Local Elections Expense Limits — Issue No. 16 — Wednesday, April 1, 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	211
P. Kerek
C. Ranta
A. Grube
J. Sternig

J. Tegart (Chair): Good afternoon, 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 phase of a two-part mandate. During the last session of the Legislature the committee made recommendations on principles for the relationship between the 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 have 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 either 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 its regional hearings that had been scheduled. We held a public hearing on Monday in Surrey. Today we are in Kamloops, and we will also have meetings in Vancouver and Victoria. Presentation spaces remain available at all public hearings, and conference call options are also available.

Today we’ve 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.

G. Holman: I always seem to have my mouth open when I’m supposed to introduce myself. Gary Holman, MLA, Saanich North and the Islands.

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

P. Kerek: Great. Thanks. Good afternoon. My name is Peter Kerek. Welcome to Kamloops, and thank you for providing this opportunity for input on the status of local elections expense limits.

I’d like to start by briefly mentioning that I was a candidate for Kamloops city council in 2014. I would also like to mention that I’ve been an activist on the Kamloops and District Labour Council for most of the last 16 years and chair of that council’s political action committee for most of the last ten years.

Part of my role as chair of that political action committee was to actively seek out candidates for local elections as well as help vet and support candidates friendly to working-class causes. So my viewpoints haven’t been formed solely from my experience as a candidate but as
[ Page 212 ]
someone who’s also worked behind the scenes for a number of years on a variety of campaigns and at every level of government.

I have several criticisms of the state of campaign financing for local elections in B.C., and I don’t think you can easily separate the issue of expense limits from issues around disclosure and donations. We have disclosure requirements to help address concerns about large donors purchasing candidates or influencing elections in an undemocratic way, but maybe disclosure wouldn’t be such a big issue if we just banned all donations.

There are so many ways to outmanoeuvre the current disclosure requirements that I am confident that said disclosure requirements provide little more than an illusion of transparency in regards to the relationships between donors and candidates.

Here are my concerns with the disclosure language. First, the time frame is too short and does not address donations or other in-kind considerations that are offered outside of the ten-month disclosure period. Why is there even a disclosure time frame? Are we not concerned about how much money is changing hands between elected officials and the public at all times? While Joe Public may balk at such transactions occurring outside the disclosure time frames, there’s nothing illegal about it.

The way things are right now, you can disclose donations of thousands to sitting councillors and/or the mayor and then go to that same council to request amendments and exemptions to bylaws without anyone even needing to recuse themselves from said meetings. That happens right here in Kamloops at our own city council meetings.

Secondly, let’s say an underhanded donation occurs within the disclosure time frame without being disclosed, thereby committing a violation. How would anyone ever find out about it? Most candidates in small cities have very small election teams and often act as their own financial agents.

There’s also no form of investigative journalism — not here in Kamloops, anyway. When issues are brought forth to our local media, there is very little interest in providing coverage because our media is saddled with their own concerns about losing lucrative advertising dollars from the donor, or they share the same political philosophy with those who are making these underhanded donations, or the liability risk of getting sued by a major donor isn’t worth the few extra readers or viewers that might tune in more regularly to read or see such coverage. That type of coverage is simply not a profitable venture.

In the case of the state-owned media, producers are sensitive to their political masters’ whims about what should or shouldn’t be discussed. Challenges to the legitimacy of the electoral process are also direct challenges to the legitimacy of the current government, no matter what level — municipal, provincial or federal.

My third concern. Let’s say a nefarious donation is discovered after an election. Elections B.C. does not have the authority to force a new election. They offer small penalties and an exclusion of the candidate from future elections as a candidate. But by this point the damage to the election results has already been committed.

Elections B.C. has stated that they’re in the business of informing, not enforcing and punishing, which they made clear when there was a significant breach of third-party advertising rules late in the recent election here in Kamloops.

My fourth and last issue with disclosure is that the deadline occurs 90 days after everyone has voted. Even if the disclosure is accurately reproduced by your local media, and people are upset about being misled during the campaign, nobody is able to change their vote retroactively.

For folks who are somewhat interested in such matters, they’ll probably rely on their local media to broadcast a summary of the disclosures. This can lead to an even more distorted understanding of which candidates were sponsored by whom.

For example, Kamloops has one newspaper, printed a few times a week. In their summary of campaign spending they did not include amounts spent by third parties via in-kind donations, which, as many people know, must be included as part of a candidate’s campaign disclosure, because if someone provides you with $5,000 of free campaign material to help out your campaign, that means you do not need acquire a $5,000 cash donation.

For example, spending on my campaign, including in-kind donations, totalled an amount roughly double of what was reported in the paper. Folks who watch the media coverage would have no idea of what was provided to candidates by third parties. Of course, candidates who curry the favour of the biggest corporations and wealthiest influence peddlers are very likely going to be the candidates that also receive the biggest in-kind donations.

With the technology that exists today, there is no reason why candidates could not disclose both in-kind donations and cash donations within 48 hours of receipt. For example, I had an on-line funding page through which I collected donations, and I could also post donations I had received through any other means.

