Why The Fair Elections Act Is A Very Good Thing For Rich Pol

[Oscar]

Why The Fair Elections Act Is A Very Good Thing For Rich Politicians

[ http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/04/29 ... 36701.html ]

Althia Raj Huffington Post Canada Wednesday, April 30, 2014

OTTAWA — As MPs prepare for a second day of clause-by-clause debate over amendments to the Fair Elections Act, [ http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/fair-elections-act/ ] The Huffington Post Canada looks at how the Conservative government’s election bill increases the influence of money in the political process – and how it fails to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding how political parties spend their money.

This despite the fact that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been used to subsidize political parties in the past decade. Critics point to four key ways the act does not go far enough to reform how political parties account for their spending.

1. No receipts needed for political parties’ expense claims.

“At every election, parties receive $33 million in reimbursements without showing a single invoice to support their claims,” Elections Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand told a Commons committee in March. [ http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications ... l=41&Ses=2 ]

Yes, that’s right. You, the taxpayer, are giving political parties your money without any proof of how they have spent it.

The federal watchdog is the only electoral body in Canada that lacks the power to require parties to back up expense claims with documents to show that the money was actually spent, he said. Mayrand called for “this anomaly” to be corrected.

Political parties receive millions in taxpayer subsidies every year. It is not only their election expenses (which are refunded at 50 per cent) and their candidates’ expenses (valued at about $23.4 million in 2011 and refunded at 60 per cent). There is also the per-vote subsidy that will be phased out in April 2015, but was worth $28,697,486 in 2011.

And of course, there is the generous tax subsidy given to political parties whose donors receive 75 per cent off their contributions up to $400. Larger donations also receive a credit worth half or a third of the additional amount. In 2011-2012, 200,370 Canadians made federal contributions worth $55.56 million. Taxpayers subsidized those contributions by those donors back $32.852 million in tax breaks.

Conservative MP Michael Chong told HuffPost he estimates his party has received more than $300 million over the past decade in taxpayer support.

“Vast sums of money, of public money, are spent on political parties. In return for that expenditure, political parties ought to be transparent and accountable in how they run themselves,” Chong said in an interview last month.

He wants to see legislation governing how political party caucuses operate. Others suggest a baby step to transparency: forcing the mandatory disclosure of political parties’ expenses.

Right now, candidates have to file supporting documents with Elections Canada when filing expense claims. But political parties don’t have to, and Elections Canada doesn’t have the power even to ask for them.

It is a giant loophole that Mayrand and academics had hoped the Fair Elections Act would close. But it won’t.

“Without these receipts, Elections Canada cannot check to see whether the parties are compliant with the campaign finance rules,” University of Toronto law professor Yasmin Dawood said. [ http://www.law.utoronto.ca/faculty-staf ... min-dawood ]

“This is unacceptable. In any other context, if you are getting reimbursements, you have to provide receipts.”

Simply requiring detailed expense reports and receipts would serve as a deterrent to inappropriate expense claims, she said.

“Just by having to provide the document, that in itself is helpful to ensure that the rules are being followed properly,” she said.

Right now, political parties file general statements verified by an auditor of their choice.

Graham Fox of the Institute for Research on Public Policy told HuffPost he thinks Canadians who file receipts with their income tax returns would expect political parties to follow the same rules.

“It doesn’t stand the test of common sense,” he said.

“Nobody wants the red tape, but we all have it,” said Monique Deveaux, the Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Global Social Change at the University of Guelph.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s Gregory Thomas told HuffPost that he suspects that political parties have been more or less silent on this issue because they like the rules as they are.

“We know that political parties will use these public disclosures to mine for intelligence on how the other political parties are operating,” he said.

His group opposed the per-vote subsidy and it also opposed the tax credit for political party donors. But Thomas said there is a case for accountability given how much the political parties receive.

“Our approach is they should not be getting this money in the first place. And then if they want, [they can] enjoy privacy on how they spend their money.”

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[ http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/04/29 ... 36701.html ]

[Oscar]

Dancing with Mr. Côté over the Fair Elections Act

[ http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/steven- ... ctions-act ]

By Steven Shrybman | May 9, 2014

On April 24, 2014 the Commissioner of Canada Elections, Yves Côté released a long-awaited report of his investigation into voter fraud during the 41st General Election in May 2011. I reviewed his report, having served as Counsel for several electors, who in March 2012, brought applications to annul the results of the Election in 6 ridings across the country.

As my analysis describes, the Commissioner entirely failed to carry out a proper investigation. Instead he adopted a flawed and narrow approach to his task that caused him to ignore relevant evidence, neglect obvious routes of inquiry, and adopt ineffectual methods for his investigation. In consequence, the Commissioner made little or no progress in answering the questions that were central to his mandate, namely to determine the extent of and responsibility for voter suppression during the Election.

Unfortunately, three years later the most important questions about voter fraud during the last Election remain to be answered. The most important of these is:

In the days leading to the May 2011 Election, on how many occasions were lists of non-Conservative Party of Canada supporters downloaded from its data base, "CIMS," by whom, and in respect of which electoral districts?

Those following Conservative efforts to amend the Canada Elections Act will know that the proposed reforms will do nothing to empower the Commissioner to compel the Conservative Party to answer that question, either with respect to the 2011 Election or the next, should voter fraud once again rear its ugly head. That means that political parties will remain unaccountable for the misuse of their databases, whether they condone that abuse or simply look the other way.