Daphne Bramham: Party bots and holiday begging are an annoying cost of democracy
Credit to Author: Daphne Bramham| Date: Sun, 05 Jan 2020 18:00:22 +0000
Finally, 2020 and a few days respite from the seemingly endless onslaught of year-end emails from political parties and Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart.
Even though I have never made a political contribution, my inbox was stuffed over the holidays with urgent pleas to donate and qualify for a 2019 tax deduction.
It wasn’t quite 11th hour when the last one arrived. Almost certainly delivered via party bot, it arrived at 8:02 p.m. on Dec. 31 from Team Stewart. Twelve hours earlier, I’d been told that with only 16 hours left to reach a goal of $6,500, the campaign has raised $3,900 from “close to 120 small donors.” “Each of them gave between $5 and $100, can you?”
On Christmas Eve, I got two requests from Team Stewart. The final one was sent at 11:52 p.m. when most normal people were asleep or spending time with loved ones.
Nothing arrived on Christmas Day. For this year at least, political operatives and their bots took the day off.
It’s no surprise that federal parties were trying to winkle out every last donation before the clock started ticking on a new year filled with the promise of more donations and tax credits.
With a minority government in Ottawa and no guarantee of how long this Parliament will last, they’re all scrambling to pay off election debts and restock their war chests.
More curious is Stewart’s aggressive fundraising that began almost the moment he announced in November that he would be seeking re-election. But that election isn’t until Oct. 15, 2022.
The rules set by the B.C. government for municipal elections limit donations to $1,200 per year for independent candidates like Stewart or $1,200 to either a single candidate running with a political party or the party itself.
But there are no limits on how much money municipal candidates can raise, only on how much can be spent in election year and during the 28-day campaign period.
Spending limits are unique to each municipality based on population and the positions for which the candidates are running. In 2018, the limit for Vancouver mayoralty candidates was $210,175 and $107,793 for council candidates.
But Stewart raised $320,228, according to his amended disclosure statement.
Kennedy also had the benefit of four campaign ‘volunteers’ — employees of unions seconded to the campaign who continued to receive their salaries. That prompted the city’s Independent Election Task Force to recommend in its June 2019 report that those salaries be reported as candidates’ spending.
Because the B.C. legislation doesn’t have contribution limits, the task force’s recommendations focus on spending.
Among its four priority recommendations is extending the 28-day campaign period and having it start immediately after Labour Day in order to reduce the influence of unlimited spending in the pre-campaign period.
It’s not just the holiday bots and begging that I have a problem with. I resent that the tax credits for federal and provincial political donations are more attractive than for other charitable donations. Donations to municipal candidates or parties are not eligible for tax credits, despite the Union of B.C. Municipalities’ efforts to them included.
Donate $1,275 to federal or provincial political parties and the tax credit is $650. Donate to a charity and the maximum tax credit amounts to less than a third of the value. So, if some Scrooges only make donations to write down their income, the choice is unequivocal. Political donations are the big winners.
Most charitable organizations also don’t have anywhere near the money to do the sophisticated outreach that larger political organizations do. Even if they did, many donors carefully scrutinize what percentage charities spend on administration and fundraising. Most want their money spent on the cause they’re passionate about, not spent on raising more money.
I understand that democracy comes at a price and that running election campaigns cost money. But how much is too much to spend on getting elected or on getting your favourites elected? And does it affect voter turnout?
Municipal spending limits that came into effect in 2018 drastically reduced the amount parties spent in Vancouver. But voter turnout remained above its historic average.
In the 2019 general election, the Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats and Greens could have spent just over $29.06 million, while the People’s Party of Canada could have spent $27.6 million. Of course, to spend it, they had to raise it.
Those amounts are a drop in the bucket compared to the United States where Bernie Saunders recently bragged that if he becomes Democrats’ presidential candidate he could raise $1 billion, while Michael Bloomberg’s self-financed campaign spent more than $155 million on advertising in 2019 and Bloomberg didn’t even enter the Democratic race until mid-November.
Still, as the Vancouver task force pointed out, Canada’s campaign financing rules aren’t perfect. Despite recent changes to municipal, provincial and federal laws, more could be done to ensure that money isn’t a barrier to candidacy and wealthy contributors don’t exert disproportionate influence.
Of course, I would also like someone to sneak in an amendment banning party bots during the holiday celebrations.
Not that it will happen because I suspect it must be at least as lucrative as it is annoying.
Twitter: @bramham_daphne