That’s exactly what I did. In every case, within a couple days of receipt, I posted onto my page exactly what I had received from any and all donors. If you merely wanted to improve the disclosure part of the elections act, I would suggest making all donations known via an Elections B.C.–managed website within 48 hours so that folks could easily go to the site and check it at their leisure and, mostly importantly, check it before they vote.

Of course, better than merely improving the disclosure of donations and expenses would be to ban donations and implement a very low cap on spending. The disclosure practices wouldn’t really matter if there wasn’t so much money flowing from the donor class to a select few candidates.
[ Page 213 ]

There was a lot of money changing hands during this recent election. In Kamloops there was roughly $200,000 in direct monetary donations, with who knows how much flowing through in-kind donations. Most of this money came from donors in the community, including candidates themselves and their families, although there were some significant donations made by out-of-town corporations.

I propose that Elections B.C. take a similar amount of money from government coffers to ensure each candidate gets an equal opportunity to be heard by voters rather than the current system of campaigning that guarantees that the candidates with the most funding will have the greatest access to voters.

Given the ease by which money flows into campaigns and the importance of such resources to the success of a campaign, our system is currently rife with opportunities to not only corrupt sitting government officials but to influence the entire agenda of local elections through the sponsoring of a class of candidates who will best represent the interests of the most well-heeled members of our community as well as the interests of the out-of-town and foreign corporations that regularly donate to their business-friendly, mining-friendly, pipeline-friendly or fracking-friendly candidates across the province.

When we have multi-billion-dollar industries and multinational corporations meddling in our local elections, the threat of being saddled with a tiny, tiny fine by Elections B.C. is laughable. Besides, I have never been given the impression that Elections B.C. is much concerned about violations anyway, as they appear to be complaint-driven rather than having an active investigative body that routinely seeks out violations of the act.

It isn’t necessary to influence sitting elected officials to change the nature of an election. When you’ve got 20 to 30 candidates running for positions on council, setting up a handful of candidates with ample campaign funds can help change the focus of an entire election campaign so that some concerns and philosophies are elevated while others are virtually extinguished.

While various local media outlets and organizations provided free coverage for candidates, this coverage was always within the frame of what that organization wanted you to discuss by either giving you specific questions they wanted you to answer or by having the final say in what would be printed or broadcasted and when, exactly, that coverage would be printed or broadcasted, which was, again, a way for them to dictate the narrative of what would be discussed during the election.

In light of all this, I suggest that Elections B.C. produce a small brochure in which all candidates would be given one page on which to print whatever they like. This brochure would be mailed to every single home in the applicable voting area and available on line. Elections B.C. could also ensure funding for certain amounts of time to be allotted for candidates to use on local television and radio stations. Elections B.C. should be taking the initiative to ensure that all voters have an equal opportunity to know more about all the candidates.

M. Hunt: You make an interesting statement concerning moneys and how moneys are dealt with. Your disclosure form is also an interesting form because, if I look at the other competitors, you received within the top eight candidates for council. So you’re in the ballpark, timing, of the money….

However, when I look at your disclosure, it’s…. I need to understand what happened, okay? The question I’m going to is: what happened? You’ve got, for example, $9,900 in total income. You seem to have spent $4,800 in the election. Almost $1,300 you returned. Where’s the rest?

P. Kerek: The gap between $9,900 and $4,800 is…. That extra amount was in-kind donations. That’s the amount that wasn’t produced in the local media. For example, my volunteers hand-delivered about 4,000 pamphlets. I had to put a dollar value on that. I looked at what it would it cost me to have mailed that out via Canada Post. It would have been roughly 95 cents a brochure. So there’s almost $4,000.

M. Hunt: Okay, good. Thanks. It wasn’t making sense. I was trying to make sense, especially when you were throwing out these numbers. You know, are you talking concept?

My question now is this — or supplementary question. We’ll call it $10,000 just for the sake of argument and to round it out, okay? For $10,000, with 68,000 electors, do you feel that’s a good number and that you ran a good campaign, a reasonable campaign, with those dollars?

P. Kerek: That’s hard to say. I didn’t win, so it couldn’t have been that good.

M. Hunt: But you see, our problem is that…. Our task now is to establish a number. I have to try and work with numbers. So I’m turning the table on you to say: “Do you think your number was reasonable?”

Now, by the same token, if I look at the rest, you’re the seventh largest. You’re in the ballpark type of thing. If you had more money, would you have spent it?

P. Kerek: Oh, yeah. I would have been able to deliver a pamphlet to every home in Kamloops. In my post-election analysis, in areas that I was able to get a pamphlet, I finished 17th overall. In parts of town where I didn’t get
[ Page 214 ]
a pamphlet, I finished about 25th. So it clearly made an effect, although there are so many factors that play in there, because I also targeted parts of the community that would be amiable to what I had to say.

It’s hard for me to say exactly. If I could have had a full page of advertising the way some candidates did — maybe not a full page but a half page — or some radio spots, I think that would have taken me over the 10 grand. I’m not sure.

