Under the cover of trying to remove big money from provincial politics, Alberta’s NDP government is going too far with its proposals to change election financing rules.
The NDP majority on the Select Special Ethics and Accountability Committee has blithely ignored criticisms offered by opposing MLAs and accepted its own proposal to reimburse candidate expenses with taxpayer money. Under the NDP plan, a candidate achieving as little as 10 per cent of the vote would be reimbursed by the taxpayer to the tune of 50 per cent of the campaign’s expenses. It’s a blatant manoeuvre to give itself an advantage going into the next election. Particularly disadvantaged under this plan are the smaller parties including the provincial Liberals and the Alberta Party each of which struggled to get less than five per cent in 2015. And why choose 10 per cent? Could NDP strategists be looking at the 9.8 per cent of the popular vote they polled in the 2012 election?
The Wildrose members of the committee also pointed out that the constituency spending caps should reflect the reality that not all constituencies are alike. Campaign costs for large rural constituencies spread over several communities are much higher than their compact urban counterparts. The NDP one size fits all approach fails to recognize this fact.
As Barrhead-Morinville Westlock MLA Glenn van Dijken pointed out in our story Aug. 17, the campaign spending limits are not the way to limit big money either. Individual limits will do that more effectively without penalizing a candidate with broad support. What’s wrong with 1,000 people giving $100 each to a campaign other than it would exceed the NDP proposed limits? It’s simply grassroots democracy and how the system is supposed to work.
Keeping big money out of politics and levelling the playing field for smaller parties are certainly laudable goals that could help diversify Alberta’s political landscape. These measures in particular are not the way to go.
The NDP knows it has a fundraising problem. It attacked the biggest source of PC campaign donations by capping corporate donations, but also hurt its own efforts by including unions. Now it’s angling to shore up that weakness by forcing taxpayers to make up the shortfall.
We don’t believe Albertans support using their tax dollars to reimburse politicians. Taxpayers already lose income tax revenue thanks to Alberta’s generous 75 per cent tax credit for provincial political party donations. And we don’t believe they support limiting the number of individual campaign contributors.
It’s not just because we’re struggling through a rough economic downturn and provincial finances are already strained. It’s because we believe political parties work best when they must raise their money directly from voters.
If this government doesn’t believe that, all it has to do is pause this process and ask us.
