The leader of Alberta’s Liberal Party is calling for changes to rules for donations to candidates in municipal elections.
“As much as anything, it’s to shift from the antiquated system that applies to municipal government and bring them in line with provincial and federal governments, so there’s more consistency,” said Calgary-Mountainview MLA David Swann.
He said all donations to candidates should be publicly disclosed before election day and donations should be limited to the calendar year when an election is held.
Swann said donations to municipal candidates should be eligible for tax credits and proposes banning corporate and union donations.
“Those are some of the key elements of what we think is a fair and important shift in municipal campaign financing,” he said.
The same rules should apply to all municipal candidates, regardless of the size of their community, said Swann
“We can’t have two different standards based on the size of the municipality,” he said. “Frankly, if the door is open it will be abused.”
Swann said he is not saying donations should be entirely eliminated because it can be difficult for people to finance campaigns on their own, even in small communities.
“If they had to put their own money on the line, you would just be attracting the wealthy, so this is an important part of opening up the democratic process, but ensuring it’s fair and equitable across the province,” he said.
The proposal has some support among elected officials in Foothills municipalities. Okotoks Coun. Carrie Fischer said there is room to improve campaign finance rules for municipal elections.
“I support being as open and transparent as we can possibly get with this on all levels,” she said. “It’s important to know where that money is coming from.”
She said donations may play a larger role for municipal councillors and candidates in larger centres, but it’s not a big factor in smaller communities such as Okotoks.
She said candidates don’t need a lot of money to run an effective campaign in a town the size of Okotoks.
She said she spent around $500 on her election campaign in 2013.
She said one of the nice things about municipal politics is that money doesn’t play much of a role in elections.
She supports making changes before the 2017 municipal election, but only if there is a “meaningful discussion” first.
She said she supports banning donations from corporations and unions, but isn’t inclined to support tax credits. She said municipal politicians are often closer to their residents, and potential donors, than their provincial and federal counterparts and questions whether it would create conflict of interest.
“My initial reaction is to say no, I don’t think it’s something that’s necessary at this level and I think it changes the way the municipal level of politics would operate and I’m not sure it would change it in a good way,” she said.
Unlike in some provinces, there are no political parties at the municipal level in Alberta.
She said encouraging more donations at the municipal level could lead towards the creation of “party-ish” alliances among candidates.
“We have open dialogue at the council table and you see different councillors aligning on different issues and it allows for an open, transparent debate and it gives greater freedom to the councillors to represent the constituents that they’re hearing from,” she said.
MD of Foothills Reeve Larry Spilak said he could live with the proposed changes, but added things are fine the way they are. He doesn’t think it would be relevant in rural municipalities anyway.
“For all intents and purposes, for rural municipalities it’s not relevant in any way or another,” he said.
He doesn’t see offering tax credits for donations as a bad thing.
He agrees with Swann that donations should be allowed. He estimated it costs between $8,000 to $10,000 to run an effective campaign in a municipality the size of the Foothills.
He said it’s not prohibitively expensive to run a campaign in the Foothills without donations, but he said it can be a different story in large centres such as Calgary.
Yet, he said social media is a low-cost game changer for candidates.
He said he hasn’t received any donations during any of his three election campaigns.
“I’ve never really requested any because I thought it wasn’t really part of the municipal political way,” he said.