To deliver a pamphlet to every single home, though, by itself would have…. I mean, it would have been astronomical — the cost to hand-deliver via Canada Post. There are roughly 30,000 homes, I believe. So to put one in each home, you’re looking at about $28,000 just to send a pamphlet into everybody’s door. If you send it as an insert in the local newspaper, it often ends up in the garbage like a lot of the local newspaper does. It’s less effective than getting it in the door.

However, the reason I mention the brochure is…. If someone has a brochure that has all the candidates listed in it, I think people are a lot more likely to hold on to that and/or peruse it. It would be more cost-effective to have all the candidates having that printed in one select brochure, which would also be available on line.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): My questions are similar to Marvin’s. I want to just preface with a little story. What they do in the city of Coquitlam, where I’m from and where I was on local government, is the city would help facilitate. Every single candidate could submit a brochure, and it got mailed. Every candidate shared in the cost of that mailing.

It was a very efficient way and a very fair way for everybody in the community. That was a decision of an earlier city council. Certainly, when I’m at the UBCM, I encourage all councils to do that. It helps to create a bit more of a level playing field.

Given that that would be a council decision, in the absence of that, it becomes a real challenge to help figure out sort of what the sweet spot is and how to calculate out what should be the maximum that folks would be allowed to spend, let’s say, on council. If you take a look, it looks like over $10,000 seemed to make a difference in terms of who won and who lost, just as I eyeballed the list.

Do you think…? Perhaps you might not have thought about the relationship between what a mayoral cap would be relative to a councillor’s cap.

P. Kerek: No, I haven’t considered the difference. Most of the council candidates seemed to put more effort in than the three mayoral challengers. The second-place finisher for the mayoral candidacy…. I think he said he put in $500.

P. Kerek: One thing…. Sorry, if I could. You looked at the total numbers, but most of the winners were incumbents. You have four to eight to 12 years of free advertising and campaigning, anyway, that you don’t have to pay for during the election period.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Right. You recognize that name recognition, being on council, has certain advantages and that that goes against newcomers.

G. Holman: Thanks, Peter, for your presentation. Did you run as part of an electoral organization? You said you weren’t affiliated, so you ran as an independent?

P. Kerek: There was one. Two of the five were elected from that slate. They didn’t call themselves a slate, but it’s an easier word to use than what they did call themselves.

G. Holman: Thanks. One of the issues we’re going to have to deal with is this issue of fairness between independents and candidates running as part of an electoral organization. We’ll be recommending limits. There will be a formula that we can scale by size of community. We’ll come up with that in some sense, some fashion, based on the input we’re getting and advice we’re getting.

One thing we have to come to grips with is independent versus folks running as part of an electoral organization. Should there be a …? We’ve already agreed as a committee that there will be a limit on the electoral organization, as well as on individuals, but it’s kind of tricky in terms of how they interplay.

One suggestion is that if there are eight council seats and there were eight folks running under an electoral organization, then the limit for the EO would just be equal to eight times whatever that individual limit is. Others have told us that independents — as I think you’ve kind of suggested — have a tougher go, and that it’s not, in your view, a level playing field. Forgive me if I’m putting words in your mouth, but others have suggested that, certainly, and that we need to change the rules in a way that makes it easier for independents to get elected without having to be part of a large group or organization. They suggested: “You set a limit on the electoral organization, and then you just divide that by the number of candidates that run.” I’m not advocating either, but….

I don’t know if you’ve done any thinking about this,
[ Page 215 ]
but how do either one of those approaches strike you? Or how do you come to grips with the individual, independent candidates versus those running under electoral organizations? How do you apply those limits?

P. Kerek: I haven’t looked much beyond Kamloops, and the two out of the five that did get elected from that slate probably would have got elected anyway. One had been a very popular councillor in the past and the other had almost won the mayoralty the last time he ran. He only lost by a couple hundred votes, so he was almost a shoo-in to become a councillor.

I’m not so sure…. I would rather just see a strict limit right across the board on the spending amounts. That formula you’ve suggested sounds decent. If you have eight candidates running, then you would multiply it by eight, what the pool could be, although it’s going to be more efficient for them anyway to have eight names on there. But there are so many things at play there about how effective a slate will be. Many people said they would have supported those people, but now they’re on a slate and they don’t like that in Kamloops because we haven’t had a slate run here since the ‘80s. So it’s a lot different here as to how effective it would be in how the spending went.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay. I’ve got one more question from Linda, and then we’ll go on to the next presenter.

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

Third-party advertising. We’re also looking at expense limits for third-party advertisers. I’m just wondering if you had any thoughts on that.

P. Kerek: I’d rather not see any third-party advertising. The biggest third-party efforts that happened in town here were from a Polish-owned mining company. I don’t think even foreign corporations should have any right to be meddling in our elections at any level.

If the current legislation isn’t changed regarding foreign corporations providing third-party sponsoring, then I think you should not have any third-party advertising whatsoever.

L. Reimer: So if they deem third-party advertising to be okay, you would prefer a small limit as opposed to a larger limit?

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay. Well, thank you very much. I think, as you can tell by the questions, the more we hear the more complex it becomes. Our role is to look at what the expense limits will be, so that’s a challenge for us. We encourage people to also go on line. We have an on-line survey.

