A new Alberta bill, which restricts political action committee spending in Alberta, is getting mixed reviews in St. Albert. The bill will cap the amount of ‘dark money’ or money spent by political action committees (PACs). Previously PACs have been unregulated and can raise and spend an unlimited amount of money without having to reveal their donor lists. PACs are organizations that privately raise money to influence the outcomes of elections. St. Albert MLA Marie Renaud said the bill will make elections fair for all Albertans. “The whole point of this is to keep a level playing field. You don’t want any one segment of a community or province buying an election,” Renaud said. On a local constituency level, Renaud said that the bill evens the playing field by limiting government spending in an election, which may reduce some of an incumbent's advantage. The bill will also ban government advertising during an election or byelection. Neil Korotash, president of the Alberta Party Constituency Association said that on a local level he doesn’t think the bill will have much of an impact. Although Korotash said it is hard to really know the impact of the legislation because PACs have only recently sprung up since the last provincial election. “We don’t have a lot of history of PACs in Alberta,” Korotash said. Overall Korotash said that he believes that individual constituency associations would not have benefited from the existence of PACs Jeff Wedman, president of the UCP Constituency Association said that the “PAC legislation will not affect us locally here in any way.” The government first began to explore regulating PACs in Alberta when legislation was slated to be reviewed by the Special Select Ethics and Accountability Committee but the group was dissolved before they could get any work done on the file. The number of political action committees in the province has grown rapidly in the last two years, since the government introduced its first bill, which capped the amount of corporate and union contributions to political parties. The government went on to cap the amount of money individuals can contribute at $4,000 per year. Since these changes, PACs have sprung up in the province as a way to skirt around the new legislation. “One thing that has been starting to invade Canada is the creation of PACs,” Renaud said. According to the Elections Alberta website, most of the PACs in Alberta were created in 2017. During Jason Kenney's leadership bid for the Progressive Conservative race, the Unite Alberta PAC raised $508,000 for the campaign. Kenney said issues of privacy around donors is why he did not reveal the names of the 63 donors who contributed $395,047 of the total. PAC contributions to parties, candidates or leadership contestants will be capped at $150,000. This limit will be imposed in the December before the election year. Spending on local constituencies will also be capped at $3,000. Outside of election periods, PAC spending will not be limited. Any money that is spent by PACs on organizing political events to promote candidates must now be disclosed. The bill will also regulate cooperation between political parties and PACs to prevent the sharing of membership lists. PACs would not be able to sell memberships or collect voter information for leadership races. The proposed legislation defines PACs broadly so they are not able to change their definitions to get around the new legislation. “The hope is to shut some additional doors. You can try to anticipate how people are going to skirt the system but it's not an easy thing to do,” Renaud said. The bill also limits the current government making funding announcements during elections so they cannot influence the vote. Along with limiting PACs, the bill plans to make voting easier. The bill would create an additional advance voting day and removes the minimum residency requirement to vote in a provincial election. The bill also creates an election commissioner, who will investigate complaints about PACs and recommend prosecutions. The bill will also remove the six month mandatory minimum residency requirement to vote in the election.
