Local Elections Expense Limits — Issue No. 17 — Thursday, April 9, 2015 (HTML)

Strategy Room 320, Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue
580 West Hasting Street, Vancouver, B.C.

Present: Jackie Tegart, MLA (Chair); Selina Robinson, MLA (Deputy Chair); Mike Bernier, 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	223
H. Chang
D. Hull
E. Diano
J. Bober
M. Hartney
D. Travis
J. Skeet
D. Huntley
C. Henschel
M. Jamieson
R. Nantel

J. Tegart (Chair): Good afternoon. My name is Jackie Tegart, and I’m the member for Fraser-Nicola and Chair of this committee, the Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits. This committee was appointed by the Legislative Assembly on 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 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 the previous recommendations 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 in 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 the regional public hearings that had been scheduled. Hearings in Surrey and Kamloops proceeded as scheduled, and a Victoria hearing will take place next week on April 15. Presentation spaces remain available at the Victoria hearing, and conference call options are 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.

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

J. Tegart (Chair): We have Gary Holman, who was unable to be here today but who is also a member of this committee.

With that, I’ll now turn the floor over to our first presenter. That’s Helen Hee Soon Chang.

H. Chang: Thanks for this opportunity. I’m apologizing because I didn’t submit my writing in advance.

I was first elected as a school trustee in the year 2005. From that term, I participated in the civic elections in Burnaby until last year. My submission is based on my experience.

The first thing I want to point out is that there is no accountability, whether it is related to candidates or an organization that selects their candidates and runs the campaign. Because I had no experience in politics before I participated in the year 2005 campaign, I had no idea what is right and what is wrong, and I really appreciated all the help I got from my campaign team.

After the first election I ran as an independent — so far. The reason why I ran independently is that I discovered there was some kind of a problem. So I tried to fix it with my campaign — actually, the person who represents our organization. But for three years, before I resigned from that organization, they didn’t give me any clarification. That’s the reason why I ran as an independent.

Also, so far I’ve discovered that a civic election is just a microcosm of all kinds of campaigning in elections, federal and provincial. I think there might be some kind of overall fixation on what’s going on in our local campaigns.

The first thing I think I have to…. Last year I provided all expenses out of my pocket. But for some candidates who can’t afford it, they cannot do anything. It’s my guess, but I think because of money they can’t do anything ex-
[ Page 224 ]
cept the webpage provided by the city website. So I think there is one kind of a problem — where people want to run, but they cannot have any resources.

Also, the second thing is that there are many private organizations, including developers like real estate development and other companies, who can donate. But I think a donation is not just a donation. It seems that there is always a kind of give-and-take when a political party or a candidate accepts their donations.

I think any company, including private or any union, like a CUPE member…. I think they cannot donate under their union name, so at least they can maybe solve a little bit of the problem. When an organization like CUPE or a real estate development company is providing money under their names, then they have some kind of power and influence.

I recommend no organization, whether they belong to a union or they’re a private company…. I think they cannot contribute to a local campaign, but anyone, even if they belong to CUPE or a union or a real estate company, can contribute to them as a private citizen. Maybe that can be one kind of solution. And there should be a cap, at least. Not a $1 million donation, but maybe the cap might be, a maximum might be, $500.

In my experience, I met one politician from the United States, and he said: “I always accept donations, and usually they’ll be only $10.” But he successfully ran and was elected several times. I think that is kind of a good example of how we can do it here in Vancouver.

Also, to provide a more sound and fair campaign environment, I think each municipality and also school district can do whatever they can. For example, each city has their own website. They can provide each candidate, whether it’s a mayor or a city councillor candidate, some spot on the city website so they can have a free opportunity to introduce their platform and their bios. Then everybody in each city can have a look at who is running and what they are running for.

Also, the same thing can apply to a school trustee. Each school district has their own website. If they can provide such an opportunity to a school trustee candidate, then it’s good for the candidate — and also citizens — who is running for school board.

Teachers organizations in each city provide some opportunities, but sometimes their survey cannot be delivered to every candidate. At the end of the campaign period there is a report from each community newspaper, but not everyone is covered in that survey. I think that kind of problem can be solved when each school district and city provides their website to each candidate.

Also, third-party advertising. I experienced…. Even if they donate to each candidate with goodwill, sometimes they don’t know the regulations and specifics of who can donate and who cannot. I think Elections B.C. officials might provide some advice in each community, either through advertisements in newspapers or broadcasting, like CKNW. They can provide at least the basic requirements of third-party advertisement. Then that will eliminate unnecessary problems in the future.

L. Reimer: The mandate of this committee is to look at expense limits. I’m just wondering if you have any thoughts about current expense limits.

We’re looking at a possible model of 10,000 and above and a per-voter amount. I’m just wondering if you have any ideas on what you would like to see as expense limits.

H. Chang: Expense limits. Actually, there should be some limit, because what I saw in my community is that whenever they have enough money, then they do whatever they want to. I saw a lot of waste. Because those organizations have money, they just spend all donations they have. I think it’s not very productive to spend people’s donations in that way. At least there should be a cap, and I think $20,000 might be enough.

M. Hunt: Having said that, if you…. Twenty thousand dollars is an interesting number. You spent about $7,600 in your election. You think that about three times the amount that you spent would run a reasonable campaign in Burnaby?

H. Chang: Yeah, I think so. The reason why I mention the website of the city and school district…. Their website can be a huge opportunity for delivering each candidate’s campaign, right? They can do it on foot. They can do door-knocking if they want to.

Actually, whenever I talk to people, sometimes they don’t happen to get those flyers delivered by mail, so sometimes it’s kind of a waste of money. Focusing on door-knocking and the city website, I think, is a basic kind of step, and I think they are very effective ways of running a campaign.

M. Hunt: Traditionally in elections we’ve had things like election signs. We’ve had things like brochures, whether delivered by the mail or delivered by the local newspaper. We’ve got ads in the local newspaper — all those sorts of things. You think $20,000 would be sufficient to cover that?
[ Page 225 ]

I live in Surrey, and I know that to get a brochure to every household in Surrey would cost me $20,000 just for the postage. You’re comfortable with the $20,000 number? What you’re suggesting is that there would then be an election in the Internet, and it would just be using the Internet. I’m questioning whether that would really be an effective campaign for people — for example, older people — that might not be as used to working with computers and those sorts of things.

H. Chang: I understand, but if you have enough volunteers you can provide it by yourself. Then you can make your own brochure, printed in your home, and you can deliver it to neighbours. That’s my idea.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I appreciate you raising the issue around the donation limit. It’s been one that we’ve heard consistently in both of the two phases. But, like Linda Reimer commented, we’re only permitted to talk about expense limits.

I, too, am intrigued about this $20,000 in Burnaby, and I will say that in Coquitlam, which is much smaller than Burnaby, that was what I spent — $21,000 in my last election. It’s not unreasonable, but I will ask you if you think it needs to be tied to population.

Marvin pointed out in Surrey, because of the size — the number of people — or in Vancouver…. Would you suggest that that would be the same? Or Port Moody, for example, that has only 30,000 people…. Do you see that there needs to be some sort of relationship between population size, geography and limit? Would you think that there’d be a relationship between those areas?

H. Chang: Maybe it takes time to change our system, but I think in the long run, if we want to eliminate corruption problems and any fraud problems and any unjustified influence from the private sector, then maybe we can start from now. Winning is good, but I think the process is much important. If we try to campaign in a more responsible way and more green way, then I think maybe it can be achieved in the near future.

J. Tegart (Chair): Thank you very much. Thanks for coming today and for presenting.

Our next presenter is the Cranbrook Chamber of Commerce — David Hull. He’s on a conference call.

J. Tegart (Chair): We have ten minutes for the presentation and then five minutes for questions. You can go ahead.

D. Hull: I do appreciate your time and your attention. I’ll be submitting a written report or response as well to the call for submissions. I’ll just highlight some of what our report will carry.

The Cranbrook Chamber of Commerce. I won’t go into great detail, but as you’re probably aware, we represent the business community in Cranbrook. We join chambers of commerce and boards of trade across British Columbia and across Canada in representing the entire depth and breadth of the business community and, as such, the economy of British Columbia and Canada.

The old saying goes: “A great place to live, work and play is a great place to do business.” We’re very confident that British Columbia is a great place to do business, because it is a great place to live, work and play. We also think that we cannot take that greatness for granted.

As Canadians, we enjoy tremendous rights and freedoms in our country that millions of people daily are fighting and dying to try to obtain. We enjoy it without question in Canada, but we cannot take it for granted.

The government is sort of the cornerstone of our whole democracy, and the cornerstone of that is of course the election process. We know that the election process needs to be sacrosanct and guarded with vigour and with every fibre of our might, as far as our society.

In Cranbrook to date, local government elections have not really been of major concern that we see in areas such as the last couple of elections in Vancouver. I myself am from the Lower Mainland, having just moved here four months ago.

In looking back through the historical data in Cranbrook — for example, the last election we just had and the one before…. Citing the last election, the successful mayoralty candidate spent $13,000. The incumbent, who wasn’t successful, in second place, spent $8,600. These represent 92 cents and 58 cents respectively per candidate. If you look at Vancouver — I’m sure you’re aware of these numbers; I think I took them right off your website — with Vision Vancouver spending $3½ million and the NPA spending $2 million, representing $18 and $11 on average per voter, it’s a dramatic difference.

We’re concerned that though Cranbrook hasn’t experienced a case where electoral spending has called into question the validity of the democratic process, at the drop of a large cheque that could change, and it could change anywhere in B.C., of course. I was a city councillor for over 12 years in Terrace and have experienced many local government elections. Again, in Terrace we hadn’t experienced issues per se, but it was always there, and there was nothing to prevent it.

The business community…. We have a vested interest in the quality of our town. We do all across British Columbia. We are vested very concretely — i.e., our money and our land and buildings are rather attached to our community. So we need a very healthy community. We don’t want one that is set into disarray by electoral spending that really isn’t respective of the process.

Looking at the options and looking at the documentation that has been put out by your group and other information, there appears to be…. I’m sure this won’t be any great revelation to what you’ve heard and will probably be a theme. There need to be, really, four principles to electoral spending. The rest of Canada, a large majority of Canada, has it, and I think it certainly is time that British Columbia does as well.

We’re looking at principles based on fairness, transparency, accountability and balance. Under fairness, the Cranbrook Chamber of Commerce believes that there should be limits on candidates, parties, slates and third-party participation in all local government elections under the purview of the province of British Columbia; that there should be a multi-tiered system created to recognize inherent differences between large and small communities; and that the spending limits should be based on a population-constructed formula.

As far as the multi-tiered system, I’m very aware, having lived in large urban centres and rural areas all within the last four or five months, that a $2,000 or $3,000 billboard on the one big main street of Cranbrook will go a long ways to promoting your campaign, whereas a $3,000 billboard on a corner in Cloverdale won’t do much up in north Surrey to attract votes or attention. Obviously large areas — geographically large areas, population-wise and diversity — require different levels of campaigning. So certainly, a system will have to be devised that has that recognition for small, medium and large communities within British Columbia.

The second area — and I think this is, probably, really the important one in all of it — is transparency. It’s imperative that the regulatory legislation is inherently transparent. The most fair and honest system will only succeed if it’s extremely transparent, accessible and understood. At the chamber, we recommend that the local elections limit regulations have no level of ambiguity or room for interpretation contrary to the spirit and objective of the statute — so very, very clear, very concise, very easily understood.

We believe that the clarity of the legislation is such that any reasonable person involved at any level in the election process should understand their responsibility and that access to the information, in all aspects of the elections, should be fundamentally simple and available without application — i.e., I should be able to go on, during an election or post-election, and look at the information and not have to fill out an application for request for information and processes such as that.

We believe that the legislation should be accountable. There needs to be a high level of accountability, and with that, we’re generally talking enforcement. A rule of law is rendered impotent if there are no real or demonstrable consequences for non-compliance. A threat of enforcement is hollow if there’s no intention to exercise the power of the force.