J. Tegart (Chair): Peter, do you have a hard copy of your submission that you could share with us?

P. Kerek: I don’t. I was going to have a lengthier submission that I would provide April 17. What I really wanted to say couldn’t fit in ten minutes.

C. Ranta: I just would like to thank you for your hard work. Your committee has been, obviously, travelling. I’m happy to be here. Thank you for all your work.

Jackie is our local MLA where I live, and she’s one of the hardest-working MLAs I’ve ever seen. So thank you so much. Really well-regarded. When I saw your name as the chair of this committee, I just gasped, wanting to know where you get your vitamin pills.

My board of education…. I’ll just introduce myself. I’m Carmen Ranta. I live in Cache Creek. I am the current chair of the Gold Trail board of education. I’ve been chair for a number of years. I’m very interested in campaigns and politics, having been involved in campaigns of various kinds for the past 40 years. I also hold a degree in political science from the University of Alberta and have completed part of my master’s program in political science and international relations.

Local government was not an emphasis in my program. But over my work as a campaign organizer and worker in British Columbia and Alberta, I have to say that I really think it’s fascinating, the work of your committee and all the questions that you’re really grappling with.

In order to prepare for today, I examined some of the information on your website, and it’s absolutely amazing — the documentation and the paper trail that has been created. I’m really admiring your work as members of the committee.

Our community is a small rural community. I know that our population is very small. The Gold Trail board of education — our district spans about a similar size to the country of Belgium. We have divided into areas for the trustees to be elected from, so that trustees aren’t attempting to campaign over all of Belgium.

You’ll see in my letter, a very simple letter…. I’m not sure you have a copy there. The attempt here was to try to emphasize the fact that, as I was running around campus with Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli…. It’s really the belief that democracy is precious and our belief that to try to
[ Page 216 ]
put a ceiling, which we know there probably should be, is really important for the future of British Columbia and for the future of local government. What seems simple is very complex.

In our smaller communities…. We did a poll around the table. Average campaign spending when there is an election on our board…. Sometimes there are very hot elections for school trustee. I’ve actually run as a candidate for school trustee a number of times, been acclaimed a number of times. I’ve been campaign manager for other candidates. Really, the amount of money that is taken up to run a proper campaign, including signs, etc., would probably be between $1,000 and $2,000 in our area, on average.

I do have a concern about the rural stigmatization should a small ceiling be created. When we gather together in our provincial bodies as school trustees, we already are challenged as rural communities by a kind of an urban snobbery that is really a great gap in understanding between urban and rural British Columbia. I would like to say, as your deliberations continue — and I see many of you are from non-rural areas — that the gap in understanding is so great that we not be challenged further in representing rural communities by sort of a lower ceiling because our communities don’t need as much money to be well represented.

We have a broad geography. We have changing dynamics in politics and more collaboration and potential collaboration between our work and First Nations band governance. We have a changing nature of campaigns from paper-based, sign-based campaigns, door-knocking-based campaigns to social media–based campaigns. We certainly have seen a larger use by local governments in utilization of social media for their work, and that will extend into campaigns, I believe, really interestingly in our next election.

I would like to see you also consider the already daunting paperwork involved in running for office as a candidate. There are quite a number of rules. All of them are worthy. But also, the rigour may create barriers, especially for young candidates that don’t have experience in campaigns and maybe want to throw their hat in. But once they find out all the requirements, they almost have to either hire a lawyer or hire an accountant — or be one themselves — in order to run. We certainly want to see that considered in your deliberations.

As far as electoral organizations go, there was a time in 2002 when I actually did form my own electoral organization with several candidates serving for school trustee during times that were very difficult in our area. I had several conversations that were very interesting with the Chief Electoral Officer for British Columbia. Our group was called Team for Change, and we actually did do some fundraising and had some money that eventually got spent on a beautiful bouquet of flowers for Christy Clark. She was acting as Minister of Education at the time and helped us out significantly through our struggles at home.

Are they a positive or a negative? Are they something that we want to encourage? Are they part of our free society in our democracy here in Canada? Are they something in British Columbia that is of such a concern that we need to immediately take steps to squash down their voice and make sure that it isn’t something that can flower in a campaign, particularly as we’ve seen in urban campaigns in B.C.?

Our view as a board of education is that these electoral organizations can be formed by any candidate at any time. It’s not something that necessarily needs to be large and big and longstanding. It’s not that difficult to form an electoral organization, as I found out. But the interesting thing is that by forming one, you get to have that name beside your name on the ballot, which can help voters understand what you stand for.

Team for Change, which was our electoral organization’s name, would have stood beside the names of those candidates on the ballot. Did it cost much money to form? No. If the accountability trail gets so thick that you need to have a team of accountants and an office and that, then…. Anyway, I suppose you can kind of see where I’m going with this.

I would think that you would consider not hindering the formation of electoral organizations. I would also ask, and I’m not sure this is actually within the purview of your committee, that you seek to make more stringent rules and laws against voter interference strategies in local elections. I’ll just give you an example.

During the last campaign, for another candidate that I was involved in, in the last local election — which was not my own campaign — fake advertising, fake campaign signs went up in our small community for a candidate that didn’t exist. At that time it was a very tough campaign, very full of negative things. I just would wonder if that could be part of your purview.

