Alberta’s rural municipalities are not concerned with new provincial legislation that will close loopholes that until now have allowed municipal election candidates to raise funds without disclosing donors, says Al Kemmere.
A Mountain View County councillor and the president of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta Association (RMA), Kemmere says An Act to Renew Local Democracy in Alberta (Bill 23) includes interesting changes.
“We don’t have any major concerns,” said Kemmere. “There are going to be some procedural changes that are going to take a little getting used to. There are going to be some changes to the election process where we are going from a nomination day to a nomination period. That will be a bit of a different structure, but fundamentally it’s not going to be a huge change.
“The limitations on spending and single contribution limits are going to be interesting. The changes are not going to have any major negative effect to us, nothing that is going to be critically negative.”
Introduced last week, the legislation (Bill 23) makes updates to the existing act that governs elections for municipalities and school boards.
The update includes banning corporate and union donations, lowering contribution limits for individual residents, and requiring third parties to be more transparent about contributions.
The legislation will also empower the Alberta election commissioner to investigate, prosecute and enforce rules related to campaign finance and third-party advertising.
“We heard from Albertans that elections should be decided by people, not by money,” said Shaye Anderson, minister of Municipal Affairs. “Our government made provincial elections fairer and more transparent, and now we are committed to doing the same on the municipal level.”
Lorne Gibson, Alberta election commissioner, said, “Active oversight by an independent enforcement body helps to ensure integrity in our electoral process.
“It not only holds to account those who break the rules, but deters others from doing so and helps voters maintain trust in their elections. Without education, prevention and effective enforcement, even the best election laws are merely good intentions.”
The Bill 23 amendments would include lowering contribution limits to $4,000 provincewide for municipal elections and for school board elections, reducing the campaign period from the current four years to one year and limiting fundraising and contributions to only that period.
They will also require communities of more than 5,000 population to hold advance votes, establish and require campaign disclosure statements from all candidates, including self-funded candidates.
Barry Morishita, the president of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association, said the association is pleased with much of Bill 23.
“We believe our small communities will appreciate the province’s amendment regarding a proposal for all municipal election candidates to open a bank account regardless of whether or not they spend any money will now be limited to only those candidates who spend or receive more than $4,000,” said Morishita.
“We did note a few new provisions to the bill that were not discussed previously. AUMA will need to discuss these new provisions with our members and get their feedback.”
The AUMA is “disappointed” that the enabling of tax credits for individual donations to municipal campaigns wasn’t addressed in the legislation, he said.
“We hope there will still be some consideration on this matter, and we look forward to ongoing discussions with the province,” he said.
Kemmere says the RMA hopes that municipalities won’t have to pick up the cost of enforcing the new campaign regulations.
The next municipal and school board elections are scheduled for 2021.