Democracy needs to be held sacrosanct and rigorously defended as a foundation within our society. To that end, the chamber recommends that demonstrable, significant and enforceable compliance provisions be included in local election expense limit regulations.

Our last point I’d like to touch on is balance. The legislation needs to strike a balance to ensure that elections are decided on merit rather than fiscal resources. Every candidate or interested party should have a fair chance to be represented in the process. However, a fair balance needs to be struck to ensure that those significantly invested in the process are not retarded in their efforts when measured against self-marginalized participants.

To that end, the chamber of commerce recommends that legislation ensure a balance is created to protect the election process from undue and unfair fiscal influence while providing sufficient latitude to allow the democratic process to be fully exercised.

To that point, I think the person who runs as, to use a colloquial term, a fringe candidate who throws their name on the ballot and does nothing else, shouldn’t then expect to have their lack of real interest or participation drag down the efforts and subsequent costs of a more vigorous and inherently dedicated campaign. So if things like averaging and such are to be used, we have to watch that the self-disenfranchised don’t drag down the more active and more participatory candidates.

To that end, that is the extent of our four recommendations. If there are any questions, I’d be more than pleased to answer them.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. It was very helpful. I’m wondering if your chamber of commerce had any conversation or has any sort of suggestions about what a figure might look like in terms of that idea of balancing. You want to have access. You want to have fairness.

Part of our task as a committee is to figure out: what’s the point at which we ought to set the expense limits? Have you given any consideration — given Cranbrook’s population, geographical scope — about what we ought to be considering as an expense limit?

D. Hull: Well, certainly, I’m a big believer in best practices and looking at what other successful jurisdictions are doing. If you look at — again, I think this came right out of your report — Toronto, their election spending limit is 85 cents per registered voter. In Montreal, for example, it’s $1.50. In the last election in Cranbrook the mayoralty candidate, the successful one, spent 92 cents. The second place, the incumbent, spent 58 cents.

A number sort of in that range, maybe in the $1.50 range for larger communities where, say…. A campaign in Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey is dramatically differ-
[ Page 227 ]
ent than a campaign in Terrace or Cranbrook or Houston, B.C. — so an upper range for larger communities, maybe in the $1.50 sort of range, and down closer to $1 for smaller communities, in that range. I think, frankly, the best idea is to look at other jurisdictions and see what best practices look like and how they work.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): That’s helpful. I just have a follow-up question, and it has to do with the relationship between a mayoral candidate, a council candidate and third party — if you’ve given any thought or had any consideration about what that relationship ought to look like in terms of what the spending limits would look like in each of those categories. And let’s not forget school board candidates or a parks board or regional district. Do you see a relationship?

There are a whole bunch of different seats that people will hold. Do you have a sense of relationship between those and what we ought to be considering?

D. Hull: I believe I’ve said it. Certainly, it will be in my written submission. All elections under the purview of the provincial government should have regulations — exactly, the school board, the regional district, the Islands Trust and, of course, local governments.

I know from my personal experience that it’s a little different for councillors in that you’re vying for one of anywhere from five to nine positions on a council as opposed to mayor, where it’s a winner takes all, so the stakes are higher. It may make rationalized sense to have different limits for mayoralty candidates versus councillors. School boards, of course, are elected as trustees. Amongst themselves, they choose a board chair. So it isn’t really a factor there.

At the end of the day, you’ll look at the stakes and say: “Well, what is a reasonable amount of money to be spent to ensure that your message is out?” Your key to getting elected is to have your message out and hope your message is accepted.

I look at the spending in Vancouver for the last number of elections. It’s, frankly, obscene. It makes it so that if you’re a third or fourth party, not a “fringe” party but just a smaller group, without things like proportional representation, your hope of ever making a dent when people are spending millions upon millions of dollars is nigh on impossible.

M. Hunt: Two questions. You had suggested somewhere in the order of $1 to $1.50 per voter. The statistics that I have from Cranbrook say you’ve got 14,800 eligible voters in Cranbrook. So that would say that in the 2014 election both of the mayoralty candidates — the third one, as well, for that matter…. They would all fit underneath that cap of $1 per voter.

The questions are: one, is that reasonable? Two, looking at the elections that you had, I noticed their expenses are really focused on newspapers and radio in Cranbrook rather than on brochures and mail — that sort of thing. My question is: from your perspective, were those effective campaigns?

D. Hull: I’ll be honest. I wasn’t living in Cranbrook at the time. I have literally moved here the first of the year. I’m a little bit aware, and I’ve certainly done some research and talking.

It would appear that the campaigns were reasonable. Both candidates had their message out. I mean, if I look at, for example, and use — and that’s the big cities — Toronto and Montreal, the successful mayoralty candidate in Cranbrook at 92 cents would have been just over the Toronto limit and under the Montreal limit. Now those, of course, are great big metropolitan areas.

I’m not…. I was just going to say I’m not comfortable. For me to put a number, per se, on it, I don’t think is terribly relevant. I think what’s important is to recognize, I think, that the limit has to be higher in bigger centres.

I come from a unique position of having been in local government in a small town, in Terrace, for 13 or 14 years, having lived in Abbotsford and the Lower Mainland for ten years and now just moved back to a similar 20,000-population city again in rural B.C. So I’ve seen different aspects, and I’ve worked for the chamber for ten years during that.

I know that you have to have a different system for the larger communities — I think, probably, even a small, medium, large kind of thing. I think Kelowna might need a bit of different latitude in their constraints for election spending versus Cranbrook but not as much as Surrey and Vancouver would need, for example.

M. Hunt: Okay, but keeping focused on Cranbrook for a moment, recognizing you weren’t there, let me rephrase the question and ask the question this way. In the midst of your consultations to make this presentation to us, did you hear from the citizens of Cranbrook that either of the mayoralty candidates ran excessive campaigns?

D. Hull: No, and in fact, it’s not a concern. That’s evidenced by the fact that you cancelled your hearings here in Cranbrook and that I’m doing this on the phone today. Being very much a political person, I was gobsmacked at former candidates, current candidates, potential candidates in the future, people with political interests, local groups. No one except for myself signed up from the whole East Kootenays to come make a presentation to your group. Frankly, I guess it tells me that there’s no perceived problem.

My point is that…. I certainly have not heard that anybody thought that there was very little interest in their campaigns, in fact, because there was no money spent, and certainly nobody has said: “Good god, Mayor Lee
[ Page 228 ]
Pratt spent a fortune. No wonder he won the election.”

At that kind of spending, if I remember back to what was said in Terrace when I lived up there and ran for council, these numbers sort of seem to be in line. But I do see, looking across the information provided by UBCM and different folks, some of the spending in some smaller towns is getting up into the mayoralty candidates spending $40,000 or $50,000 in a town of 20,000 or 30,000. You start going: “Is this starting to throw the democratic process a little off tilt?”

I have a question in regards to the discussion at the chamber. Certainly, one of the areas that perhaps a chamber would discuss is that as we put limits on expenditures, that has got to have some effect on business. Has there been discussion about that within your chamber?

D. Hull: Yes. In fact, they had a meeting yesterday and went over my written submission. That was one of the points: “Well, hang on. We’re business people, and if anybody should be able to afford to write a large cheque and influence the process…. Hang on. You might be holding back our potential to make a difference.”

I said: “Well, that’s the exact point. I mean, to say that we’re businesses and we can write a cheque doesn’t mean we’re all on the same page.” One day we have an eccentric business guy whose ideas are contrary to the good civic health of Cranbrook, and he decides to write a $300,000 cheque to back some person who’s not going to be good for Cranbrook. As we know, apathy in elections, especially local elections in British Columbia and Canada, is just at an all-time low and absolutely pitiful. That person is elected, and all of a sudden our town, our businesses and our way of life can be greatly affected by the turmoil. They went: “Oh yeah, I guess that does make sense, right?”

It’s fine to say that all of us sitting around this table are of a similar mind and that’s not a problem, but that’s exactly why it can be a problem. Not everyone is of a right mind or a correct mind.

J. Tegart (Chair): Just from another perspective on that, David, I’m thinking about businesses that may be affected — like newspapers, radio stations, printers, sign-makers and those kinds of things. Just to give…. That’s why we contacted chambers of commerce who may be interested in giving input — because our recommendations may have significant impact on impact on business in communities.

D. Hull: The chamber of commerce — first and foremost, we are big picture. We are concerned about the quality of life in Cranbrook. I can tell you that’s the same message with chambers of commerce across the land. So the democratic process is far bigger and far more important than a few business people’s business once every three or four years when election season comes around. We enjoy already, at the provincial and federal level, third-party expense limits and quite strict rules and regulations when it comes to elections, and now we need that at the local level in B.C.

It’s not a problem in Cranbrook. It might never be a problem, but that’s why we have all sorts of rules that govern our lives and structures — hopefully, never to be used. But it’s there to protect us in case something does go awry.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to speak to us today. We were looking forward to coming to Cranbrook, but this is the next-best thing, I guess. Thank you very much to you and to the members of the Cranbrook Chamber of Commerce.

D. Hull: Well, thank you very much. If you get a chance to come to God’s country, come on out.

E. Diano: Good afternoon, and thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to express a few words about your task. It’s a very difficult task indeed, but I strongly believe in the work you are doing.

You are a committee that is representing the real maximum, maybe, possible level of a democracy in our province because you are reporting to the floor. You are a multi-party committee, and that is very important to all of us. Of course, your decisions are going to be very important. Even if you don’t decide anything at all, this is going to be very important. The consequences are going to be felt everywhere in the city, in the communities.

I’ve been involved in politics here and there, and I’ve been observing many of the political parties. I’ve been trying to express my point of view. Maybe it’s a little bit original that I’m even taking the opportunity to express some modifications to the structural format. But I think that it is really very important when it is saying that what is happening in the city of Vancouver, for example, is totally different from what is happening in Cranbrook or all around the province.

We have a huge province. We have so many communities, and they’re all different. To try to lump everything together would be a terrible mistake. For example, I’m taking the opportunity to talk more about the city of Vancouver because I believe that the city of Burnaby and maybe Surrey could have similarities, and I believe that in the future there are going to be major changes toward the concept of a greater Vancouver. I think that the city of Vancouver, per se, isolating the expressions that we have, is limiting the possibility of expansion.

Madam, you are very right when you talk about business, because this is a big business. We are talking about
[ Page 229 ]
money. There is a dramatic difference in Vancouver between the people that are independent candidates and the political parties. Also, they are not officially parties, per se. They are organizations, as you very well have been mentioning. But they are acting like parties, so they are copying from the federal and copying from the provincial governments. This is good and bad, and we need to pull apart the bundle to try to make the proper decisions. Your decisions are very important to us, are very important to me.

I am a new Canadian. I walked on water to come to this country. I chose to be a Canadian. I strongly believe that we are a fantastic democratic system. But in a sense, there is plenty of room for improvements.

Let’s talk about business. If you are going to be limiting the expenditures of the political parties, in Vancouver you are going to be limiting from something like $6½ million. To what? Is money not important to you? I think money is very important. There is no such thing as a campaign without money. If you don’t have money, you don’t have a campaign. That’s it. And if you don’t have a campaign, you don’t have a democratic system. The most important thing to me is not so much the individuals and the parties, per se, but it’s the population at large participating in voting.

You know what I’m talking about because you have been cancelling five meetings in the province. To me, it’s a shocking experience, just to understand that. I don’t have really a magic solution for all that. Sure, you can legislate people to go and vote. Maybe you could give some kind of incentives to bring them out and vote, or maybe there could be much better participation from the political parties.

I think that you have some big huge problem here. Trying to create just limitations without talking about the general voting is a terrible mistake. I would like to have as many people coming out and voting. The 30 percent, the 35 percent — it is not enough. It’s a miserable expression of our democratic system. We need to reach the 60, 70, 80 percent participation. It’s not a dream. It’s a reality. It’s something that must be done.

You have the opportunity. All of you are responsible about all this, because what is happening in the city of Vancouver, in Burnaby, in Surrey, is the consequence of what you guys are going to be putting together in writing in the legislation.

