St. Albert MLA Marie Renaud is defending the work of a committee that’s recommending changes to Alberta’s election rules.
The Select Special Ethics and Accountability Committee, tasked with reviewing several pieces of legislation including election financing rules, has made several recommendations in the past week that are ruffling feathers in opposition and media circles.
Last week, the NDP majority on the committee approved a recommendation to have half of any party’s campaign budget reimbursed by the province, as long as the party receives 10 per cent of the popular vote.
Opposition parties panned this move over the weekend, but Renaud said this change is just one piece of the puzzle. The committee met again on Monday to discuss spending caps for both provincial elections and for leadership races within the province’s political parties.
She said the end goal of all the changes, taken together, is to create a more level playing field in provincial politics, making elected office more accessible to everyone regardless of wealth.
“There are certain groups of people who really have difficulty raising the money and running an election campaign,” she said. “If we’re looking at equal access, I think it’s important to have some ceilings or some caps that promote access.”
The committee is proposing a spending cap of $70,000 for each candidate, as well as an 80-cents-per-voter cap at the provincial level – about $2.2 million. Candidates in a leadership race would be limited to spending 15 per cent of that figure, which would currently be around $330,000.
By comparison Jim Prentice, when running for the Progressive Conservative leadership in 2014, spent more than $2 million, which far surpassed the combined spending of the other two candidates.
Renaud explained the committee came to these figures – including the caps and the 10-per-cent vote threshold for a party to qualify for a rebate – as a result of government researchers looking at standard practices in other Canadian jurisdictions. The committee also considered all the written and oral submissions made to the committee, most of which are available online.
She noted the recommendation for a flat 50-per-cent funding for political campaigns was deemed preferable to a per-vote subsidy based on that same feedback – but at this point, no firm decisions have been made, and changes could come to the proposals when they’re debated in the Legislature this fall.
Renaud also dismissed concerns about the NDP using its majority on the committee to enact legislation, noting the committee isn’t actually a decision-making body.
“We’re still talking about this, and I think we have quite a bit of work ahead of us, but the goal is to change the way things happen in Alberta,” she said. “There has been a previous position to favour ideas and policies from the largest financial backers, and we’re looking at really changing that.”
Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock MLA Glenn van Dijken, a Wildrose member of that committee, said he’s not opposed to the goal of getting big money out of politics but he’s opposed to the way the NDP wants to do it. Instead of a spending cap, he suggested a donation cap would more effectively address the issue of big money in politics without punishing popular candidates.
“If I have 1,000 residents give $100 each, now I can’t honour their donations,” he said, noting that would put him $30,000 over the individual candidate cap.
At Monday’s meeting he proposed setting the spending cap at what the government has spent on “partisan” advertising averaged over three years. He issued a media release accusing the government of spending up to $6 million on partisan advertising “risky economic policies” like the carbon levy.
“I would agree there are many useful programs Albertans can participate in, and government introducing new deadlines, that advertising is acceptable,” he said.
Renaud questioned who would decide what constitutes partisan government advertising as compared to essential government advertising, dismissing the proposal.
“Clearly what the goal is for the opposition, at least in this committee, is they don’t want any spending caps. Period,” she said. “Never mind that the federal government and most of Canada has spending limits. They just don’t want it.”
The committee is scheduled to meet again next Friday, van Dijken said, and he hopes to discuss a motion that would regulate third-party advertisers in the election.