The signs went up. The costs for the signs were obviously not accounted for in anybody’s campaign because the candidate did not exist. The local election officer had the campaign signs removed by the local municipal workers, but still, in a larger city, it wouldn’t have been quite as easy as that. Not knowing all the rules around it, they were removed. I would say that that might be a tiny footnote in what you’re doing.

On your summary you did have a kind of continuum, with the little dots where the ideas were placed. I would say that our board of education, in our discussions, sort of landed a little bit left to the right of your page on your website — in other words, a little bit less concerned about limits, a little bit more concerned about freedom.

Our board of education would like our youth to have an opportunity to run in an election campaign in British Columbia where there aren’t quite the limits and there
[ Page 217 ]
isn’t as high a level of scrutiny that maybe others would like. We really feel that it should be kept as free as possible.

M. Hunt: Thank you. I notice in looking at the election results, five of the six in the school district were acclaimed. You were acclaimed, so therefore your disclosure is zero.

My question is this. When I was a school trustee, it was way back when the earth was cooling, in the 1980s. At that time, chatting with fellow trustees from around the province, it was exceptional to have somebody spend $500. Most were zero to under $100 type of thing. One lady took out an ad of $50 to thank people for having voted for her. Obviously, times have changed.

From what you’re saying to me, that really, this is not a rural B.C. problem, election expenses per se…. Is that what I’m hearing you say? I’m asking that question to have you stretch, because you’re the first school trustee we’ve had. I’m asking you. The BCSTA isn’t able to come and see us until later in the process.

Since you’re the first one I have, and I don’t know how many more we’re going to get, the question is: is that, from your perspective, or from your knowledge within the BCSTA…? Is that your general knowledge — that really, it’s only a large urban issue, and really, in the rural and the small urban areas, election expenses aren’t that critical an issue on people’s minds?

C. Ranta: I also hold the position of president of the regional association, which is called a branch, for the Thompson-Okanagan, which includes nine school boards from Osoyoos all the way to Salmon Arm, Merritt — that whole giant area.

Being a trustee and serving BCSTA in numerous committee positions, I would say that you’re pretty much right, although the $150 campaigns are looking a little bit more like $1,000-to-$2,000 campaigns in the very tiny rural areas. In the urban areas it’s much higher.

I think that if you’re also including regional districts, for instance, some of the regional areas are massive. I’ve heard of campaigns…. I’ve never run a regional district campaign, but with over 200 signs — for instance, up on the highways — and 200 hand-placed signs, think about the labour costs.

As far as boards of education go, I think that really we are a humble lot. They are mostly not political animals in that group — kind-hearted, caring citizens that are community volunteers, largely, or representatives from First Nations bands that are very hard-working. Campaigns are almost…. They don’t like to call their campaign a campaign often. Taking that all the way to folks…. I talked to one trustee from Delta who had knocked on 10,000 doors himself. There’s just such a broad range in that bunch. But thank you for your question.

I just really do have a concern about the gap between rural and urban and the need for our province to recognize each other well. We know that the future doesn’t rest only in urban areas. Rural areas are going to see a different flavour in the way we govern because of our close relationships with First Nations and our need for that.

Just thinking about all those things, I think this is really important work that you’re doing, and I hope that helps.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I come from a suburban area. One of the things that I noticed with our school trustees is that for many years they were acclaimed. So there was no spending, even in an urban-suburban environment. However, if there were one or two other candidates to run for the handful of positions, there would be a little bit more spending. Yet if there were 15 people running, then the spending would go up.

I would argue that it depends on what the field of candidates looks like. That will influence the spending, in that people start to get more competitive and perhaps campaign a little bit more. I wanted to check if that has been the experience here. I don’t know if you get people banging on the doors to run for school board, but is that something you’ve noticed, as well, here?

C. Ranta: I live an hour from Kamloops, actually. Our area is…. In my first campaign there were four candidates for my area. That was in 2002. I won. I’ve had one or two other times, I believe, where I’ve been challenged. The spending was similar each time.

The acclamations I take for our board…. Having gone through school closures in the last couple of years in our district and significant times of challenge, finding low-hanging fruit now, we may see a difference. I look at the acclamation rate, and sometimes it’s an indication not of lack of interest but of a job well done.

J. Tegart (Chair): Thank you very much, Carmen. Thanks for being our first school trustee.

A. Grube: Thank you very much for coming to Kamloops. I thought the least I could do, seeing that you were coming here, was spend a few minutes and come to see you.

I’ll be very brief. Really, I just wanted to say that we need to lower or have very small limits.

I would even suggest something like no more than $100 donations from anybody — individual, corporation — although I’m sure there are ways that they could get around that. They would just give $100 to all their employees or something. But just to really bring it down. Maybe full disclosure too.
[ Page 218 ]

My son was one of the successful councillors here, but that has nothing to do with this.

I really think that we need to just have people elected on the basis of their participation in the community and their past records rather than advertising. From an environmental point of view, which I always look at things from, the less signs the better.

