electoral organization and all of the members on a slate combined, then you could actually limit spending to $104,000. As I’ve shown with the other electoral organizations that ran effective campaigns, you can make a campaign work on that amount. I’ve got some tables looking at 35-cent limits and ten-cent limits and so on.

The Vancouver solution…. If you look at the independents, independents actually combined to only spend $14,807 out of the grand total of $6.5 million. It’s not significant. It’s 0.23 percent of the total, so I don’t think independents are really a factor here. It would be nice to have more of them.

What about deficits and continuous reporting? Well, Vision Vancouver reported a shortfall of over $400,000. They spent $400,000 more than they received. How will this debt be paid off? Well, we don’t know, because there isn’t any reporting this year. It’s very important to have continuous reporting on an annual basis on how the electoral organizations are spending their money, and there have to be caps put in place in non-election years on electoral organization spending.

A tweet from Jeff Lee of the Vancouver Sun said that Vision ran the office on $557,000 in 2013 and appeared to have received $860,000 in an off-election year. That’s him reporting from the AGM.

Finally, in my last minute, electoral organizations should only be limited on how much money they can carry over from year to year — $25,000. That’s our suggestion. There needs to be a way to hit the reset button, so if an electoral organization has amassed a large war chest, that gets emptied, everyone is on a level playing field when the new rules come into effect. The new rules should come into effect as soon possible, because by-elections can happen at any time, and we may have a few in Vancouver before 2018.

The final point here is that I would urge the committee to reconsider the four-year term. I think we’re already seeing some really, really big problems in Vancouver in terms of the direction our current council is going in. Citizens are not having a say. There are seven votes always there in public hearings voting in favour of rezoning applications or for any large project put forward by a major proponent, and the public is being shortchanged.

I encourage the committee to make some really meaningful…. Teaching the way elections are financed in B.C. This is really the nature of your committee, and for our future.

J. Tegart (Chair): Thank you very much, Stephen, and I apologize. Apparently, the photocopier isn’t working, but we will ensure that everyone gets a copy. All committee members will get a copy.

S. Bohus: I’ve sent the PDF file as well to the main e-mail. Maybe that can get circulated for your reference. I’ve got lots of nice charts.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for all the research you’ve done. It’s certainly a real value-added to our committee.

You hadn’t mentioned anything, however, about third-party advertising. You may choose at some point to go off and do some of that research and send it in to the committee — before April 17, I believe. Just your thoughts about it, given that you spent so much time paying attention to this. Do you have any sense of third-party expense limits and what we ought to be looking at?

M. Hunt: I’m just trying to pull it up here. In the Vision’s…. It is such a long, long disclosure. It’s crazy.

My question. Dealing in large organizations in large municipalities, the reality that a lot of the election expenses are not during the 45 days of the election…. I use Vision as an example, where just under $1.6 million is spent in the election period, and $2.7 million is their election expenses. Then the number goes on from there, depending on whatever else we add.

M. Hunt: Yeah. The question I want to ask is: how, from your perspective, do we deal with these organizations that are basically full-time organizations that are there all this time, outside of the election period, and dealing with a lot of expenses and work that is for the election period outside the election period? What are your thoughts on what should be disclosed?

S. Bohus: I believe that we need fuller disclosure. I think if we had the same rules for the entire election period, that would be very helpful. I think the disclosures are very, very complicated with the new system, and there’s an issue of equality.

I think we need continuous disclosure, and we need disclosure, also, prior to voting day so that residents know what’s coming. That actually happened on a voluntary basis, with five of the elector organizations disclosing their figures.

In terms of the class and the detail, there is definitely
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a need for greater clarity before the start of the election period for disclosures.

M. Hunt: A subsequent question. Should we be dealing with the number of eligible voters when we’re talking about this, or should we be dealing with population?

J. Kwan: Is it your view that all of the slates’ candidates should have the same amount on a per-capita basis, in terms of the spending limits? In Vancouver we have school board, park board and council in there. Is it the same, equal amount for everybody?

S. Bohus: That’s actually a very good question. We’ve given it some thought. In Toronto, in some other municipalities, there is a lower limit for school board — and maybe, conceivably, for park board. Our feeling was that the electoral organizations and all the candidates under that should be considered under one umbrella, in one total, and it should be consistent.

