When governments tinker with electoral law, it's tough to avoid the allegation it's an effort to stack the deck. With the introduction of Bill 37, the NDP has done nothing to avoid that charge.
Bill 37 is a complex series of changes to electoral-financing and party-advertising laws that landed in the legislature like a firecracker in a church picnic. Completely unaware that the NDP was working on an overhaul of electoral law, opposition parties have been quite agitated about Bill 37.
Gary Doer likely won’t be as pleased with Bill 37 when his NDP is in the opposition benches.
Some aspects of the bill are benign. The adoption of fixed election dates appears to be a purely political move by Premier Gary Doer, who has never been a fan of this staple of right-wing populism. But adopting this now removes one more issue for opposition parties in the next election.
Party allowances have made Tory Leader Hugh McFadyen positively apoplectic, but it's unlikely taxpayers will revolt over the modest sums of money involved. The allowances are calculated on a per-vote basis, and have the potential to provide mainstream parties with up to $1 million over a four-year period between elections. But given that political fundraising has been severely curtailed in recent years, it's not an unreasonable measure.
Union and corporate donations are now a thing of the past in most jurisdictions in Canada. A bit of taxpayer money is a reasonable trade-off to eliminate the influence-peddling that often accompanies big-cheque fundraising.
More contentious are the limits the NDP is putting on advertising between elections.
Limits on party advertising were first brought in by the NDP in 2000 as part of a package that banned corporate and union donations. The Tories have consistently argued that advertising restrictions give the ruling party -- which has access to millions of dollars for 'official' government advertising -- an unfair advantage.
Although Bill 37 raises the amount parties can spend on advertising, the Tories argue it is not enough to compete with the government's advertising machinery.
The Tories know how valuable government advertising is because, quite frankly, when they were in power they used 'official' ads to further their partisan cause. This was confirmed by a memo, uncovered and circulated by the NDP during last year's election, showing that the Tories had planned a government advertising blitz in 1999 leading up to a fall election.
The government ads did not help the Tories win that election but it's evidence all ruling parties use government ads to set the table for an election.
The NDP denies it engages in the same tactics. An examination of the feel-good, post-budget ad campaign the NDP launches each year might betray that claim.
However, if the NDP had thought more about how this bill would appear to opposition parties -- a position the NDP will no doubt reclaim some day -- it might have taken a different approach.
The bill does enforce a blackout of government advertisements for 30 days prior to an election; previously the blackout only lasted for the election campaign. But even as Bill 37 curtails government advertising to some extent, it has the potential to more severely restrict opposition advertising.
The bill will require that all mailings by individual MLAs are vetted through a legislative committee dominated by government MLAs. The 'householder' pamphlet and other mailings are the life blood of an opposition party. The prospect of an NDP-dominated committee approving opposition mailings has the Tories seeing red.
The NDP is no doubt aware that in electoral politics, what goes around comes around. Today's ruling party is tomorrow's resident of the political wilderness. Which means there may be a day coming when the NDP will be sorry they introduced Bill 37.
dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
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