The greater quantity of people makes it confusing. It confuses the fact that the city’s level of bylaw…. The bylaw is created by your law. The province is the state. We are a confederation in this country, and the province has the absolute authority to create and destroy the cities or change in the best way that is necessary for the people.

One of the major weaknesses is the fact that political parties can transfer money to the individuals. We are not interested in political parties. Political parties are not the candidates. We are voting for the candidates. It is necessary to unbundle these kind of legacies, because this legacy creates the most serious problem.

At the federal level we have the famous seals that are trained to say yes because somebody in the back room is putting a piece of paper together that is what we are going to do today. No. That is not a democratic process. Our democratic process relates to the fact that we vote for a candidate and that candidate is going to represent us, not the party.

Unfortunately, the separation has been changing and dramatically evolving to the point where we vote for a party. It’s impossible to vote for an individual. In the city of Vancouver you have 70 people. How are you going to know these people? How are you going to choose these people? What kind of decisions are you going to make to make sure that the best candidate is going to be elected?

What is this story for the mayor, the mayor that just becomes the Miss Universe contest here? What is this? Why do we lose talent, top people, that are running in that field? One is elected. The other one is thrown out of the window. Why don’t we put them in the list of candidates and say: “Hey, you are not going to be able to be a good mayor, but maybe you’re going to be a fantastic candidate for council. Maybe you can be in the council.”

Why do we confuse the electorate? Why do we focus on a marketing concept where we are packaging this soup, a can, and we try to sell the can and we withhold the ingredients in it? I mean, this is about the ingredients. That is vital for me, but you are not giving me this opportunity.

I demand, I want, that you go back to the Legislature and say: “Hey, just a moment. We cannot only talk about the limitations of funding. We need to talk about everything.” It’s not enough that British Columbia’s municipal parties put together a task force and they enact the legislation. We want the people.

What you are doing…. You are fantastic, because you are giving the opportunity to many of the people to talk even about topics where they could be thrown out of order on the spot. You are having that opportunity because you are trying to understand what is going on in the communities. I commend you for that. I appreciate that.

I hope that you are going to be back in the Legislature and that you are going to tell them in really tough terms that a lot must be done.

I have been taking the liberty of putting together suggestions for solutions. I’ve been putting the example of $50,000 — ten cents per candidate — because the city of Vancouver is lumped together in a very large quantity of voters.

We have a city where, basically, 60 percent of the people are new Canadians. We are a community where 30, 40 percent — like Surrey or like Burnaby — basically are brand-new Canadians. You’re expecting that they come in and vote and participate. You have the responsibility for these kinds of things. We need a much better
[ Page 230 ]
marketing campaign. It’s not enough to put just an ad in the paper and say: “Come out and make presentations.” There is much more than that.

You need to spend money. If you don’t spend the money, you are not going to have a campaign. I’m very hesitant in your approach, in saying: “Let’s put limitations.”

I would like to say: please, consider the possibility of removing that money. That is very important not only for the business communities but for all of us to be electing the right individuals. I’m saying: please, try to move money away from that purpose to another one, okay? Let’s create a different kind of a dialogue with the communities. My experience — and I think all of your have the same experience — in the communities is they’re fantastic people. When I go and sit down and listen to all these communities around, I find that so many mayors and so many councillors there could be handling our business in a much better way than we are doing it now.

What is the distortion? Money. You must try to understand what I’m trying to say, please. Unbundle this legacy between the party and the candidate. Let the candidate run free and not let the party buy the candidate and have the candidate a slave of the machine of the party, where the candidate is not able to move. Clearly, if the party is going to give money for the running of the campaign, the candidate is there. He’s a slave, has been bought by the party. You must separate that legacy.

I think that the ability is to sit down and have a better dialogue with the party system, because the party system could be the major key in bringing the people out and voting.

At the Olympics we have a system that works very well. They are proud to put their ad with the naming of the Olympics down there. We could have the Elections B.C. there, and they could be proud in bringing out the people for voting. There is a lot that can be done. Really, this is just a start of a huge avalanche of possibilities that you have there.

I think that the ability is, first of all, to convince the minister responsible, to convince the Premier, to convince the Legislature, that there is much more to be done. It must be done now, not later. The city of Vancouver, for example, has been asking since 2005 to have this kind of a dialogue, and nothing has been happening, strangely enough.

E. Diano: The structure that I’m putting together…. It is something out of the elections of British Columbia. It is something that is more to promote the participation of people to come out and vote. There is a total vacuum right now. There is absolutely nothing that will bring the people to come out. People are annoyed. They don’t want to come out. Politicians are worse than used-car salesmen. I’m sorry, but this is the way that politics has been moving.

We have an evolution in electronics, for example. We have data mining now. Cranbrook — they are not talking…. I’m talking about Vancouver, because now they can zero in — in my riding, in my neighbourhood, in my block — and tell me the way I’m going to vote in the future. Things are changing dramatically, so you’ll need to have a lot of money. Don’t throw the money away. Just swing the money in the right direction. You have the power to do that. I have hope.

M. Hunt: Well, actually you are. The federal government and the provincial government are elected by the party system. You’re saying that in larger municipalities you want to get rid of the party system. I would suggest….

This is a big conversation which is not our jurisdiction. I’m just saying the ramifications of what you’re talking about have to roll both into the provincial and the federal elections as well. I’m leaving that right there, because I want to focus on third-party advertising, which you didn’t comment on.

M. Hunt: Well, I know. I’m trying to get you there. You were so busy on the other part, I want to give you a couple of moments on the third-party piece of it.

On the third-party advertising piece, is your recommendation…? You used the number $50,000. So let’s just use….

E. Diano: I’m trying to give you the feeling of the dramatic difference between the independent candidates and the party candidates, okay?

You are trying to find a level field. I’m warning you, because if you are going to create a level field or you eliminate all the candidates in the independent candidates concept or you eliminate all the parties, you are caught in a big trap there. Be careful what you are doing. If you are moving that thing higher, to $500,000 or $1 million, you are playing exactly the same game that you are playing today.
[ Page 231 ]

Now, I’m sorry. You can cut me off here, if you want, at any time you like to. I apologize. I’ve been not able to convey my presentation right enough to let you understand that, fundamentally, I’m not going to change the system. First of all, the federal and provincial party system is fully recognized. At city level, there is no such thing as a party system. There is the word “civic party” that we are talking about, but in fact if we are talking the right terminology, that is an organization, an electoral organization.

That electoral organization in fact can include the third-party system because the electoral organization is not always toward promoting candidates, but it can be promoting an idea, an ideal, a point of view. That is exactly what the third-party people are doing. You could consider them and lump them together and put the level right there on all of them.

E. Diano: No, for what you are limiting for the electoral organization — what you call the party. That is totally incorrect to call it a party. And it is totally incorrect — I’m sorry to say this — to compare that to the federal and provincial level, because we don’t have that.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I appreciate that your presentation is very Vancouver-centric. It has some unique challenges.

In Coquitlam, where I come from, there historically haven’t been parties. I really appreciate your passion for community engagement and civic engagement. I agree, and I think everybody at this table would agree, that that’s been problematic.

We have, especially at the local level…. In my community, it’s been as low as 21 percent voter turnout, which is abysmal. But there haven’t been, historically, parties. It’s been at 21 percent without parties. It’s been individuals who put their names forward, who worked really hard, door-knocking and trying to get the vote out, trying to engage people, trying to engage citizens. It’s been impossible.

There have been attempts at parties or elector organizations — that people work together to pool more resources together, to promote more, to have more abundance. It hasn’t really made much difference in voter turnout. I guess I just wanted to point out that I’m not convinced that that’s part of the issue.

I did want to ask you a question. You suggest that mayor, councillor, parks board…. You list everybody, and you say that they should all have the same level. Can you just provide a rationale for that? I know that, from other conversations we’ve heard, some people do feel that councillors should have a different limit than mayors or that regional districts would have a different level than those and that school boards should have it a little slightly lower.

E. Diano: Well, from the community point of view, if I may say — I’m only here as an individual: the school board trustee or the parks board trustee, which are under different acts, are very important to us, are not second to councillor. The councillor is not second to the mayor, because they have the same, one vote. It’s very important, fundamental in our principles.

What we are doing is that we are separating them for marketing reasons. We are packaging them as soap types in different labels, and we put these labels on. Because there is huge complexity in voting, we cannot decide between 70 candidates in Vancouver. The candidates don’t know the areas, the ridings, the problems in the communities.

This is why I’m saying it’s very important to discuss the concept that you cannot discuss because you are cut off — and this is not your fault: the ward system, for example. It’s extremely…. In fact, I’m suggesting there that the province of British Columbia should legislate law, because it is an imperative necessity. It’s not something that we give up to the people to decide and that the parties will meddle up, and the full thing there becomes very confusing. When are we going to make…?

You must make it easier for me to vote. Please, you must do that. If you don’t make it easy for me, I’m not going to be able to vote and defend our democratic rights here. That is your fault; it’s not the city’s fault. It’s yours, because you have the mandate, as the state, to legislate in the Legislature. The minister is the most important person there.

J. Tegart (Chair): No, you don’t have to be sorry. Truly, your passion comes through.

E. Diano: It doesn’t work out well. Sometimes it boomerangs in the wrong way and creates wrong impressions and wrong explanations.

J. Tegart (Chair): Well, we certainly thank you very much for your written submission, also, and for your recognition of the importance of the work that’s being done here. We all have, in the past, been municipal or regional district or school trustees. We understand the process
[ Page 232 ]
and value the process. We really appreciate that you’ve taken the time today and that you’ve been at some of our other meetings too.

Jordan, we have ten minutes and then a five-minute question period. Thank you, and welcome.

My name is Jordan Bober. I’m a director with the Green Party of Vancouver, and I’d like to thank you for this opportunity to share some of my views on this important topic with you. This is something that’s been very near and dear to my heart for at least the last year and a half.

The Green Party of Vancouver and myself were very, very disappointed when we saw last spring that even though the government was preparing to unveil a new act, the local elections financing act, there were none of the limits on donations, spending or any of those types of things that had been called for, for over nine years, by Vancouver city council, by other civic elector organizations and individual citizens groups.

Actually, just over a year ago, on April 1 of 2014 — and it wasn’t an April Fools’ joke — we decided to take leadership on this by adopting our own voluntary spending and donation limits in the hope that we would actually inspire other parties to follow our example. There were a couple that did, but there were a couple that very clearly did not as well.

The limits that we set at that time were based on…. It was very difficult, actually, to determine what the limits should be, because there are very few cities that have the same situation that Vancouver is in, with an at-large system of our size with elector organizations.

We were inspired by a challenge that IntegrityBC put out, calling on parties to adopt voluntary limits. They gave us some good examples — for example, Mississauga, which has a very comparable voter base to Vancouver, although it does have a ward system — so not entirely translatable.

We also looked at the case of Naheed Nenshi in Calgary, who ran his mayoral campaign with a self-imposed limit of, I think, 67 cents per eligible voter. He even spent below his limit, and it was a very successful campaign.

We ended up choosing a number, and 65 cents per registered voter would be the maximum that the party, centrally, could spend. Additionally, each individual candidate that we ran could spend up to 15 cents per registered voter in their own expenses. The 65 cents per registered voter would have come out to about $273,000 last year, and the 15 cents per registered voter would have come out to approximately $63,000.

Now, we also set donation limits. I must say that I’m very disappointed that your committee hasn’t been given a mandate to look at donation limits, because I think that’s actually even more fundamental to the attack on democracy that I have seen from big money in politics. It’s, at least, the perception that there are certain organizations, corporations or individuals that can, essentially, buy favour with an elector organization. That’s something that the spending limits, unfortunately, are not going to address directly.

We set our own donation limit of $5,000. No individual or organization could donate more than $5,000 in a year. Also, we had a complete ban on donations from property developers as well as fossil fuel companies. They were two types of donors that we felt shouldn’t have undue influence over city council at this time.

Basically, according to our formula, we could have spent up to $400,000 or $500,000 with the number of candidates that we ran. We ran seven candidates in total: three for city council, two for park board and two for school board. In actual fact, we weren’t expecting to spend that much. We ended up raising and spending approximately $100,000.

