55dB

Letter Versus Spirit

No doubt if you follow any political news, and likely any news at all, you have heard about the raid on Tory HQ by the RCMP, requested by Elections Canada. Many people I talked to really don’t understand what exactly went on - the lefties I know were generally just happy that the Tories were raided, and some of the right-wingers I know feel this is the left-wing bureaucracy’s retribution.

You’ve probably also heard the term “in-and-out” scheme, which is what it is. The question isn’t whether this is an in-and-out scheme - of course it is, and you will see why - the question is whether it is good and legal. It really will be a question of the letter of the law versus the spirit, and the Tories will likely be judged (by the electorate) not even on if it was legal or not, but whether it was perceived wrongdoing, like the meeting that Goodale had with investors before the income trust announcement during the Liberal reign.

The Canada Elections Act has limits on election campaign expenses - usually somewhere between $70,000 and $80,000 per candidate riding. The party itself also gets to run a campaign, usually on the level of $18M or so. The party expenses are for getting any and all candidates elected, whereas the candidate’s expenses are… well, let me quote the candidate handbook:

An “election expense” includes any cost incurred, or non-monetary contribution received by a candidate, to the extent that the property or service for which the cost was incurred, or the non-monetary contribution received, is used directly to promote or oppose a candidate during an election period.

And therein lies the problem.

In some cases where candidates were not spending their entire limit (and many don’t - often campaigns for grits and tories run between $40k and $60k), the Tories ‘transferred’ some of the burden of federal ad spending on the candidates. In these cases, the Tories added the name of the candidate to the ad - so Joe Schmo runs for the Tories, and the same ad that runs across the country runs in Joe’s riding, but somewhere on the ad it says, “Joe Schmo, Conservative for Riding.” The letter of the law says that the ad is now directly promoting a certain candidate, which theoretically means that the candidate can use his/her expenses for it.

Because transfers between parties/constituency associations and candidates are perfectly legal (and integral to fundraising for those in parties), what happens is the party transfers the cost of the ads to the candidate, but it immediately gets used as an expense (zero-sum for the campaign), and essentially the party has increased it’s ability to spend through the local campaigns.

So, two things are in play here, based on what happened. One, did the Tories overspend and break election laws. That’s what EC’s raid is about.

The second is a lawsuit you may have heard about. This is because, under the Elections Act, the Receiver General remits 60% of paid election expenses back to any campaign that received over 10% of the vote. This money cannot stay with the campaign - it must either go to pay unpaid expenses (this includes any remuneration of campaign staff - campaign managers, among others, are often paid for their services… luckily my campaign manager doesn’t request such remuneration), or be transferred to the constituency association or party (or remitted back to the Receiver General, since any campaign surplus must be returned to the RG after the campaign, and that money, if not used to pay expenses or transferred, is a surplus).

So, because the individual campaigns “paid” for these ads, any of those candidates (which should be all) who received 10%+ of the vote, would get 60% of the money spent on those ads back, to be transferred to the party. Elections Canada did not provide that money, and thus are being sued by the party.

Harper says it was done with the proper interpretation of the law. Even Tom Flanagan, in his book, “Harper’s Team,” mentions that transfers to the candidates is a legal and proper way of extending the party’s national spending.

So, in the end, all it is a question of is - Can a nationallly run ad, with the addition of a local candidate’s info, count as the candidate’s campaign expense? It’s the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law; and really, it’s all about how the public perceives it all.