The proposed North Battleford bylaw to establish election campaign disclosure and spending limits is running into some big problems.
Councillors voiced multiple concerns about a number of provisions of a draft of the proposed bylaw that were presented to council for the first time Monday.
But that’s the least of the problems. The bigger issue is timing.
A new bylaw must be enacted at least 60 days before the municipal election. That means any campaign disclosure bylaw for North Battleford must receive final passage and be signed and sealed by the Aug. 15 meeting. Moreover, to meet all the public notice requirements, first reading has to happen by the July 18 meeting.
The aim of the bylaw is to promote greater transparency during the municipal election campaign. But the late timing of the bylaw was a main concern of Councillor Ryan Bater.
“I’m not a huge fan of the timing, because I think we’re basically changing the rules on the eve of an election,” said Bater.
He thought the most obvious thing missing from the draft bylaw is an audit process. There is no way to confirm the spending numbers disclosed without one. Information in the return could be fabricated, he said.
Bater also pointed to provincial and federal disclosure requirements and noted the reason those disclosure requirements are there is “less about disclosing who your contributors are and more about the consequences of that contribution.”
Campaign donors for those provincial and federal races receive a tax credit for election campaign contributions. As well, candidates receiving a certain percentage of the vote also get some of their expenses refunded.
Others on council, including Councillor Greg Lightfoot, wondered what would be included as an expense in the bylaw. Would vehicles, or taking people out to lunch, be considered an expense, he wondered.
In general, Lightfoot shared many of Bater’s concerns. Bater later reiterated he was not enthusiastic about recording expenses, since there was no reimbursement coming.
“I don’t see what the point of it is, beyond just disclosing for the sake of disclosing,” he said later.
Another issue was the spending limits in the bylaw, which Bater thought was too low. He said it would cap a mayoral campaign at $10,000 and a council campaign at $3,500.
Bater later noted that at the provincial level for the Battlefords constituency, the spending limit was well over $50,000 for an area not much bigger than North Battleford, with their candidates running “pretty much the same campaign.”
Councillor Kelli Hawtin also expressed concern incumbents might get an unfair advantage under the proposed spending limits. She noted incumbents who already had election signs printed from the last election wouldn’t need to encounter that expense, but newer candidates would.
“That would be an unfair advantage of having that spending cap thrown in there,” she said.
The draft bylaw was received at Monday’s meeting. Beyond that, it’s unclear what the future holds for it.
More work will be required by administration to address the various issues with the bylaw before it can come back to council for first reading. If not passed in time, it likely becomes an issue for the next council to deal with in time a 2020 vote.