The reason that we actually aimed higher than the amount we were reasonably expecting to raise, given the limits that we imposed on ourselves, is that…. We set the bar a little bit higher because we were hoping that some of the parties that were in the $1 million range would actually take a look at these numbers and say: “You know what? This sounds reasonable to us. We might have to reduce our spending by half compared to the previous election in 2011, but it’s still a reasonable number.”

It would actually still put Vancouver in an extreme league compared to most other communities. It would allow them to spend up to $1 million, which I don’t think is necessarily a good number, but it was a start, something that they could move towards voluntarily. Unfortunately, that did not happen.

My take-away from this past election is that there is good news and bad news. We did quite well with the Green Party of Vancouver, even though we spent about 1.6 percent of the total campaign spending in the 2014 Vancouver civic elections. Four out of seven of our candidates won. Councillor Adriane Carr actually received about 75,000 votes, which is more votes than a city councillor has ever received in a civic election in Vancouver. So we got very good bang for our buck.

The morning after the election I was thinking: “Well, the good news is that money isn’t the only factor in elections, clearly — because otherwise none of our candidates would have won — but the bad news is that money is still a dominant factor in elections.” We’ve seen that we’ve again broken records. We smashed our records from 2011, which were already highly problematic. We had megadonations, and the parties that spent the most
[ Page 233 ]
again dominated city council. So it clearly still is a very dominant factor. Now, why is that?

Well, I was very involved in the Green Party of Vancouver campaign, and I can tell you that with $100,000 you get a campaign that is, at least in my opinion, something that looks like what I would expect a good democratic campaign to look like.

It’s fuelled by volunteers. It’s fuelled by small donations from individuals. About 85 percent of all of our donations came from individuals, not from corporations or unions. It was a good, fun campaign. We managed to get our message out to many, many people. We were active participants in all of the debates. We got good media coverage. It was a good, solid campaign. And we did that on $100,000, which tells me that it’s possible to do a campaign on $100,000.

In spite of the fact that we adopted limits that were higher, basically hoping that it would allow for some voluntary movement in that direction, we would actually support setting even lower limits than we adopted internally last year. For example, I would say something in the order of 25 cents to 50 cents per registered voter is a very reasonable-sounding figure. It would basically allow for a campaign up to more than double what the Green Party of Vancouver spent in the last civic election, which as we’ve seen, is something that is sufficient for running a proper campaign.

That’s the first point that I’d like to make. Basically, we’re looking at campaigns that would be not in the $2 million to $3 million range but the $100,000-to-$200,000 range.

Another issue I’d like to address very quickly is that of spending between elections. As we know, under the current act the reporting period applies to the election year itself. Of course, political parties are raising money and spending money all the time. The Green Party of Vancouver thinks that it’s very important for those in-between years to be subject to the same reporting requirements, donation disclosure, as well as the spending limits.

Now, I do not think that a political party, a civic elector organization, needs to spend the same amount of money in an off-election year as they do during an election year, so something like half of what the cap is set at for the election year might be appropriate for off-election years — basically allowing them to maintain some baseline operations, maybe have an executive director and maybe a couple of staff at the most. That should be more than sufficient for a civic organization.

Lastly, the question of third-party advertising, I know, has come up as well. That’s a difficult one. I don’t have a particular number to give you because, on the one hand, I think it’s very important that civic groups be allowed to advance their issues during an election, and that does cost money.

However, I think that it’s also important that third-party advertising not turn into a way for other political interests, such as elector organizations, to get around the spending limits that they’re subject to. I think that it should be set at considerably less than what the cap is for an elector organization — again, perhaps about half of the cap. That’s as long as the cap is what we’re suggesting — at around the $100,000-to-$200,000 range.

Those are the main points that I’d like to make for your consideration. I’ve provided some copies, as well, for all of you so that you can have those on file. I welcome any questions you have.

M. Hunt: I do your calculations just slightly differently. I’m taking your numbers. You’ve said $63,000 per candidate. If I times that by the number of offices that are available — I don’t know exactly how many on parks, but I’m going to guess it’s seven, just for the sake of numbers — I’ve got 27 elected positions times $63,000. That has me at almost $2.2 million for an election.

Therein is the rub because if someone was running…. Earlier we had people talking about independents running. Yeah, an independent’s going to need somewhere in those kinds of dollars in order to be able to run, although we know we’ve got to go back to Carole Taylor to be able to actually get one here in Vancouver. Past her, it’s a long way back as well. But at least in theory, the $63,000 becomes actually $2.2 million, which you said you don’t think is a fair number.

Now, you’ve got us into…. The challenge that we have is how you get something that’s fair for electoral organizations or those who choose to run together in some form, called electoral organizations, and those running independent.

If I take your actual numbers, you said you had seven candidates. Your $88,000 that you spent — that’s $12,000 each, which obviously, an independent could never run for. How do we deal with those challenges from your perspective?

J. Bober: First of all, I’d like to clarify that I actually don’t think the $63,000 formula is what I’d like to see, ultimately. We advanced that as something that could get other parties to join us in going in the right direction, but I would actually advocate for much tighter limits, such as I was saying — about 25 cents to 50 cents per registered voter for the entire elector organization. I maybe didn’t clarity that as well earlier.

I think we should be looking at a cumulative total of spending for all the candidates, as well as what the elector organization is spending centrally.

In the case of the independents, I think something on the same order as an elector organization would actually be an appropriate spending cap. We haven’t seen
[ Page 234 ]
that kind of spending from independent candidates. But the way I look at it, there are pros and cons to running with an elector organization in an at-large system like Vancouver’s, as far as your spending requirements go.

On the one hand, if you are an elector organization and you have many candidates, you might have more costing per candidate. But at the same time, an election is really about making contact with as many voters as possible. If you’re running, let’s say, a full slate of 27 candidates as an elector organization, you actually have a significant advantage in carrying out that task. Money actually should become less important, because you have a larger team, whereas an independent, obviously, has to do more paid outreach because they’re only one person and they have to appeal to 420,000 voters and get out to all the neighbourhoods.

I would say that they pretty much balance out, and I would expect to see the same cap applied to an elector organization as to an independent and for it to be set quite low, as I mentioned.

J. Kwan: I’m curious to know what your thoughts are around third-party spending and whether or not you have any suggestions around spending limits related to that.

J. Bober: Right. With third-party spending, I think that it should be set considerably lower, at least half of what an elector organization is allowed to spend, simply to prevent the possibility that third-party advertisers are used as a way of kind of getting around the caps on elector organizations. I think there do need to be other controls looked at as well. I don’t have any particular suggestions to offer right now as to what those would be, but it is something that worries me. That’s what we see in the United States with very, very large spending by third parties that really skews electoral outcomes.

J. Kwan: Do there should be a differential rate for different positions — mayoralty versus council versus park board versus school board?

J. Bober: Yeah, the Green Party of Vancouver, in our policy last year, actually did create sort of a separate category for a mayoral candidate. They could spend up to 65 cents per eligible voter — again, looking at Naheed Nenshi as a template, basically a model. But again, I would actually say that even that is probably high, unless they’re running as an independent. If they have the backup of an electoral organization, we should probably look at having a lower limit for mayoralty campaigns because of the advantage that being in the electoral organization already confers.

J. Kwan: Just to clarify, do you think, then, there should be a differential rate for mayoralty candidates versus the council candidates versus the school board versus a park board candidate?

J. Tegart (Chair): Thank you very much, Jordan. Thanks for taking the time today.

Next we have Matthew Hartney. We have ten minutes for presentation and five minutes for questions. I’m trying really hard to keep us on track, but we’re running a little late. Over to you.

M. Hartney: Thank you, Madam Chair, the committee. First, my name is Matthew Hartney. Out of full disclosure, I ran in the 2014 local election as a councillor candidate in Burnaby. I’m currently not a member of any political party. That’s not why I’m here today. I’m here representing myself as an individual. I was a member of a coalition group at that time, supporting a mayor candidate.

What motivated me to be here today? I simplify it in the word “fairness,” which was sort of a foundation principle, I believe, in the task force, which I read back before 2010, and the idea of talking about two things: (1) single mothers and (2) Saskatchewan. It doesn’t have to be single mothers, necessarily. It could be a single parent. But what came to my mind….

A couple of things from the last election. I should provide that feedback first. Context in Burnaby on fairness. I would like to actually applaud their chief election office. They, for the first time ever, in my understanding, released a pamphlet — a simple document, unbiased, print, a photo and a bio of every candidate that was running — and that went to every household in the city of Burnaby.

That new initiative — certainly the idea of reach or marketing — couldn’t have been accomplished, obviously, for an independent-type candidate, and that certainly improved the fairness. I’d like to at least recognize that that took place. Those initiatives are happening.

I appreciate, through this process, that there’s also lots of criticism — or innately, because this committee was formed — and that there are issues to be addressed. But I think it’s fair to also recognize the relative context. We’re very fortunate to be in Canada. Even myself now, the empathy I have for others and understanding to put your name on a ballot. And the access — everyone has that right.

We are very fortunate, when you look globally, for our democratic system. Our local election process, especially, is probably one of the best in the world. That this committee is even formed and discussing this topic right now, on contribution and expense limits, is I think a testament to that as well. Kudos to you and the provincial staff and everyone else that’s working hard on this.

Then to single mothers. Out of the last election, I was very impressed with seeing a single mom run as an independent — a working mother, supporting two kids at home — in West Kelowna and ultimately be successful
[ Page 235 ]
and win. That in and of itself I think is very impressive — that that type of person put themselves out there, looking to be a community representative with nothing more than good values and vision for their community, getting out there and hearing from their neighborhood.

Then to also know that intentionally, she didn’t have much money to spend, so decided right from the start that she wasn’t going to spend anything. Her objective was zero dollars in expenses and, therefore, zero in contributions. She also didn’t feel good about asking people to give her money to buy signs or to do anything else. Other than word of mouth and discussion and a passion for representing her community, this wasn’t an issue for her, and she was successful.

Now, based on the things we’re talking about, when we take that same person and put her into Vancouver, Surrey or Burnaby, we can appreciate…. Most likely, we’ll say that she probably doesn’t have a chance at being successful with what we call elector organizations, or a lot of other factors.

I guess I just want us to maybe remind ourselves that this spending limit probably isn’t the only thing that would determine or impact fairness for many of these people who could be, possibly, great community representatives and could be either discouraged or encouraged to be involved in their community as a councillor.

Then to Saskatchewan. Through this, I understand, there have already been some good comparisons, and there’s lots of information already gathered and presented about comparing other current situations, other provincial legislation — limits either through the act of bylaw at the local level or at the provincial level through legislation.

When I look at Saskatchewan…. I know the topic’s come up about this per-capita limit and something for the larger cities that they should respect, which we’ve just heard on as well. In Saskatoon they have a bylaw for 75 cents for the mayor position.

Thinking about comparing now the city of Burnaby to the city of Saskatoon. I know some people initially roll their eyes as well about that. For me, they’re both cities I love. They’re both dear to my heart. They’re great cities. Really, the only difference I find when you talk about the two is that Burnaby has an advantage of being in the Metro area of GVRD. Saskatoon doesn’t have that advantage.

When you look at the numbers, Saskatoon is a larger city by population — about 250,000 plus. Burnaby is 230,000. They have a larger area of geographic responsibility — 170 square kilometres versus 90 for Burnaby. Not quite double, but close, and they’re expanding. That’s growing.

They have different growth challenges, as well, with not being part of a metro area. Their operating expenses in Saskatoon are not quite double but close. Their council manages $650 million. Burnaby is about $360 million. Size of council is larger in Saskatoon as a result — bit of a larger area, so ten councillors, one mayor. Eight councillors and one in Burnaby.

All that to say the city of Burnaby…. To be successful, the current mayor and councillor elector organization were in the press for spending close to $480,000. It depends how you want to look at this, because the elector organization skews it slightly, but under the mayor’s name was $480,000. The limit for the mayor in Saskatoon was $170,000, and he spent well below that.

