Next election campaign could be four months long, will cause spending ‘orgy’
By ABBAS RANA, CHRIS PLECASH
Published: Monday, 05/26/2014
If Prime Minister Stephen Harper sticks to the fixed election date in Oct. 19, 2015, the next federal election campaign will be the longest and the most expensive in Canadian political history as the unofficial campaign will start right after the House adjourns in June 2015 and will continue until the Oct. 19 election day, causing an “orgy” of election spending, say Hill insiders.
Don Boudria, a former six-term MP and Cabinet minister who retired in 2004 and served in various Cabinet portfolios in the Jean Chrétien government, told
The Hill Times that the 2015 election campaign could be the longest ever because the writ for the 36-day campaign would be issued Sept. 13. According to the Parliamentary calendar, the House is scheduled to adjourn on June 23, 2015 and return on Sept. 21.
Instead, Mr. Boudria said, political parties and their candidates will ramp up their campaign activities about three months in advance, from the moment the House adjourns for summer.
“The House will adjourn June 23 and everybody’s going to go. They’re not going to take this summer off, they’re not going to go to their cottage. They’re obviously going to start campaigning the next day, if not before,” said Mr. Boudria, now a senior counsellor at
Hill & Knowlton Strategies.
If Prime Minister Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) follows the fixed election date, it will be the first federal election in Canadian political history when everybody knows the exact date in advance. This will lead to an extended unofficial campaign with expensive, heavy rotations of attack ads and other campaign activities from all parties, said Mr. Boudria.
“It’s going to cause an orgy of election spending during the summer of next year because Parliament did not change the election spending rules” in Bill C-23, the Conservatives’ electoral reform legislation, said Mr. Boudria.
Some Conservative insiders and opposition parties have been speculating over the last few weeks that Prime Minister Harper could decide to trigger an earlier election after the next federal budget to take advantage of momentum generated from next year’s expected balanced federal budget with billions of dollars of surplus.
The fixed election date law passed by Parliament in May 2007 says elections are to be held on “the third Monday of October in the fourth calendar year following the previous general election.” The last federal election took place on May 2, 2011 so the next election date is Oct. 19, 2015.
Even with this fixed elections date law in place, the Canada Elections Act “does not prevent a general election from being called at another date.” The act requires that the election campaign period last a minimum of 36 days, but it does not specify a maximum.
There is no pre-writ spending limit for election advertising or other campaign activities but Elections Canada does restrict the amount of money that can be spent on election activities during the writ period.
The spending limit for national political parties during the writ period is calculated by how many candidates each party is running and the number of voters in each riding where there’s a candidate. In the last election, the Conservatives, who ran candidates in all but one riding, had a spending limit of $20,995,088; the NDP and Liberals, who ran candidates in all 308 ridings, had a $21,025,793 limit. The Conservatives did not run a candidate against former Quebec Independent MP André Arthur.
The three national parties usually spend up to the maximum in election campaigns and sometimes even try to circumvent the spending rules by coming up with creative ways to spend more money than they are allowed.
Since Prime Minister Harper formed government in 2006, Conservatives spent millions of dollars on attack ads to pummel their opponents, which yielded positive political results. Attack ads against former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion (Saint-Laurent-Cartierville, Que.) were in high rotation right after he was elected as party leader in 2006, portraying him as bumbling, incompetent, and “not a leader.” Conservatives also demonized Mr. Dion’s Green Shift policy in the 2008 federal election, describing it as a “tax on everything.”
The Harper Conservatives ran an all-out advertising blitz to discredit former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, portraying him as an elitist snob and an opportunist “just visiting” Canada to become prime minister after spending 34 years abroad.
Since Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) became the Liberal leader last year, Conservatives have run ads presenting him as a party leader who is “in way over his head.”
Up until now, Conservatives have been able to successfully execute this strategy because of their financial superiority over the Liberals and the New Democrats. It remains to be seen if the Liberals and the New Democrats will unleash any attack ads against the Conservatives in the pre-writ period next year.
Conservative MP Peter Goldring (Edmonton East, Alta.) agreed, in an interview with
The Hill Times, that the candidates and political parties will start campaigning next summer when the House adjourns. He said candidates will be trying to attend as many community events as possible to make themselves visible in their ridings.
“It’s for sure that people will be campaigning through the summer, that’s just a given, but it’ll be [an] unofficial campaign. People will have been nominated by then. For sure, people will be trying to position themselves through that period of time,” Mr. Goldring said.
He said it’s no surprise that political campaign activities and spending will intensify before the writ is dropped next year because Canadian political parties are already in a permanent campaign mode.
“They’re doing this all the time. They’re doing it right now. It’ll certainly be heightened during that period of time,” he said.
Conservative strategist Tim Powers agreed.
“I think the next campaign is already effectively beginning. Whether you have an extra 80 days or not, for all intents and purposes, people are becoming more election-minded now and you see this in different positions that parties are taking and policies they’re advocating now. I don’t think it really matters that much,” said Mr. Powers, who is vice-chairman of Summa Strategies.
“We’ve seen both the Liberals and New Democrats follow the lead of Conservatives and spend money on advertising outside of the election window. We see extensive fundraising and appeals made by all parties outside of the election window on issues, which is all a form of campaigning. I do think, even though we’re in a majority period, we are in [a] ‘permanent campaign.’ The official dates are markers of convenience.”
Former NDP campaign director Brad Lavigne, now vice-president of Hill & Knowlton, said that after the House adjourns, political parties will use a variety of tools to define their opponents and to determine what the ballot question will be.
“The months between Parliament’s sitting and the actual writ drop, obviously without any conditions on how much money can be spent by parties… it’s going to be open campaign season to help shape what the fall vote will be about. It will be able to define what the ballot box question will be. Millions of dollars may get spent in that pre-writ spending in order to shape the discussion,” he said.
NDP national director Anne McGrath said that since Mr. Harper became Prime Minister in 2006 and because of the past two minority governments, election readiness for all parties, at all times, has become a routine. She said that even though the Conservatives have a majority government, they still operate as if they’re in a minority government and function in permanent campaign mode.
“It’s actually what we’ve lived with since the mid-2000s,” she said.
“It feels like the election is always on—even now. It has during minority Parliaments, and it still does during this majority Parliament. I’m not sure it’s the fixed election date that’s the issue as [much as] it is this kind of move towards permanent campaign mode.”
The Conservative Party’s controversial Fair Elections Act legislation that’s before Parliament addressed a number of issues related to election law but not the issue of pre-writ spending.
Mr. Goldring said that in his view, no restriction on spending outside of the writ period is required. He argued that there are already significant restrictions in place on fundraising for political parties and candidates, so if a party is able to raise enough money to spend in between elections, it should be allowed.
But Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Man.), in a voicemail message to
The Hill Times, said that due to the politics of the Fair Elections Act, there has been a lack of discussion and debate on a wide range of issues, including inadequate restrictions on pre-writ spending. He said that pre-writ spending is something that should be addressed because political parties with “big pockets” can spend as much money as they like in between elections with very little accountability.
The Hill Times