I understand one of…. I did fill out the survey on line, which I found a little difficult. With the actual numbers, I couldn’t really figure it out too well. I don’t have the background. But it did strike me, as Carmen mentioned, that particularly the rural representatives in regional districts…. It would be more of a challenge for them. Even things like expenses — driving around just to meet with people — would be higher for those candidates.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for coming and sharing your experience with us. I have a couple of questions, but first, I guess, a comment.

I appreciate hearing your concern about limits to donations, but we’re not looking at that. Right now, we’re looking at expense limits. You and I maybe could chat later about limits to donations, because I think it’s valuable to consider, but we’re looking at how much people can spend.

Your son was successful, you said. You think about the amount of money that gets spent. What’s your sense of what an upper limit on expenses ought to be in a rural context — driving around, having to, perhaps, do more signs? Because if you’re in a particularly rural community and it’s spread out over…. You have to do more of that.

A. Grube: Well, Kamloops — I wouldn’t really call it rural. Chase, where I do live part of the time, definitely would be. For people in the smaller communities, even having a limit of $10,000…. Most of them wouldn’t be able to afford $10,000, for starters. Again, it just means wealthier people have more clout, really. I found that difficult, I thought. I don’t know how I can put a number on this really.

A. Grube: I’m sure it is, although you can probably do a lot more research than I’m able to do, right?

There have been a number of people suggesting, particularly in rural areas, that geography plays a key role. It’s not just…. The formula that we’ve kind of been considering or that has been proposed is typically per capita, either per population or per number of voters, and we have to come to grips with that. But that kind of formula doesn’t address the dispersion factor and the geographic factor.

G. Holman: So you could come up…. A previous presenter was worried about having a different formula for rural versus urban — don’t penalize rural — and also mentioned the geography factor. But if you’ve got two areas each with 10,000 population…. It could very easily be in British Columbia, though, that you’ve got one area that’s two, three or four times as large as another that’s more concentrated.

Obviously, the candidates in the more dispersed, more rural areas are going to have different kinds of challenges. Any thoughts about how to deal with that?

A. Grube: I don’t know how you can figure out a formula really. I noticed all that when I was doing the survey — that you were trying to get numbers and trying to estimate for those different parameters, but I really can’t give you numbers. I’m just interested in it being reduced significantly, because I just don’t think it should be a question of who has the most money.

G. Holman: Just to follow up on that. It’s your sense, then, that typically the amounts you see being spent by, let’s say, successful candidates should be reduced a little bit by regulation or law?

M. Bernier: Thank you very much for coming in, and hopefully I don’t sound like I’m putting you on the spot too much for this. It’s more around when you look at the expenses. I listened to some of your comments, and your son was elected, so congratulations to him for that. He was also almost the highest spender.

M. Bernier: I’m just curious, peripherally, for yourself for the campaign that he ran. Do you think he could have still got elected by not spending that amount of money? I’m thinking, if we had reduced the limits….

A. Grube: Yeah, I really don’t know. It’s hard to say how much is…. Again, he was an incumbent, which gave him an edge. He did use bus ads, which he used the first time too, because transit is one of his priorities. He did that the first time, and then more people started doing it the second time. But that is very expensive. He chose to do that.

I don’t know. I still think, regardless, everybody should be limited. We didn’t have a discussion before I came here.
[ Page 219 ]

M. Bernier: That’s fine. It’s just that when we look at putting limits, I look at what everybody spent, let’s say, in Kamloops. For argument’s sake, if we said, “Okay, he was one of the highest spenders,” and if that was the absolute limit, everybody would be able to go up to him. But that means they still have to be able to raise that kind of money.

If we lowered it — I’m just throwing numbers — to around $10,000, which more seems to be the average, is that enough money to run a proper campaign?

A. Grube: I think it is, totally. I mean, he’s young. He’s single. He put quite a bit of his own money into it. It wasn’t….

A. Grube: He was able to do that, but some people with other circumstances wouldn’t be able to, so I totally think it should be lower than what several of the candidates spent here in Kamloops. Yes, I do.

M. Hunt: I just want to push that slightly a second time. That is, do you have a number that you think is reasonable for a campaign in Kamloops, considering that your son was at $17,000?

A. Grube: Well, apparently, it was lower than that because, I don’t know, there was some technicality or something that took it down to $13,000. But I don’t know how that worked. He didn’t spend all that he put in. I don’t know.

If it was done per capita — and here we have, what, 86,000, 90,000 people — if it was worked out so that it was, say, $9,000 or $8,600, or so much per…. But then, do you do it by the voters or by the total population? How do you do it?

Anyway, I mean, it gets really complicated, right? Some areas might have a much higher population of actual eligible voters than others, too, so you might have to consider that, as well, if you’re doing it per capita.

M. Bernier: I just want to follow up on that. You just made me think of something.

We’ve heard in some larger cities in the Lower Mainland, dollars…. Like 50 cents per eligible voter. I’m looking at something like that all of a sudden and saying, “Okay, that might be relevant in Vancouver,” but if we put that as a provincial thing, that would mean you could spend up to $30,000 in Kamloops.

I’m wondering, from your comments, then, do we need to be looking at different things, different rates for urban and different-sized communities?