Even if we were to say, “Let’s include the limit of all of council in Saskatoon,” their limit was about $340,000 total, if you took every single person running. So still well below the mark that the mayor and city of Burnaby needed or felt they were spending to be successful as incumbents.

These are all nice things to understand and to see for, I guess, scale or comparisons, and I think they are a good comparison. Ultimately, what I found is…. What was the result? What does the community get? Who is running? What was the idea of fairness? When you look at the ballot, is the fairness not just for the person running but fairness for the electorate?

Someone in Saskatoon, going to look to decide on who would be their community representative, was looking at a ballot with five names sometimes. I think the max they saw was seven for total mayor and councillor positions. In the city of Burnaby people were having to figure out over 24 names and then, of course — I’m intentionally excluding school board in that number — upwards of close to 50, if you were to consider school board candidates as well, on a single piece of paper.

The feedback I’ve been hearing is that’s certainly not fair to the electorate to understand that and to reasonably expect who they should vote for or how they get to understand these people. What we eventually get to, which I’m sure you’ve heard already, is the concept of a ward system.

When I talk with folks across Canada, what ends up happening is…. If wards are brought into discussing this topic, you can link the single mom in West Kelowna, who was successful as an independent, and she can reasonably compete in a variety of different scenarios of what you set for expense limits or contribution limits in a ward model in a major urban centre. It brings it back to the original intent of mayor and council. They are community representatives. They’re meant to be at that level, representing the people in their neighbourhood with the values and vision that they have for their community.

In the city of Saskatoon they ended up with what you would say is a diverse set — maybe not based on race or culture but based on political ideas, values and vision. If you look at who they ended up electing, their ten councillors plus mayor, they all have very different backgrounds of vision for the city, their campaign ideas, political backgrounds, their allegiances.
[ Page 236 ]

The city of Burnaby currently has every member representing one federal political party. I’m surprised most locals aren’t even aware of that. You have a major jurisdiction in Canada with a one-party rule system. It’s not just the mayor and council — also school board. Every single local elected official is not independent. They’re a member of one federal political party.

The idea of fairness in terms of representation over ideas to the community certainly seems to be lacking. There’s a gap that many people are concerned about and, therefore, also think about: “Well, I’m not sure even who to call. I don’t even know who my representative is. Why even vote?”

I guess I’m challenging the committee to think about, to tie in the conversation…. And I know it’s not in the mandate. I absolutely respect it, but I wanted to bring that to your attention — the idea of making an environment where that single mother could run in a major city in British Columbia.

M. Hunt: Considering you did very well on your expense limit…. You got 12,000 votes spending $500. I think you should get an award for that, because that’s obviously very good production on a price per vote.

Now let’s turn the discussion around and say…. Obviously, if you had more money, you would have spent it. Give us a number. What would you think would be a reasonable number for you to spend to actually get elected in Burnaby?

M. Hartney: I’ve said the number $20,000 would be more than sufficient. I said that, I think, in a previous written submission. The only reason I think that number is relevant is back to the original concept of this idea that it’s marketing. It’s reach. What are you trying to accomplish to get your message out there? That $20,000 would be to either buy a combination of newsprint, your marketing on billboards, radio, possible television type of thing.

That seemed to be a magic threshold where you could reasonably accomplish those things, understanding that technology is helping this as well. Technology is somewhat levelling the playing field and allowing people to do it. Even nowadays Internet advertising has a cost associated with it, and that can be fairly expensive. Certainly, I think that would be a reasonable number, I suppose, for a city the size of Burnaby, one of your largest municipalities in B.C.

J. Kwan: I’m just curious. Did you have a campaign team working with you — any staff that were hired on your campaign team? Or was this all just done by you?

M. Hartney: Good question. We were a coalition group, so by “staff” I mean we were the staff. A group of independent people who wanted to run as independents said: “We can’t run as independents.” You’re just not capable of competing in British Columbia cities that way — in the large cities. So they said: “Well, let’s just get together.”

M. Hartney: I believe the $542 is the marketing expense. That was my personal claim, but I donated $1,000 to the group as well. So I spent $540 out of my own pocket, but the coalition rules were that in order to join, we all put $1,000 to the coalition as well. That would have been reported under the Burnaby First coalition. They would have received “$1,000 from Matthew,” which is the right approach, in my understanding, to recording that.

So it was run…. To answer your question directly, there were no paid staff. There were only volunteers, and the volunteers were ourselves. And then we not just volunteered, but we also contributed our own cash to the electoral organization society that was formed.

J. Tegart (Chair): Thank you very much, Matthew. Thanks for taking the time today.

J. Tegart (Chair): Next we have IntegrityBC. Hi. Ten minutes for presentation; five minutes for questions.

D. Travis: When I heard the ten-minute part, I thought: “I couldn’t bear to listen to myself for ten minutes.” So I’m going to try to be a little shorter, because I’d like more opportunity if you want to ask questions. I think most of you are well aware of our organization’s position on many of these issues. I want to touch on some things that I haven’t heard today or seen discussed yet, and I’m on a bit of a road trip, which I’ll touch on as well.

There is a model in Canada for municipal parties and candidates running together with independent candidates that has an extensive track record and experience, and that’s in Quebec. In the province of Quebec, Montreal, Quebec City, Sherbrooke — all of these communities — mirror what you see in Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond in terms of having candidates that are independent, candidates affiliated with parties and also very, very stringent campaign spending limits.

What it doesn’t mirror in terms of B.C. is that virtually every province, as you know, has wards. I noticed in a document that there’s one community in B.C. that has wards. I think it should be hyphenated with a hybrid ward system, because they also have at-large councillor positions being elected in that city. But I’m going to be in
[ Page 237 ]
Montreal tomorrow, so if there is any desire on the part of the special committee for material to be brought back on any aspect of either Montreal politics or any of the communities outside of Montreal, such as Quebec City, I’m happy to bring it back for you.

There’s another model. I can certainly sense a bit of the dilemma that you’re facing in trying to come up with an actual number. Another way to approach it would be: what would be an overall fair expense limit for a municipal organization running a full slate of candidates in Vancouver and then work it backwards? I would agree with the Green Party — Ms. Kwan raised it earlier — that there should be some type of differential in the limit between a candidate running for mayor, a candidate running for council, a candidate running for school board and a candidate running for parks board.

One of the things about limits, and one of my concerns at IntegrityBC, is that sometimes the limits in B.C. aren’t really that tough. They’re almost…. Why do you even have limits?

I’ll give you the B.C. illustration in a moment, but one of the reasons limits are important, one of the reasons tough limits are important, is accessibility. Anyone should be able to sit at home, at their kitchen table in the morning, and say: “I can do this. I can run for public office.”

I just did some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and 38 percent of the councillors elected in November in cities with a population of over 100,000 are women. Now, those stats are thrown off a bit by Vancouver and Burnaby. What’s interesting, however, is it starts falling. The smaller the community, the less gender balance you see on city council.

D. Travis: Burnaby’s there too. But in Surrey, quite frankly, you push the number up, because you have such a tremendous balance in Surrey.

Oh, just to give you the stat: cities between 15,000 to 35,000 — 32.9 percent women.

In 2008 a young, unknown — relatively speaking — candidate decided to run for mayor of Port Coquitlam — Greg Moore. Greg Moore’s expenses — he won, as you all know — to get elected were, in 2008, $34,220. This last time out he got re-elected for the second time and only had to spend about $4,000 more to do it. But what’s more interesting is that in 2008 his donations were approximately the same as his expenses — $34,600. Last time out — $50,000. So if the limits are not tough, a challenger is going to look at that and say: “That’s a lot of money I have to raise.” You want to make certain that anyone sitting at a kitchen table can say: “I think I can do this.”

In terms of how much campaigns should cost in B.C., let me throw a couple of numbers at you. We’ve all talked about Winnipeg. I know I’ve seen it in your documents. In 2011 Rob Macdonald donated enough money to the Vancouver NPA to pay the full mandated limit for four candidates running for mayor of Winnipeg — both cities the same number of registered voters. Peter Armstrong? His donations to the NPA, and with his companies, probably could have covered two or three, from last time out.

I support what the Green Party mentioned in regards to annual reporting for electoral organizations.

In terms of third-party limits, I think the model, quite frankly, at the provincial level works, if applied respecting the fact that there are obviously far more municipalities in a riding than there are ridings in a province. I do believe it should take into account the number of registered voters in a city. The idea that it should be the same across the board is slightly problematic, because some communities, certainly at the provincial level, have a wide difference in the number of voters.

The other thing I would talk about, in terms of third-party limits, is the definition of election advertising. It is far too broad for third parties, in both the provincial act and what is proposed for the Local Government Act. Also, we would support other associations in B.C. You don’t really need to register until you start spending money, and there should be a point where you can spend up to, before you have to register.

I’m going to move away from my computer, because a few things came up during the presentations a moment ago that I’d like to touch on.

I personally think that having very, very strict rules and limits in place is actually going to be good for democracy in B.C. — good for local democracy. I’m going to tell you why.

In Toronto, at the mayoralty level for the last campaign, which John Tory won, between July 28 and the election in mid-October the candidates running for mayor had 50 all-candidates debates. I would be surprised, if we put all of the communities in Metro Vancouver together, that we could come up with 50 debates.

The funny thing about it is…. It happened in Montreal last time out. The tougher the limit — I hate to say this — the more you folk have to go out and meet people and talk to them and stop buying advertising and actually get into church halls, Rotary clubs, environmental organizations and meet the voters. Surprisingly enough, the media is going to come out and cover this. I’m definitely not pro-
[ Page 238 ]
posing 50 debates, but a candidate who goes through 50 debates does demonstrate to voters whether they have what it takes to be the mayor of Toronto.

The most remarkable aspect of why I think it’s good for democracy…. The voter turnout in the city of Toronto last time out bested the provincial turnout in B.C. in the last election. It was over 60 percent in Toronto. Every city that has limits in place has a higher voter turnout than every community in British Columbia except for that one little exception in the Interior.

Now, in addition to the Quebec model for elector organizations, there is also possibly — I was thinking about it today, looking at the legislation — looking at the federal act as another potential model. That’s not in terms of the dollar limits, but they have a very separate category for limits for parties, based on how many candidates you run and how many voters there are in those ridings, and then a limit for candidates. So in essence, you have two possible models to examine.

I had, as you know, a few problems with some of the documents that were prepared for this committee. I’m still a little baffled as to why you keep talking about per-resident per-capita when all of the legislation in every other province and at the federal level talks about per-elector. I know there must be a reason for this, and it must be somewhere, but I haven’t been able to find it. I would really love to know how that came about.

I also kind of chuckled over this use of the term “the contenders” — I almost thought it was a Hollywood movie — in examination of the 2008 data. I think you’re going to have a better chance at setting limits once the 2014 data is looked at, but I don’t think it can be just looked at from the perspective of the contenders. I think you’re going to have to choose some very selected communities across British Columbia and look not only at the spending limit but what the composition of the race was. How many were incumbents? How many of the incumbents got re-elected? How much did they spend compared to challengers? It may be a bigger task, but it might give you a better answer at the end of the day.

You kind of touched on it a little bit. A lot of the focus down here in the Lower Mainland always seems to gravitate towards the electoral organizations. One of the challenges we’re going to have when we’re looking at those limits is around that fairness for people who aren’t….

You touched on it a bit, but what are your thoughts, then, around how we would look at this as a committee — around the limits and the differential between whether you’re running as an independent or part of an organization? You talked about Vancouver picking something and then working backwards. How do we find that fairness now for a single mother who wants to run and who’s not part of that organization? Should she have a bigger spending cap because she’s not going to have the ability with an entire group?

D. Travis: No. In Montreal there’s no differential. I think Montreal may have had half a dozen municipal parties running in the last election, all with different numbers of candidates. None of them had a full slate. There are, I think — get ready for this; it’s the last thing we need in Vancouver — about 120 positions on Montreal city council because they have boroughs. The structure is worked so that if you’re a party running five candidates and, for the sake of argument, the limit is ten cents per voter per candidate, you have 50 cents that you can spend because you’re running five candidates. Someone running just by themselves, ten cents.