If you have a situation in Toronto where you can give $2,500 to the mayoral candidate and $750 to a council candidate, I think…. Those rules don’t apply to Vancouver because we have parties, and in Toronto everyone’s an independent. I think consistency would be good, in terms of having the same limit per electoral organization on what they can spend on their entire slate.

G. Holman: Thanks very much for your presentation. You don’t seem to be suggesting that there should be a different spending limit for council versus mayor.

S. Bohus: That’s correct, because in Vancouver it’s been a very long time since independents have been elected.

G. Holman: Okay. You were suggesting 25 cents per voter for an EO, like Vision. You calculated it was $125,000 or something like that — 25 cents per voter. That’s how you calculated the limit for an EO. Did I get that right?

S. Bohus: That’s right. I think I have a figure…. It’s just a suggestion. I worked out 30 cents and 35 cents. So it was $103,994 with that number of registered voters for Vancouver.

G. Holman: I’m not hung up on whether it’s 25 cents or 35 cents. What I’m curious about, then, is: how do you calculate the limit for an independent? Is it sort of derived from the EO calculation? How do you get down to the limit for that independent candidate, then?

S. Bohus: Well, the independent candidate, if they’re endorsed by an EO, then they’re in that total. If they’re a truly independent candidate, the suggestion would be spending up to half of what an EO can spend on the campaign.

G. Holman: Okay. In a way, you’re almost suggesting a formula that gives a bit of an advantage, maybe more than a bit of an advantage, to independents versus people running as part of a slate or electoral organization.

S. Bohus: I think there are a lot of efficiencies of scale to run one candidate versus running five or running 21. I don’t think you’re really giving that advantage there. I think in Vancouver you have to be on an electoral organization slate to be elected. That’s the issue for Vancouver. It might be something else elsewhere in the province.

Seeing none, thank you very much, Stephen, for your presentation and we will ensure that all the members get a copy of it.

D. Pitcairn: My name is Don Pitcairn. I live at 2422-124th Street in Surrey, Marvin Hunt’s riding, as a matter of fact. Good to see him here today.

I actually came here today not to speak, not to report, but to actually just listen to find out if democracy is alive and well in Surrey. But after hearing the proceedings so far, there was just something that I’ve been involved with, and I thought I just wanted to mention it to you so you could consider it as you look at election spending.

I’ve run for the Green Party of B.C. in South Surrey provincially. I’ve done this twice now, the last two provincial elections, so I know about running a campaign, I know about election signage, and I know about some of the costs. I’ve also assisted with civic campaigns, both in Surrey and White Rock. I’ve had success with some candidates, not so much with others.

Now, in Surrey we have Surrey First that controls all of council and all of the school board. Basically, they have so much money at their dispense that they can put as much advertising out there as they possibly want. There are no controls, especially for outdoor signage, where name recognition really comes off of the street.

Back in 2008 Surrey First was putting up 4 foot by 4 foot Coroplast signs for their candidates. In 2011 it was 4 foot by 8 foot signs. They were the only ones that were using them. Well, in the last election three of the mayoral candidates were putting up 4-by-8 Coroplast signs. Some of them were even doubling up — you have two signs basically back to back — so you have a sign that’s 4 feet by 16 feet, and these things were going up across Surrey on almost every major corner.

I think there were 33 councillors and nine people running for mayor, which is 42 candidates. There are no con-
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trols over outdoor signage or the spending that’s put on them. You look at 42 candidates times…. Let’s say everyone put up 100 4 foot by 8 foot signs. That’s 4,200 of these huge signs that are the size of a piece of plywood going up across Surrey, and there are issues and dangers associated with them — lines of sight, driver visibility, pedestrians.

Then, of course, there are things that they don’t think about, like the wind. The wind came and took a lot of these signs down. Some of these signs actually blew onto some of the major highways in Surrey.

You also have broken 2-by-4s. You’ve got nails. You’ve got screws. So there are big pedestrian hazards. Plus, when they came and took all the signs down, a lot of the 2-by-4s that were used to stake these monsters into the ground were left sticking out of the ground, and of course they’re now a tripping hazard. So besides the spending issue, there’s also the public safety issue regarding these things.