A. Grube: Yeah, I don’t know. I think so because of the whole geographical issue. I mean, things are changing so much now, too, in that so much more is done on the Internet than it used to be, where it was all just signs or all…. They need to be reduced significantly — those signs.

J. Tegart (Chair): Thank you very much, Anne, for taking the time today. We really appreciate you coming in.

J. Sternig: Thank you, Jackie, and thank you, panel, for appearing here in Kamloops today. It’s a pleasure to be in front of you. I’m trying to position myself so I’m totally centred amongst the panel.

What I’m trying to do today is address municipalities. I’m not talking about the amount of spending, so to speak, but municipalities becoming engaged in rural politics, whether it’s accidental or on purpose.

I’ll just give you a little bit of background, when I started to run for my third term of area P director. Again, I was a director of area P for two terms and ran for a third term this October. I realized that my opponent had a big name. He was the previous mayor of Kamloops. He was the previous editor of the Kamloops Daily News.

It was a challenge. I had to do a survey to understand whether I could do a decent job against this candidate. So I was polling, I was asking questions, I was making a plan, and really, I determined that I could.

I guess the question is…: I gathered all the statistics and all the facts and what have you, but the one thing I didn’t plan was support from a municipality. Whether it was on purpose, or accidental, it entered the race. It became an issue.

To give you some information about this. The city of Kamloops sent out a mailout. It’s a good thing to do: inform your voters to come out and vote. We can all agree to that. But the problem with mailouts, and it’s a significant one, is you can’t be sloppy. There shouldn’t be collateral damage. Don’t mail out to the rural areas to people that don’t vote for you.

Well, the city of Kamloops did a targeted mailout, and they did not take the time to understand the mail routes. I just did it again this afternoon. It’s a two-minute job. The mapping comes out, and what have you. In targeting the city of Kamloops, they targeted the First Nations reserve along Shuswap Road, ten kilometres out of the city of Kamloops in my area, and other areas as well — so, not a very good job by the legislative staff. Of about 22,000 to 25,000 homes and businesses 3,000 cards were mailed out outside — so about 10 to 15 percent.
[ Page 220 ]

I realized in the campaign that the more rural areas would likely support me, and the people towards the city of Kamloops would likely support my opponent. The city staff sent out this mailout, and TNRD staff recognized the error. The mailout didn’t go to all of area P, but just to portions.

My problem with the mailout — and they not only did the mailout, but they did a correction to the mailout to the same areas that they mailed the mailout — is that if you’re reminding people to come out to vote in certain areas of area P, isn’t it your responsibility to remind everybody in area P, once you make that mistake, to come out to vote? Well, the city staff didn’t feel that need, and neither did the TNRD staff. That’s a problem I expressed. That was a concern that I forwarded, but it fell on deaf ears.

Anyways, the city made this error in three areas: area P, area L and area J. But the two other areas didn’t have a city candidate that moved out to the rural, that was running. So the effect really did have a response in my area.

When I’d go down to where their mailouts occurred, the results were: my opponent in Sun Rivers got 180, and I got 62. In Rivershore he got 110, and I received 81. In Black Pines — 49, and I received three. You can see those differences are significant. But when you view the overall vote, he received in total 512, and I received 444.

You can see the difference between the more rural areas that came out to vote for me, like expected…. But they weren’t reminded to come out to vote. They had to drive 15 kilometres. The people closer to the city were notified two times to come out to vote, and so they did.

The irony is that Sun Rivers, on the First Nations reserve, determined the outcome of the election, and Sun Rivers doesn’t pay a dime in taxes to area P. So that really is ironic.

My wife spent an hour at Sun Rivers as a scrutineer, just to see how many people were coming in and what have you. She took an hour there, and in the hour that she spent, 25 people came in to vote, and that’s great.

Two of those 25 people were confused that they weren’t voting for city councillors and the mayor — 10 percent. This is what erroneous mailouts cause, and it’s a serious problem. They entered a rural election. The fact is that by not doing their job properly, they played a significant role.

When I did further research after the election…. I handed you out a Canada Post target. I don’t know if anybody has got that. With each target mailout, you have a map that you refer to. Basically, that map has all the lines of the streets on it. You also have a data sheet. It’s a five-minute job. You click on and off. You toggle on and off, and streets appear or disappear. This is not a difficult job, to do a proper target.

When you’re doing a target mailout to the city of Kamloops, you have to understand that it’s not the city of Kamloops. The mail routes don’t just say: “Oh, we can’t go over the city of Kamloops boundaries.” Any legislative staff within the city should know that, but apparently this one didn’t. They didn’t refer to the maps, or if they didn’t, I can’t understand why they didn’t. This really is a simple thing. I believe that the city of Kamloops legislative department is smarter than that. I don’t know why they didn’t do a better job.

In my further research, I don’t see anything in the Local Government Act that restricts cities and city staff, while they’re working for the city…. That’s an important point, because city staff can support rural candidates. I’ve got no problem there. But in their jobs with the city, there’s no legislation to say that they can’t become involved with their preferred choice for a previous mayor, what have you, in rural politics.