M. Bernier: Do you not feel that there’d be the opportunity, then, for somebody to run an artificial candidate just to get that extra ten cents? They’ll throw a name on, whether it’s a credible candidate or not, just to increase their spending limit?

D. Travis: I think in politics there’s an incredible opportunity for many people to do many things to try to get an edge. I’ll give you a really good example. The B.C. Election Act. You and I, tonight — it might not go over well with the caucus, though, on your side — could form a political party. We don’t need anyone else in this room to do it, just you and me. We don’t have to run a candidate, but if we choose to run a candidate — just one — we get to spend $4.3 million as long as we don’t spend it in the riding that candidate is running in.

B.C. has the only election act in Canada where the spending limit does not vary based on the number of candidates that you have. And it came up at the B.C. Court of Appeal reference.

The answer to your question is yes. I don’t think this committee — I don’t think anyone — is ever going to stop somebody trying to find a way to play the system.

S. Sullivan: I was surprised that you would bring up the Quebec model. Do they have spending limits?

S. Sullivan: I try to only watch French TV. What I’m watching constantly is the Charbonneau Commission, and we’ve had three mayors in Quebec cities forced to resign for corruption. It seems like corruption is a pretty big part of municipal politics. I haven’t seen anything like that in British Columbia, but if that’s what happens with the spending limits, that has me concerned.

Also, you brought up the issue of the Toronto mayor. Was Rob Ford elected under spending limits?
[ Page 239 ]

I think both of your illustrations are, quite frankly, irrelevant to the issue at hand. The spending limits for elections in Quebec or Ontario or Manitoba have nothing to do with the fact that there are three — or possibly half a dozen, frankly — mayors in Quebec that are currently facing criminal charges. It’s not the spending limits that resulted in the corruption. It was the brown envelopes getting passed at restaurants that resulted in the corruption. It had nothing to do with the spending limits.

S. Sullivan: But clearly, though, the spending limits didn’t prevent what we’re hoping it does. Prevent this….

D. Travis: No, you’re not here hoping to prevent corruption in B.C. politics. You’re here, based on what the Union of B.C. Municipalities said, to accelerate and encourage accessibility so that candidates from any income sector, of any gender, of any ethnic origin, have as much opportunity to seek public office as you would — and did, with the NPA.

But the idea of making that extension in Quebec, quite frankly — far off the mark. As for Rob Ford, voters choose who they want to choose.

M. Hunt: Actually, I have to admit I was going down very similar lines to Sam. We’ve had at least two very colourful mayors in Toronto over the last number of years, who you said….

M. Hunt: Well, you know, I’m not going too far back. But when you say that after 50 all-candidates meetings you can tell whether they can be the mayor or not, I would question that.

Anyhow, be that as it may, one of the accusations within the local government was corruption concerning donations for elections, so I don’t think you can dismiss it quite as easily as you have tried to slip out of that one. But we’ll leave it there.

M. Hunt: My real question is this. You used the example of Port Coquitlam, where the eligible voters are in the order of 38,000 and the expenses for the mayor in the order of $38,000. Therefore, you’re leaning towards agreeing with the chamber of commerce from Cranbrook that’s saying: “Yeah, for the smaller communities, that sort of thing, around a dollar a voter makes sense.” But you’re also saying in yours that you were down at 65 cents or something else in the larger communities. So you’re seeing a variable rate that rolls…. The number gets smaller the larger the place gets.

D. Travis: As it does under the federal act and other provincial legislation across Canada.

I’m not going to let you off the hook for the Quebec comment. You mentioned that somehow this was connected to political donations, and frankly, you’re partly right. The only reason they ever got caught was because all of those campaign donations had to be disclosed.

A friend of mine in B.C. once said: “I don’t think the Mafia writes cheques out to political parties when they want to give them money.” Surprisingly enough, the Charbonneau Commission had so many cheques from the Mafia to political parties that were getting disclosed on the legislation, and it was discovered because of a journalist at La Presse and a journalist at the Montreal Gazette who started putting two and two together.

If that act did not require full disclosure, including address, and did not exist, I can’t tell you that the corruption wouldn’t be going on today still.

J. Tegart (Chair): Okay. I’ve got a question from Selina, and we’re going to wrap it up.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Dermod. It was a very good presentation. I quite enjoyed it.

My question has to do with third-party spending. Given your presentation was so robust….

D. Travis: You’re going to give me a bad reputation on that side of the table.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I’d like to hear what your thoughts are because you spend so much of your time thinking about this and really paying attention to this idea of fairness and what it would look like. I’d like to hear your thoughts about how third-party spending limits would fit in relation to all the other limits that we’re looking at.

D. Travis: I would be thinking in the 5 to 15 percent range of any per-elector limit that you set. I don’t believe that third parties should have the capacity to spend freely as drunken sailors in local elections — or provincial or federal elections, for that matter. I’m almost scared to say it, but in Quebec third parties aren’t allowed to spend a penny, and they’re not allowed to campaign at all. That’s the other extreme, and I wouldn’t go to that extreme.

A lot of it has to do, quite frankly, with that definition
[ Page 240 ]
of advertising. Many groups feel it’s not worth participating because the definition is so broad that we could get trapped overspending the limit even though we didn’t say vote for anyone.

J. Skeet: I would like to begin by thanking the provincial government and the committee for the opportunity to address you on such a critical issue for our democracy. My presentation is perhaps going to be quite different from some of the others that you’ve heard. I would like to speak very much as a resident and talk about the impact of the current system on people such as myself and the townhouse community where I live.

Just to give you a bit of background. As you know, my name is Jillian Skeet. I’m a national and international affairs consultant. I was born and bred in British Columbia, but I spent many years working with organizations at the United Nations in Geneva and New York. I also worked in the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa. I have been back in Vancouver and have lived at Marine Gardens for the last 12 years.

While I was in the parliament, I witnessed firsthand how big corporate and union money corrupts democracy. I regularly examined the listings of the corporate donations, and I would match them against the legislation that was up before parliament. Prior to major bills being passed, like the bill that extended patent protection for pharmaceutical companies for 20 years, all the big pharmaceutical companies donated enormous sums of money to the party in power. If an election was looming, they would cover their bases and donate to both of the two leading parties. The same was true when the telecommunications legislation went through that privatized that industry.

Here in Vancouver, as residents we witness a similar kind of impact on our democratic process almost daily. It’s no secret that the two major parties, Vision Vancouver and the NPA, are funded in large part by big developers. As a result, our politicians are beholden to the developers rather than to the voters that they were elected to serve.

Public open houses and consultations are still being held, but the projects that are put forward by the developers are almost always approved as presented, regardless of the amount of opposition from residents. There actually seems now to be almost a converse relationship between the loss of democracy and the proliferation of public open houses and consultations. Our city council boasts about an unprecedented level of public consultation, and I would agree with that. But what they fail to state is that in most cases the vast number of residents have been opposed to the project as it was being presented.

For the last six years I have attended all the open houses and public consultations in my neighbourhood, Marpole, in Vancouver. Time after time, the vast majority of residents stated that they weren’t opposed to some form of development, but often they had a problem with what was being presented — the scope, the sheer height of many of the projects.

My own townhouse complex now has a massive development with two towers, around 30 storeys, that are under construction just metres from our back windows. Directly across the street we have a massive 36-storey skyscraper at the marine gateway. Our affordable townhouse community and its garden of wonderful trees are going to be demolished and replaced by more skyscrapers. All of these projects met great opposition from local residents.

The developer that received approval to demolish Marine Gardens donated $66,800 to Vision Vancouver. PCI, which is building the massive marine gateway project right across the street from us, gave Vision $40,000 under two different names, and Intracorp, which is building the skyscrapers right behind our back windows, gave Vision $15,000.

Bob Rennie, the so-called Condo King, held a $25,000-a-plate fundraiser for Vision just months before the last election and immediately before the Vision council approved 14 new skyscrapers for Oakridge. This was a last-minute change from what residents had been presented with over a period of years, and it met with massive and overwhelming public opposition. Basically, every major developer in Vancouver right now contributed to the pot of over $2 million that Vision Vancouver received leading up to the last election.

The impact is not just in the creation of all these new structures. Where citizens now cannot even fight a parking ticket in the city of Vancouver that they feel is unfair or for which there are extenuating circumstances, developers receive no penalties for violating noise bylaws, for working before or after set hours or for exceeding noise limits. Several of the residents at Marine Gardens have experienced hearing loss from concrete drilling 30 feet from our back windows. One neighbour was told to stop calling the city because they had too many complaints about the same thing.

The truth is that no one in our society, especially not those in business, gives money without expecting something in return, and both sides know this. Our political parties and our politicians are being bought by the highest bidders. If an election were held tomorrow and you told these same donors that the money would go into a centralized pot and would be shared fairly — perhaps according to votes, as is now done federally — I’m sure that many, if not all, of these donors would disappear. To restore democracy, we must bring in similar rules to those that now exist at the federal level.

A ban on donations over, say, $500 should not pertain solely to the official campaign period, particularly
[ Page 241 ]
not when we have set election dates. Donors will simply ensure that they make their hefty donations prior to the campaign. There should be strict annual donation limits imposed.

We should never have allowed the current scenario to exist. By allowing unlimited donations, we have opened a door to corruption. The damage that has been done to our democracy and to our city is irreparable in too many cases. It is truly tragic.

Although I know this is beyond the scope of your current work, I would also like to put in a plug for reforming our electoral system. I hope you will include in your report a note that in addition to strict electoral financing laws, to protect and restore democracy, we desperately need a municipal ward system and proportional representation.

Someone said to me recently: “Why did everybody re-elect Vision Vancouver if you have so many complaints?” In actual fact, we didn’t. Our dysfunctional electoral system did. Vision Vancouver received just over 40 percent of the votes cast, and only 44 percent of Vancouverites voted. Basically, they were elected with one out of five eligible voters in Vancouver voting for them.

I won’t go into a lot of detail. I’m sure I’m close to the end of my ten minutes. I just urge you to bring in the strictest possible limits on electoral campaign financing. We desperately need it. It’s absolutely vital to our democracy.

M. Hunt: Then you have to give us a number, because that is our mandate. What would your number be?

J. Skeet: Well, I think federally the limit is $1,000 or $1,100 that can be donated to each candidate.

M. Hunt: No. We’re expense limits. Expense limits, for example, provincially were at $73,000, give or take some change, during the election period and $73,000 before, so our total limit would be $146,000 for each one of us running. That’s the provincial limit. That’s a very large number.

M. Hunt: You’ve heard a lot of the discussion here today already. What would your relative number be?

J. Skeet: Well, I think at the municipal level it should be quite low. Someone suggested that they could have run a campaign for $20,000. I think that would be a good number. I agree with previous speakers that accessibility is an important issue to consider. That single mom should have the same chance to run for elected office as a wealthy businessman.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. It sort of came back to a conversation that others have brought forward to this committee. Even though the committee is only mandated to look at expense limits, I appreciate you talking about donation limits and that that’s an important aspect.

Given that we aren’t tasked with doing donation limits, is that something you think ought to be looked at in the future?

J. Skeet: Absolutely. That was my misunderstanding, and I apologize. I didn’t realize that you were not actually covering that.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): You’re not alone in that. A lot of people have thought that and have been asking for that, so thank you very much.

D. Huntley: Thank you very much for this opportunity. I’ll start off with our recommendation, and I’ll tell you who I am.

The recommendation is that expenses be limited to donations by eligible individual voters in that election only and that the amount for each donation should be limited to an amount that almost anyone can afford. This is a recommendation about expense limits. The limit is what the person can get in donations.

My name is David Huntley. I represent the Burnaby–New Westminster Citizens for Voting Equality. We’re a group of five people. We’ve been around for several years.

I’m a professor emeritus in the department of physics at Simon Fraser University. The other members of our group are alumni of the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform in 2004. We have two people who are professionals in high-tech industry, and we have one who is a member of the executive of Unifor.

