55dB

Transparency

I read two separate comments this morning pertaining to the Tory in-and-out system of campaign ads. One was by the Montréal Gazette, Election financing rules should be simplified, and the other was in the National Post, Conservatives knew the rules

Here’s what stood out in these:

But surely that goal could be attained as easily by rigorously requiring parties to disclose their sources of financing.
(The Gazette)

What is required to make elections “fair” is transparency — letting voters see who is contributing to which campaigns, and how much.
(National Post)

I’m going to assume that they mean *during* the election, because a quick trip to one of my most-used websites, Elections Canada, clicking on ‘Search Elections Canada’s Databases’, and then ‘Contributions and Expenses Database’, you can actually see who donates to which campaign.

Well, partially. You can search how much is given to a party during a year (or quarter), a registered association (by year, so you can’t see 2008 yet), or a candidate (by election). So you can make assumptions about the money in a registered association being transferred to the candidate during the election (assuming the candidate is not an independent, where there is no way to fundraise outside of electoral periods with the ability to issue tax receipts and then transfer the funds to the candidate later), and you can essentially see who donated to what campaign. Again, this information is available after, but it is transparent and anyone can look it up.

Of course, this is for donations over $200. So, for example, when I look at what was sent to my opponent’s constituency association for last year, I see that $2,170 was made in donations over $200, so those peoples’ names are published. Then, there’s $6,275 in less-than-$200 donations from 83 people, from whom we cannot see from here. Lastly there’s $1,828 from less-than-20 donations, from which the association doesn’t even have to let EC know the name of the person.

The other thing to consider is, if a candidate in an election gets over 10% of the vote, 60% of his/her paid election expenses are reimbursed by the Receiver General, which must then be transferred to a party or constituency association (or remitted to the RG if the candidate doesn’t intend to transfer it - for example, if one is running as an independent, why would they transfer those funds to a party?). So, any incumbent has a wealth of funds available for transfer to him/her during an election simply because of campaign rules. You can see how much was transfered to constituency associations, but it’s up to you to figure out how far one person’s donation from years back has stretched.

So, there is some transparency. However, there’s a lot more to it than simply declaring all donations, and it is only available after-the-fact.