Keith Gerein: Corporate donors, third-party advertisers in Edmonton's civic election show need for tougher rules |
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Keith Gerein: Corporate donors, third-party advertisers in Edmonton's civic election show need for tougher rules
Indeed, last year’s election already had too much involvement from big money and dark money, largely due to the UCP government’s changes to election rules that almost nobody wanted.
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For those who missed my last column, it was a discussion of how success in last fall’s Edmonton civic election was not particularly linked to the size of a candidate’s war chest.
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The impressive financial enterprise that was the Tim Cartmell and Better Edmonton campaign was defeated by a mayoral rival with less than 20 per cent of the funding. Similarly, in the races for councillors, eight of the 12 wards were won by those who were outspent by at least one opponent.
On the surface, such results might lead us to the adage that money can’t buy happiness, or something like that. And I suppose there is a certain gratification many will take from the outcome, but a single election should not dissuade us from the reality that there remains some real transparency and balance issues with campaign finance rules.
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One perspective comes from political strategist Stephen Carter, who helped organize the Better Edmonton campaign. In a recent Postmedia article, Carter contends that a lack of money in municipal politics is primarily responsible for the lack of voter engagement and turnout in elections, and that most of the turnout that did occur last fall was due to the spending of Cartmell and Better Edmonton.
I respect Carter’s skills as a strategist, but I mostly disagree with him here.
For one thing, nothing drove voter turnout last fall in Edmonton, where the rate of 30.4 per cent was the second lowest in 45 years.
Secondly, the lack of engagement in civic politics is an entrenched and perplexing problem but is likely due to a combination of factors — declining media coverage, poor municipal communications, increased aloofness of politicians, rising time demands on residents, and heightened cynicism at provincial interference, among other things.
In other words, if you are among those who feel disconnected and uninformed about city hall, and that municipal affairs don’t really matter that much anyway, there’s a good chance you are also going to feel some apathy at election time.
Keith Gerein: Big money led to big disappointment in Edmonton's city council election
Analysis: Cartmell's fundraising has significant crossover with UCP, while Knack has support from city staff
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Introducing municipal political parties clearly wasn’t the answer to that, and I am similarly skeptical that increased campaign funding is a substantially better approach.
Part of the issue is that additional money could be put to nefarious use as much as good, exacerbating confusion and cynicism of the political process.
Moreover, extra campaign cash can really only be generated through extra donations.
It would be one thing if regular people gave more to local candidates — allowing tax receipts for those donations would help that cause — but chances are that the bulk is going to come from those with outsized spending power.
Indeed, last year’s election already had too much involvement from big money and dark money, largely due to the UCP government’s changes to election rules that almost nobody wanted.
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I’ve already written at length about the unfair financial advantages that were given to parties over independent candidates. But a less heralded change that perhaps proved just as influential was the decision to once again allow corporate and union donations.
Businesses, in particular, took the opportunity to get involved, and a handful of businesspeople really dove in by using multiple corporate handles to create a river of money.
My colleague Steven Sandor laid it out well in an article last fall on donations to Cartmell.
He found that developer Paul Allard donated the maximum $5,000 on his own as an individual, as did Brad Clough, president of Allard Developments. But then $5,000 infusions also came from Alberta 806837, 23rd Avenue Lands Ltd., 7 Oaks Developments Ltd., HV Developments Ltd. and Keswick Landing Ltd. — all companies in which Allard and Clough act as directors. Some of these businesses also donated to Cartmell’s party.
(Clough told Postmedia that, as a company director, he did not have a say in any of those donations.)
This is just one example. Other businesspeople seemed to do the same thing, and Cartmell was not the only beneficiary.
What’s unclear to me is whether this sort of giving technically violates donation limits and should be investigated as such, or whether this falls into a legislative grey area or loophole. Either way, it is a practice that needs to be shut down, not expanded as a way to funnel more money into campaign coffers.
Third-party advertisers
There also needs to be a hard look at third-party advertisers.
Three such groups were registered during the election, two of which were pretty lean operations that campaigned against Knack and other incumbents.
The third group, Working Families Edmonton (WFE), was a union-backed entity that endorsed Knack and 12 council candidates. We don’t know how much they spent because final disclosure statements haven’t yet been posted, but it’s probably safe to say they had ample resources, perhaps up to their limit of $505,000.
Whatever the number, WFE distributed ads in support of their favoured slate of candidates and against certain rivals, leading to complaints that the organization was more or less acting like a political party but without the rules of one.
With third-party advertisers, the major constraint is that they are supposed to have no collaboration with candidates, but there’s an element of make-believe to that.
Political communities in Edmonton are not that big. WFE organizers and at least some of their endorsed candidates know each other well. So even if the two sides never talked tactics during the campaign — and how would you ever prove it if they did — they still have a long history of collaboration through the labour movement and provincial NDP circles.
(There tends to be similar blurred lines with conservative third-party advertisers.)
Clamping down on these entities is no easy feat because there are free speech issues at play, but some tougher guardrails seem in order.
For example, perhaps there should be a rule that says if a third-party advertisers wants to run ads in support of an endorsed candidate, that candidate first needs to agree to the endorsement.
This could dissuade some of the shrug-and-wink games that went on, in which WFE-favoured candidates would say they had no control over the group’s endorsements but then go silent or cagey on accepting the support. It was a way of taking all the benefit but shouldering little of the backlash.
(In Knack’s case, he repeatedly insisted he didn’t ask for WFE’s endorsement, and eventually said he wished third-party advertisers didn’t exist, but he didn’t really reject the WFE seal of approval either.)
Tighter expense limits for these groups might be another idea, along with tougher truth-in-advertising rules, since the TPAs I’ve seen in action over the years haven’t shown ideal fidelity to accuracy and context.
And since so much of the advertising battle is now waged online — with messages often targeted to select audiences hidden from the rest of us — we might consider a rule that third-party advertisers, parties and candidates maintain an accessible public registry of their digital ads.
I have no idea if any of these safeguards might make a difference or if enough voters will care. But there is something to the principle of having elections decided by the people in a fair, open fight, not due to the oversized influence of those with fatter wallets who are more adept at working in the shadows.
kgerein@postmedia.com
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