Our brief to you is about fairness to voters. The principle is that each voter should have equal legislative power. Each voter should be able to have the same influence on the outcome of an election. This comes back to something that we find in the Canadian constitution, and I’ll quote it. “Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons,” etc. “Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law.”

It’s individual voters that matter, and these are the people that the legislation has to be fair to. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin stated in a 1991 Supreme Court of Canada case, which is very well known: “What are the conditions of effective representation? The first is relative parity of voting power.”
[ Page 242 ]

This is where we come from. We want every voter to have to be able to have the same influence over the outcome of elections. As you’ve seen from other speakers, we’re nowhere near that at the moment.

How would this work? A candidate would be able to call on friends and others for donations. We’re suggesting that the limit of the donation of any individual voter be something in the order of $50 to $100. The reason for this is that we don’t want to exclude anyone. We want the make the number an amount that just about anyone can afford, whether it’s a single woman in Kelowna or some man who’s got hundreds of millions of dollars. They should be on equal terms.

I don’t know. You don’t know me. Most people don’t know me, but I reckon I could quite easily raise $2,000 at $100 each with 20 people or so that I know and I think would be willing to support me if I ran. If I pushed it and got a little group of people together to help, we could probably get more. I don’t think that’s impossible.

What I would very much like to see you people do is, somehow or other, get into your recommendation that we desperately need donation limits — and I’m not the only saying it; previous speakers have told you the same thing — and that donations should be coming from individuals. They should not be coming from unions or corporations. You see this distorts our society and gives people something that is not what they want. This is one of the reasons why a lot of people turn off on politics. We want more people to get engaged and know what they’re voting for.

D. Huntley: So expense limits equal the donation limits. It might be necessary to put in overall expense limits, as I think is what you’re considering, but my guess is that it probably wouldn’t be necessary.

M. Hunt: In your presentation here you’re saying that $10,000 should be sufficient to contact each household at least once during a campaign — in what sized municipality?

M. Hunt: How are you distributing that for $10,000? Have you ever tried to distribute to every household in Burnaby for $10,000?

D. Huntley: I’ve tried distributing in Burnaby for nothing. I’ve distributed a fair number of pamphlets myself and have had other people do it for me. You’re making it very commercial, and I’m not, I guess. You’re talking about….

M. Hunt: Well, I’m just asking the question, and you get to give me your opinion as the answer. That’s what you’re doing.

C. Henschel: Hi, guys. I’m Craig Henschel. I’m from Burnaby. I presented to you guys a few months ago.

I’ve got your preliminary report and your recommendation. I thought there would be more than one, but there is more than one principle that you’re recommending that you used to set the expense limits. I would like to recommend that you add a few.

The first is that I think that expense limits should make the electoral system corruption-resistant, kind of like a spray-on expense limit. If the expense limit is very high, then there is going to be more of an opportunity for corruption. For example, if there’s a $500,000 expense limit in some place and one person can donate that entirely, that could be a problem if you can only usually get 500 people to donate $100 each. If one person can donate a lot of money, with high expense limits, that leaves a larger possibility of corruption. The expense limits can have an effect on corruption, so when you’re thinking about what level to set, that should be one of the considerations.

Another principle which I think is important is campaign contribution limits. Obviously, if the one person can contribute an awful lot, then they’re taking away equality from the people who can’t. The expense limit — I mean, David Huntley just talked about that — affects the equality of voters. That’s important.

There’s also — and this is where it gets tricky — if you’ve got low expense limits and you’ve got high third-party limits, then all of a sudden you’ve sort of taken electoral corruption into a different area, where someone in a third party can affect an election more than voters. The expense limits are set down. Good. Third-party expense limits are set high. That corrupts the electoral system.

The fourth is charter compliancy. Section 15 is about equality, which David has talked about. But there’s also the ability to run, which is section 3. We’re guaranteed the right to be able to run for election. If you can’t win because it costs so much to run, then I don’t know if we actually have a right to run. If it costs $100,000 to win an election and a normal person can only raise $10,000 or $15,000, then I don’t know if a normal person has an effective right to run.

When you’re setting the expense limits, anybody should be able to say: “Okay, I want to run. I’ve got some money, not a lot. I’m an independent person. I should be able to win, and it’s going to cost this much money.” That
[ Page 243 ]
amount of money should be affordable to most people — not everybody, but most people. So it’s got to be Charter-compliant — the expense limits. You’ve got to take that into consideration.

These are principles which I think you should include in your recommendation about what you’re going to look at. The expense limits should be corruption-resistant. They should take into account campaign contribution limits. If there are no limits on campaign contributions, then you may set a very different kind of expense limit.

Those two things work hand in hand — kind of like in the Senate, Duffy’s thing right now. He’s being charged with taking a bribe, and the person who gave the $90,000 is not charged with giving a bribe. They’re two parts of the same thing. So you can’t talk about expense…. It’s a crazy analogy, sorry. But you can’t do one without the other. They’re linked. You’ve got to look at third-party limits when you’re dealing with expense limits, and you’ve got to look at Charter compliance.

You also…. And this is the overall thing. The limit has to be effective. If it’s too high, it has no effect on anything. Once you get lower and lower and lower, then it starts having some kind of results and means something. So you can make a completely ineffective expense limit. That’s very easy to do. What purpose is that solving? Effectiveness is not one of your recommendation principles.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for coming out again and presenting to us.

I like how you sort of categorized it, and I want to just ask you a question about…. The mandate of the committee is to only look at expenses. There has been some request to ask the Legislature to have us look at donations, because we certainly heard that a lot, but that didn’t go anywhere. Given that this is our mandate — to only look at expenses — what’s your concern about what could possibly happen if we don’t get to look at the other side, which is the donation limits?

C. Henschel: I think to put fairness into the system, you’re going to have to err on the side of a lower expense limit. You’re going to have to…. If you cannot relate expense limits to donation limits and contribution limits, then I think you’ve got to really tamp down on the amount people spend so that those other factors don’t come into it. If you’ve got a $500,000 expense limit, then that opens the window for corruption. If you’ve got a $100,000 limit, then the corruption possibilities are much less. If you’ve got donation limits, then it goes away a lot more.

When you’re not allowed to examine or work with contribution limits, then you’ve got to look at sort of the worst-case scenario of what we’ve got, which is appalling. I mean, someone donated almost $1 million a few years ago in Vancouver and this time over $400,000. That’s crazy. That means that one person is having the effect, in an election, of the rest of the population. It doesn’t make any sense.

M. Hunt: Just to put your comments in context, I would surmise — I haven’t proved this, but I think I could — that the majority of municipally elected officials in British Columbia spent less than $500 to get elected. We’re looking at British Columbia, and that’s the British Columbia context.

Now, having said that, you have a difference because you’re in the third-largest municipality. Obviously, this is a size-of-municipality issue much more than it is a Charter right and freedom type of thing because the majority are out of that.

So the question, which you’ve heard me ask many times before — and I’ll ask once again of you — is: since our mandate is to come up with numbers, what kind of number, in your context of Burnaby…? Or you can do it in New Westminster, roll over to Vancouver. We’ve had lots from Vancouver, so if we can keep it on the outside of Vancouver, since you’re outside of Vancouver. What kind of number do you think is a reasonable number?

C. Henschel: Well, in Burnaby I understand that…. It wasn’t this last municipal election but the election before. I don’t think I’ve seen the most recent expenses, but the mayor spent zero money, apparently.

C. Henschel: His organization spent money, but he spent nothing. So people without an organization — that poses a difficulty for them.

I think that in the discussion of an election, in the negotiation with voters and the comparative procedure that the voters have to do to see who to vote for, I don’t think you need a lot of money. If you look at what we get in the mail — I’m just talking about Burnaby, because it’s a large city — we get a few glossy things. There are a lot of lawn signs that go up. The most useful thing was a document that the city put out, with all the candidates on it. That was good. And we’ve got a couple of good local newspapers.

I don’t think you actually need a lot of money to run, to get your message out there. I think an expense limit could be…. For running, it could be $5,000 or $10,000. That may seem extremely low to you in a city the size of Burnaby. I’m pretty sure you guys in your…. What you’ve been asked
[ Page 244 ]
to do is to look at different-sized municipalities and have different recommendations for them. In a Burnaby-sized municipality, I think $5,000 is probably good enough to run, for advertising. There may be campaign office kinds of expenses, which you guys would know more about than I do. But to communicate with voters….

I think you’ve got to go to section 3 of the Charter and say: “You have a right to run.” Every voter has a right to run. That means you’ve got to have an equal chance of winning, based on your ideas rather than on how much money you’ve got — or how much money someone else is going to put into a campaign to skew the result.

L. Reimer: Thank you very much for your presentation. Our work here on this committee is very much an extension of the work that the Local Government Elections Task Force did back in their report of 2010. It’s kind of the final recommendation from that report which we felt needed some additional work. That’s why we’re here today.

My question is in relation to third-party advertising and the comments that you had made around that. Are you thinking that a good expense limit for third-party advertising would be a certain percentage, as an example, of a candidate’s limit? What are your thoughts on that?

C. Henschel: I think third-party advertisers, if they’re voters, should be able to have the voters campaign contribution limit — something in that range. You shouldn’t be able to overwhelm the rest of the election based on a wealthy person’s or a corporate interest. I think it’s important to add that principle, of figuring out expense limits with respect to third-party advertising limits. If you set the expense limits low and don’t have a limit on third-party expenses, then you just open the door to, basically, an undemocratic election.

I think elections need to be about…. At this one point in our democracy, one point in time, we have to think of every voter being equal and having an equal say in determining who is going to write the laws and policies which are going to affect them. The rest of the time, it’s an all-out brawl for influence and getting your point across and having a good discussion, a fulsome discussion. But on that one day, election day, and the campaign freeze before it, we need to be looking at voter equality — section 15 of the Charter — and candidate equality, section 3 of the Charter. We can do all kinds of other stuff outside of that period.

Third-party advertising. You guys are all elected. Who knows what a third-party advertiser can do to your campaigns, your next campaigns? Who knows what a corrupt individual — how their corruption can influence how everyone feels about you guys? You guys are all doing good work, important work, for the province, but if you don’t think about making the campaign spending limits corruption-resistant, then a lot of bad public opinion can come back on all politicians.

In Quebec there are very few politicians who are corrupt. I mean, there are enough, but most of the officials and most of the politicians, I think, are probably absolutely straight up and fine. But you’ve got to set the rules to keep people out of trouble. We are seeing in Ottawa where the Senate expenses policy was not set out clearly, and the entire Senate, the entire government of Canada, takes a hit from that. It’s your job to keep people out of trouble, keep everyone out of trouble.

C. Henschel: Well, I don’t think it’s all that hard. You know, that’s what we’re asking for.

M. Jamieson: I’m Marion Jamieson. I’m actually speaking for the Upper Kitsilano Residents Association, but I guess I didn’t manage to get everybody on side with my presentation until it was too late. But I am speaking for a larger group.

We very much appreciate the fact that the province has set up this committee and the dedication of the committee members, and we trust that the recommendations and the report that will be coming out of the committee will be implemented well before the 2018 local elections and not just shelved.

As Mark Hanna, called the kingmaker of the U.S. Republican Party, said famously: “There are only two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can’t remember what the second one is.” As we all know, money is the most important thing in politics at this stage, and hopefully, your work will turn that around.

The cartoon that I have included in your presentation was done by a local cartoonist. I think he’s really put his finger on the public pulse and captured the public mood about election spending. He won an award for this cartoon, so I think that shows that there is a kind of wider agreement with his point of view.

I don’t think I really need to argue too strongly that there need to be limits on election expenses. Certainly, the people that preceded me have argued that very well. We all know what the numbers are, that Vision won a majority by spending $3.3 million. I think COPE…. I couldn’t find the number, but it was about $50,000, and they elected no representatives to Vancouver city council or park board or school board. And Green candidate Adriane Carr, who got the most votes of any candidate,
[ Page 245 ]
only raised about $80,000 in her campaign, which shows that although there are a lot of people who supported that candidate, obviously they’re not people with deep pockets.