In Surrey I was told that the Surrey firefighters union donated time to go out and put up all of these signs for Surrey First. Now, I don’t know if this is true. That was what one of the mayoral candidates told me — that besides endorsing Surrey First, they were involved with putting up the signs. Is that true?

D. Pitcairn: That’s something to consider — when you have a municipal firefighting force that’s being paid by Surrey who are putting this kind of time and effort into political parties.

D. Pitcairn: I know it’s on their own time. But still, the fact that they are working as a cohesive unit, they are working as an organization…. I know they’re not getting paid, but this is the problem. You have people that are getting paid with municipal tax money out promoting candidates, not on a personal basis but as an actual group. I have a bit of an issue with that.

Anyway, as far as the spending, I’d like to maybe consider that you look at outdoor signage, also gets some controls on that, because when you have a slate like Surrey First, for example, with all of the money that’s behind them, they can basically bury this town in signs. That’s what’s been going on in the last few elections. It’s getting progressively worse. The public safety danger is increasing steadily over time.

I know some places, like White Rock, have municipal bylaws to control some of this. Whistler just did away with any outdoor signage. I think that if we had some controls over the amount of spending, you could have a little more level playing field as far as outdoor signage name recognition, because for your average candidate to put a 4-by-8 or a 4-by-16 sign on every major street corner of Surrey is impossible both for money and logistically. The only people that can afford to do that is a slate.

That’s probably something that really hasn’t been brought up, but around Surrey it’s just that every election it gets worse and worse and worse. I’m kind of looking around, thinking: well, maybe the next elections they’ll start putting up full-sized billboards on every corner. Right now the only person that can do that in Surrey, I believe, is Jim Pattison, but we’ll see what happens in the future.

From today there were a couple of things I did see, though. There was talk of a full slate and the short slates. I think that to help level the playing field it would be nice if you look at maybe the amount of spending on a per-candidate basis.

If you’re involved in a slate, you should have a lower level than persons that are running as an independent because if you have, say, nine people on a slate and you all have the same spending limit, the $100,000 times nine is $900,000. Well, now you’re nine times up already on a single independent candidate. So even if the amounts were the same for each person, with slates versus the independent candidates, obviously the independent candidates are at a serious disadvantage.

Another question I have actually for you folks in general is the…. I made submissions to the Railway Safety Act review panel, and all of those submissions were posted on line on the website for people to see. The submissions that the LEEL is receiving — are they being posted so that everyone can read them, so they can see the various ideas that people are coming up with, or is it just the members that are able to see what’s being sent in?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): My name is Kate Ryan-Lloyd. I’m the Clerk to the committee. I can advise that the committee did have a practice of uploading written presentation materials that were provided to the committee by way of expert presentations in its first phase. Those are available on the website. But for the written submissions that were provided at the public hearings, we have not yet taken that step to upload them to the website. I’d be happy to facilitate that if that’s the wish of the committee, but there are meeting documents available on the website in conjunction with all the transcripts.

D. Pitcairn: It would be nice to have as much information there as possible. You get all these different people, all these different ideas, and there are some things…. I know with the railway safety review, there was a lot of information there, things that you would probably never even consider. When you read them, it’s like: “Well, hey, that’s a really good idea.”

M. Hunt: I can’t resist. It’s just so much fun. I think some of the issues you raised are outside of our mandate, completely and totally. However, when you deal with volume of signs…. I can’t tell whether these particular signs made it down into your area or not, but I know up in the centre of Surrey a particular candidate for mayor of an ethnic background had signs everywhere, and many of them are still in the ditches and that sort of thing. Again, there’s also that element of it as well. Certain ethnicities have a certain style of elections that produces even more signs.

Let’s turn that to expenses because that does get within our jurisdiction. My question to you is then: what kind of number do you see as a realistic number that we should be coming up with? What’s your submission as to what kind of a ballpark number we should be dealing with, since that’s now our specific mandate?

D. Pitcairn: I think the election signs should be limited to a specific square footage. What was wrong with a 4-by-4 Coroplast that we suddenly needed, two elections later, a 4-by-16?