There’s no regulation to control cities from becoming advertisers in rural elections. If that happens, can you just imagine what’ll happen with regional districts? You’ll have the city councillors and mayors being directors and then potential supporters or rural candidates that they support becoming directors as well. I’m really concerned.

Obviously, if I knew the city was going to be an active part or participant in my election against the former mayor, I wouldn’t have entered. I wouldn’t have gone there. I only went there because I knew — from my surveys, from my information, from talking with people — they thought I did a good job, and they wanted me back in that chair.

The people of Sun Rivers — and this is nothing against them — really don’t know how TNRD politics affects them. Honestly, with my six years, I can’t find a way to get TNRD politics to help the people of Sun Rivers. It’s Tk’emlúps Indian Band that controls their fate in that regard.

When I view possible remedies…. Create legislation that controls cities from becoming active participants in rural elections. I don’t know if this is in your purview, but hopefully it is. I know you’re trying to address election limits, but even so, there’s no valuation of what happened here. This mailout probably cost in the area of $10,000 in total, if not $15,000, plus labour costs.

Really, cities can make mistakes, and I accept that. But if they make mistakes to enter rural areas…. If they notify certain parts of a rural area, they have to notify all of a rural area and correct their mistake properly and entice everybody to come out to vote.

You know, the problem with rural people is that their drive is 15, 20, 25 minutes away from the polling station. The people from Sun Rivers had to drive two blocks. Big deal. Again, when they came out to vote, a lot of them didn’t even know what they were voting for, who they were voting for, where they were voting in.

M. Hunt: Because our mandate is dealing with a number at this moment in time…. Your number is basically $2,300 — what you spent in the election.

M. Hunt: How many electors are there? The area, TNRD, isn’t broken down by the different areas, so we can’t figure out exactly how many voters you have. Do you know an estimate of how many electors there are within your…?

J. Sternig: The population was slightly over 6,000, so I’m thinking we’re probably in the area of 4,200 or 4,000.

M. Hunt: Okay. Are you satisfied that the number that you spent, the $2,200, is the ballpark of what is substantive in a good campaign for that area?

J. Sternig: Yes, and I’ll tell you why. My wife — and I have to thank her immensely — is incredible at marketing. Her design sense, and what have you, is great. For whatever time she spent, my signs looked good.

I put my platform out there. I wasn’t just stating that the TNRD was 44,000 square kilometres. Who cares? I put an actual platform out there. I tried to get into the nuts and bolts of a platform election. So yes, I was quite satisfied with the amount that I spent, even though it was half the amount of my competitor. I found that even though he spent twice as much as me, all the stuff that I was doing, he copied at about three or four weeks into his campaign, realizing: “Yeah, I’ve got to do that.”

M. Bernier: You were saying you were an incumbent, so I’ve got a bit of a question here around that. Did the regional district send any information out to the voters during the month or two prior to the election?

J. Sternig: Absolutely not. No, they didn’t remind voters to come out and what have you.

M. Bernier: Some regional districts do, and that’s why I was just curious in that situation. Actually, many do. Many actually take out paid ads in newspapers. Most regional districts I’ve seen do that.

You just made me think of something, and I’ll get to it. It’s something you can maybe comment on. One of the things we are looking at is third-party advertising. The question would be: is the regional district, is the school board, is the municipality…? Should they be third-party advertisers or registered if they’re going to be sending something out reminding people to vote?

J. Sternig: It depends. If the areas are selective, I would say yes. But if they cover the whole area, like all of area P, then it’s equally distributed. In the case of the TNRD, they did advertise. But again, with advertisement and regional district offices, they tend to take easier advertisements with bigger newspapers or what have you and then don’t go out and seek the smaller newsletters or smaller things like this to get those advertisements out into the rurals.

As the previous presenter stated, there is a municipal-rural difference and sometimes a lack of understanding in how to get the word out into the rural areas.

J. Kwan: I’m curious. You were saying that there was a mailout that was sent by staff from the local municipality to certain parts of the community and not to certain other parts. Was that a mailout that was paid for by council, or was this an area where the candidates contributed to it, to the cost of that mailout? How does that work?

J. Sternig: It was decided by the city, by all of council. It’s a city initiative. The mailout was supposed to go out to all of the city. You would expect that the legislative department in the city would ensure that a mailout stays within the boundaries of the city. It did not.

The intention, possibly, was good in that regard. The only thing I have as a candidate, and researching this afterwards, is the mistake is so bad…. Really, I’m wondering if the error in the mailout was on purpose. I’m not sure. It was just a very stupid mistake.

J. Tegart (Chair): There do not appear to be any other witnesses at this time. We’re going to take a recess, and we’ll come back to order in ten minutes.

J. Tegart (Chair): There are no other witnesses in the room to present at this time. We’ve been contacted…. There is one witness who was scheduled who’ll be coming in via conference call to the Vancouver meeting.

So seeing no other witnesses here in Kamloops, I’ll call for a motion to adjourn.

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet.
Chamber debates are broadcast on television and webcast on the Internet.
Question Period podcasts are available on the Internet.

1) Peter Kerek
2) Gold Trail Board of Education	Carmen Ranta
3) Anne Grube

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