It seems clear to a lot of people, and I would number myself among them, that the party with the best PR is winning elections, not the party with the best candidates, and that parties can buy the signs, the mailouts, the phone callers and the media ads. The role of election expenses is also skewing media reporting. Instead of being the historic watchdogs of the political process, the evidence suggests that electoral reporting is being influenced by advertising revenue from electoral organizations and successful political parties.

Clearly, we need expense limits that will restore elections based on merit, not the amount of money that a party has. More importantly, we need to restore the appearance of fairness. Other speakers have referred to this — the fact that, as this cartoon suggests, there’s just the perception out there among a lot of electors that it’s not a fair process, so why bother voting? It’s not just the reality of the numbers; it’s the appearance, and that can have a critical influence on our democracy, where there isn’t the sense that the governing parties have legitimacy.

Our recommendations are that there should be stringent, significant limits on election spending, on expenses. I don’t think I’m going to be recommending numbers as low as some of the other speakers, though my initial idea was that the spending limits should be very, very low. Realistically, in a city like Vancouver, I’m going to be recommending a little bit higher than other speakers have.

We’re suggesting that this should be based on per eligible voter: 25 cents per eligible voter. In Vancouver this would mean that each electoral organization would spend a maximum of $103,994. This would be applied to the entire electoral organization — all candidates and the organization combined. This 25 cents per eligible voter would be further broken down too, so that all the money couldn’t go to one candidate, one star or other — seven cents for mayoralty candidates, five cents per city councillor and three cents for other candidates. This would apply to both independents and electoral organizations.

I did make a recommendation for the campaign period — I don’t think that’s part of your mandate; I don’t know — and I’m not absolutely sure about this recommendation, of starting the clock 45 days before the election and not allowing candidates to solicit donations or incur campaign expenditures outside that period.

I’m also suggesting that in order to be eligible for donations — and I know, again, that donations are not your purview, but I’m throwing this out anyway — candidates should reside in the community in which they are seeking office.

The corporate and union donation issue. I know it’s not your mandate, but again, you’ve been asking people whether or not they feel strongly about this. We certainly do feel strongly that democracy can really only be restored — in Vancouver, certainly; I’m not that aware of other jurisdictions — as long as individual and corporate donations can be limited. I think somebody already referred to the famous $900,000 donation that was made, and another one of $400,000. Unless corporate and union donations and individual donations are limited, this will still leave a real or apparent obligation to powerful, wealthy special interests.

Going further, limits to individual donations of $300, as is done in Montreal, would be an appropriate limit. A ban on corporate and union donations altogether, as in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg. Also, the rule that a donor must reside in the same city as the candidate to whom they are contributing, as in Quebec.

Third-party advertisers. Again, my suggested limit is a bit higher than other speakers were suggesting. It could be about $5,000 per third-party organization, or again, it could be set on the basis of the number of eligible voters but quite a bit lower than for candidates.

The whole issue of third-party sponsorship and third-party advertising is a thorny one for us small organizations that have a minute budget. The registration requirement for third-party advertisers should be revised, and a minimum expense level of $500 be set before registration is required.

An organization like mine has an annual budget of maybe $300, yet we are restricted from putting out comments on candidates’ positions and suggesting how these would affect our community. I feel strongly that that should be removed, that only advertising that supports or opposes a candidate and advocacy advertising should be limited — not just raising an issue, such as most third-party small organizations like ourselves would be.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for taking the time to do all that research that you did. I think that’s admirable. Most groups won’t have put that much thought and energy into it.

I do have a question about the expense limits and how you’ve structured it — just more clarification. You’re suggesting a maximum expense limit of 25 cents per eligible voter for an elector organization, and then on top of that candidates will get an additional seven cents for mayoral?

M. Jamieson: No, that would be breaking down that amount among the different candidates so that if you had $103,000, you wouldn’t put that all into one candidate, for instance — just so that it would avoid the possibility of skewing the results by putting all that money behind one candidate rather than a slate of candidates.
[ Page 246 ]

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I’m still not 100 percent sure. Let me just ask the question so that I make sure I understand it. If someone is running as an individual — let’s say, city council — they have a five-cent limit per eligible voter.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Right. If they’re running on a slate — so they’re running as part of an elector organization — they get the five-cent limit as the candidate, and then the elector organization can run its campaign for their entire group with 25 cents.

M. Jamieson: Yeah. I understand that this would not benefit independents. It would benefit parties more. I guess that’s….

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): I just wanted to make sure I understood that that’s what you were looking at, so thank you very much.

M. Hunt: A question to you on third-party advertisers. You picked a number at $5,000. What do you think that they could actually do for that $5,000? I’m just trying to get an idea of the order of magnitude that you’re thinking.

M. Jamieson: I can’t really say exactly what you can do for $5,000. All I’m doing is trying to put a limit on third-party spending. Another alternative would be to just put a cent limit per eligible voter, like five cents or something, whatever that would come out to.

M. Jamieson: Right. Okay. That’s why, I guess, I went for a limit of $5,000 rather than allowing any third-party advertiser to be able to put $25,000 in, because that seems like a large amount. I mean, other people have suggested that for an entire elector organization.

M. Hunt: Well, I know. Just, again, trying to shift to the example I understand, which is Surrey — I have to apologize for that — in one of our local papers a full-page ad is going to be about $2,500. That would be two full-page ads in one of our local newspapers, and we have two of them. If you did one in both, that would be the third-party expense.

M. Jamieson: Well, I mean, that sounds like a good thing to me. The fact that you could only put….

M. Hunt: Well, no, no. That’s what I’m trying to get from you. Is that the ballpark of what you’re thinking?

M. Jamieson: That is about the ballpark. As I said about the media, they couldn’t look forward to a constant stream of advertising revenue from your party and then likely slant editorial and news coverage to support that advertising revenue.

M. Hunt: Would it be reasonable to say that your thoughts are that for smaller communities it would scale back according to size so that, again, it would be in the ballpark of, say, a full-page ad in the local newspaper type of thing? I’m just trying to catch your….

M. Jamieson: I don’t know. I mean, I understand that for a committee like yourselves, you’re looking at every community from tiny to huge, so to have any kind of a sliding thing like that would be really difficult to come up with. Possibly….

I’m just putting it out there that there have to be, as others have said, really strong limits on third-party advertising. For a city like Vancouver, about $5,000 seems right. For a really small community, maybe it would be $500. But I don’t quite know how you would come up with that kind of a sliding scale.

M. Hunt: That’s why I tried to use the illustration of a full-page ad in a local paper versus the Vancouver Sun or Province.

R. Nantel: I’m just here as an average citizen. I can give you a little bit of perspective. Back in the ’90s I ran as an independent candidate in the Vancouver civic election.

You probably have had a lot of great comments made to you already. I like voting for people, as opposed to parties. I think that presently the status quo is not acceptable.

Right now it was clearly shown…. I think there was an article in the Province that the party that civically…. We’re talking about large municipalities, especially, here. I think the dynamics might be different for smaller towns and smaller regions in British Columbia where people are known and the filter isn’t there — the media and the spin and everything that we see in Vancouver. I think that in Vancouver the clear correlation is that the party that spent the most money won, throughout all the Lower Mainland municipalities.

I think that is a disservice to democracy. I think what’s really happening here is that the spin — “We’re the green-
[ Page 247 ]
est” or “We’re the most ecological” or “We represent bike lanes” and all this…. All these superficial issues end up defining the outcome of elections, and I think that a lot of more important things, like land use and how politicians are or are not responsive to the citizens and individual neighbourhoods in Vancouver, are being missed, clearly.

Again, in Vancouver I think the newspapers recently reported that essentially $6.5 million was spent on the last civic election. Again, the party that spent the most won. That was Vision Vancouver. Right now in Vancouver…. Vision basically spent the most, but they only represent 30 percent of the population of the people that voted for them. There was 70 percent of the population that, for various other reasons, got split up and voted for other people. I think we’re in this problem right now: “Are they representative of the city as a whole?”

I’m in favour of anything that basically limits the big money, especially corporate and union donations, to political civic parties. Maybe the dynamics are different on provincial and federal terms. I think the federal guidelines in all this are quite stringent as to who can donate and the conditions and everything like this. But I think that in Vancouver, we’ve got a really big problem. I can’t speak about the other municipalities, but in Vancouver for the last ten or 15 years I’ve really seen a slip in democracy in the city.

When people go to public hearings, basically the public is ignored. I guess the other thing, the perception out there…. A lot of my neighbours wouldn’t even come here today. They think that this whole debate about election reform and campaign spending and all that…. How long has it been going on? For five years? Even more than that, I think. We talk, and we study things to death, and nothing really happens.

I hope this is all coming before you and something dynamic will come out of this that will give faith back to the common people that are in the city and don’t vote. A lot of people, close to 60 percent of the population, don’t vote. Rhetorically, why? I think they just feel alienated from the big-party politics that are happening in Vancouver.

Right now we have 150 names on the ballots. We have campaigns phoning us up and telling us: “Hey, don’t worry about who you vote for. Just vote for this party or this party.” The debate is limited about who we get to represent us and how we have good representative politics in Vancouver as a whole.

I think you’ve had some other good comments about third-party advertisers. For me, I think another point I’d like to bring up to you right now…. I know the case is before the courts. I’m one of the five petitioners that have basically launched the petition based on the Vancouver Charter against CUPE’s recent donation to the party in power in Vancouver right now, Vision Vancouver, for accepting money under what we thought were questionable circumstances about…. And there was a conflict.

I won’t go into it any further than that, other than to say the point is, again, when the perception is there that money is going towards a political party and some deal may or may not be made behind closed doors, that basically comes back to haunt the population, or the electorate, as a whole. That is a big problem in today’s democracy.

I think whatever you do, elections could be fought on a lot less money, on a lot more debate about real issues. We don’t need to have this kind of money being spent on civic municipal politics, right? Certain people would disagree with me here. I think the Toronto model, where parties are actually illegal, I believe, in their municipal elections, would really serve.

I mean, there are all sorts of different things that can be done, but right now the status quo is not acceptable, and I hope that in your infinite wisdom you will report back to the government and that you’ll come up with some really good ideas. Again, I think a lot of people are turned off by the status quo.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for making a presentation and for joining us. You certainly made it loud and clear that you have some serious concerns about where money comes from for these elections.

You might well be aware that our mandate is only to look at election expense limits — how much people can spend. Do you have a sense of what would be an appropriate amount of spending in a campaign here in Vancouver?

R. Nantel: Well, I guess a rhetorical question would be: would a lot less hamper the debate and the democratic process? I think that….

R. Nantel: Yeah, but I meant that the more money that’s thrown at any party from one particular person creates the illusion or the potential illusion of conflict.

S. Robinson (Deputy Chair): Do you have a sense of what an expense limit might look like? We’re going to be tasked with putting a number — a real, hard number.

R. Nantel: Well, I’m quite sure there might be people around here that are better capable of answering that than me. But I would err on being on the extreme conservative. Again, I don’t mind money coming from individuals, but the fact is I resent the fact that big cor-
[ Page 248 ]
porations or unions are funding the democratic process and we don’t know what kinds of deals may or may not be made with those parties behind closed doors. Even the perception, when something goes to a public hearing, that: “Hey, is my voice being heard as much as the person that basically gave that kind of money to any organization?”

R. Nantel: Yeah. And rhetorically, getting back to your original question: would running an election on an extremely small budget hamper the democratic process? I don’t think so.

J. Tegart (Chair): That ends the hearing for today. I would just remind people that there is space still available — and a conference call option is available — next week. If there are people who are interested in presenting, the meeting will be in Victoria, but we can arrange for a conference call option for anyone who is interested in participating and giving input to the committee.

Seeing no further presentations at this time, 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) Helen Hee Soon Chang
2) Cranbrook Chamber of Commerce	David Hull
3) Enrico Diano
4) Green Party of Vancouver	Jordan Bober
5) Matthew Hartney
6) IntegrityBC	Dermod Travis
7) Marine Gardens Residents’ Association	Jillian Skeet

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