Just like we do with population, it also depends on the size of the municipality. If I was going to say a maximum of 50 4-by-4 signs per city, well, in White Rock, again, you’d basically have one on every corner, whereas with 50 in Surrey, you’d barely scratch the surface. I think if you’re going to put limits as far as outdoor signage, you have to look at the total square footage of the outdoor signage and relate that to how many eligible voters and the size of the actual city.

Surrey is such a massive place that for an independent candidate to put one sign on every corner is basically impossible. When you have, like I said, 42 people running, you certainly would not want to have that anyway. If you’re going to do that, there has to be a limit based on population and size of city. I don’t know where you would draw the parameters on that. That’s always the issue, because there’s so much variety of these cities. Surrey versus White Rock — it doesn’t get much different than that, really, does it?

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I have one comment and one question. In terms of the signs, I come from Coquitlam council historically. What the council had done was they actually limited all signs to 2-by-2, private property only, except for about a dozen to 15 prominent corners in the city. You can have 35 signs on that corner, but they’re all the same size. You have none of the big signs. So there is some opportunity, but it’s a local government decision, and I would encourage you to take that to your council. In terms of a public safety issue, it’s one that I think you might be able to get some traction there.

D. Pitcairn: I’ll take it to the Surrey First slate, and we’ll see where it goes.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): But the flip side of that…. I understand why you’re bringing that up, because there are tremendous costs to those signs, and you’re wanting it to be a level playing field. Given Surrey’s size, you’re looking at the expense limits as a way to get at that.

I guess what I want to suggest is that an expense limit is not going to get at that, because given Surrey’s size, people will choose to spend their range of spending however they so choose. For some that might be ads, for others it might be signs, for others it might be pamphlets, and for others it might be hiring staff. People will make their own choices on how to do that. I guess what I’m interested in hearing from you is: do you have a sense of what a limit should be or could be for an independent candidate? What would that look like?

D. Pitcairn: I know for myself in South Surrey–White Rock, which was the riding that I ran in, I used 25 4 foot by 4 foot Coroplast signs, and I think I had another 50 of the 2 foot by 2 foot. In that location, geographically, it covered quite well. I was pretty happy with the outdoor presentation, shall we say. It certainly got the name out on the corners.

If you expand that into Surrey, you’d probably be talking 100 of those signs and then, of course, how many of the smaller ones go along with it. I think if you looked at it….

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Do you have anything with an expense limit? How much can people spend? Not how many signs can they buy, but how much can they spend total on their campaigns?

D. Pitcairn: Again, it depends on how many signs you’re dealing with and the geographical size. I know that down in White Rock a lot of the people were probably spending $1,500 on their signs, but that’s for a city of 20,000 people in a place that’s only, I think, three square miles.

When you’re dealing with the monstrosity that is Surrey, then, of course, you’re talking some big numbers, which is why people obviously get involved in slates in Surrey — because unless you’re running on a slate, your chances of getting elected here are slim and none, as we saw from the last election. Even Mr. Hunt can tell you that. He ran as an independent councillor. He did very, very well, but he saw the writing on the wall and joined up with Surrey First, as did Councillor Villeneuve.

To be quite honest, I applaud their decision. It was very wise, and it’s worked out very well for them. But for anyone else, unless you get invited to the Surrey First party, the door is there.

G. Holman: Two quick questions. Thanks for your presentation, Don. Do you see a difference, in terms of spending limits, between mayor, mayoral candidates
[ Page 208 ]
and councillors? Should the spending limit be the same?

D. Pitcairn: I think because you’re just voting for one mayor and so many councillors that the mayor should have a bump-up — maybe a 25 to 30 percent higher rate of spending than the councillors. But I think that if you’re running as part of a slate, you should have a lower spending limit than somebody that’s running just as an independent.

Maybe you could have a level for an independent candidate. You could have a number that would be a little bit lower for, say, a short slate, because of course now they’re not running for all of the positions.

On a full slate — which, to be quite honest, I’d like to see them ban, for the simple fact that having a full slate running council…. I don’t think that is democracy in my world.

But for a full slate, again, they should have an even lower spending limit because the fact that they can group all of their spending and funds together and put their name out there as one gives them a lot more clout in the community. It’s one thing to see all these independent names, but to see a slate name with all of the candidates listed on there…. It obviously gives them a huge advantage as far as name recognition in the city.

G. Holman: Okay. I do remember the second question. Based on what you know of the dollars that are being spent in Surrey, either as electoral organizations or individuals, do you think the spending limit should be bringing that spending down? Do you feel like, in Surrey, in your direct experience, based on what you know, we should be bringing spending limits down to make it fair — or for whatever reason?

D. Pitcairn: I think the spending limits need to be brought down and, like I say, for any of these slates that are being run, the actual individual amount needs to be dropped down to level the difference between the individuals running and the groups that are running. Because when you’re running as a group, and they can combine all of the money, like what they’ve done…. Again, how are you going to compete? We’re all talking about this level playing field.

I’m involved with competitive rifle shooting. When we go to the rifle range, guess what? The same rules apply to everyone that’s there, so that when you actually compete, it’s all a matter of who’s the best marksman that’s out there. I’m going to the world championships this summer in Ohio. Who’s going to be the best shot on the planet? That’s what we’re all there for. But we all have, basically, the same ammo, the same rifles, the same equipment. It’s all just down to who’s the best shot and who could read the wind the best.

As far as elections in Surrey…. Basically, it’s been shown in the last few elections that unless you’re part of a large slate and have a large bankroll behind you and can afford all of this advertising, all these signs, getting your message out there to a town that’s half a million people…. The independent candidates here don’t stand a chance. You’re there for the show, but at the end of the day, we all know, basically, who’s going to get elected.

The results in Surrey in the last election showed that, with all of the candidates being from Surrey First. I’m not saying anything bad about Surrey First. They’re obviously running excellent elections. They’re doing enough to get themselves voted into power. But you have to start questioning, at some point in time, if this is the type of democracy that we want at the civic level.

J. Kwan: Just on your point about a differential rate for electoral organizations versus those who are running as independents, you were suggesting that there be a different spending limit. How would you quantify the amount as the right amount, for example, if you were take that into consideration?

How would you get through the argument that some people will say, “We all have the right to run as individuals,” and so therefore should be treated accordingly, on an equal basis?

Some will chose to go with an electoral organization. Others will not, right? It would be those individuals’ own decision. How would you deal with that challenge of having a differential rate, if one were to come about?

D. Pitcairn: Well, I think you have to realize that there is a financial advantage to running as a slate. Part of the way to take that away is to lower the amount that you can actually spend on a per-group basis versus the individual.

J. Kwan: So how would you quantify, then, that advantage, if you say that there’s that advantage? What amount would you attach to that to say that’s an advantage, to create that level playing field that you’re talking about?

D. Pitcairn: Well, even for Surrey First, if we were to say “Okay, if you’re a big coalition like that, you can only spend half of the money of the independent candidates,” I think it still gives them an incredible advantage.

For example, let’s just say that you had a $100,000 spending limit for candidates, just as a number. Well, if it’s a Surrey slate, they’re spending $900,000 on a full level. Even half of that would be half a million dollars. So they’re still five times up as a group on the independent candidates.

If I’m putting up my signs as “Don Pitcairn” for my name recognition on the streets, boom, you’ve got Surrey First already out of the gate. They have five times as much income or disposable money to spend on signage than I do.
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Like I say, what I’ve seen in Surrey the last few years is that, with the help of the firefighters, Surrey First is putting up 4-by-8s or 4-by-16s on every major street corner throughout the city. If we keep the actual money being spent on a per-candidate basis the same, these slates will continue to crush the opposition.

D. Pitcairn: Thank you very much for being here. I just wish that there were more people here that were interested in democracy on a civic level. I’m actually very, very disappointed in the people in Surrey — that more people were not here to be part of this and to make their voices known as to concerns that they have over the electoral process.

J. Tegart (Chair): There’s been quite a good response on line, and we certainly, as a committee, have been committed to go out to community where there is interest. We were quite pleased to be able to come to Surrey. So thank you.

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5) Surrey First Electors Society:	Stephen Casson
	Councillor Bruce Hayne
	Gordon Schoberg
6) Roch Fortin
7) Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver:	Stephen Bohus
8) Don Pitcairn

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