Brampton councillors cry foul over changes to municipal election rules
Amendments to Ontario’s Municipal Elections Act completed second reading March 23

yorkregion.com
April 5, 2017
By Peter Criscione

Brampton city councillors are crying foul over changes to municipal election rules introduced to help level the playing field in local democracy.

Amendments to Ontario’s Municipal Elections Act, which sets out wholesale changes to campaign rules, completed second reading on March 23 and referred to committee for further discussion.

Staff on Wednesday sought committee of council’s responses to proposed amendments including increasing individual campaign contribution limits from $750 to $1,200, establishing limits to personal campaign financing and changes the start date of the new council term to Nov. 15, 2018.

City councillors spent much of the committee discussion targeting Ontario’s introduction of third party advertising.

“It essentially takes power out of the hands of residents,” said rookie Coun. Gurpreet Dhillon, warning of negative advertising and other campaign tactics more akin to U.S. politics.

“Rather than candidate against candidate you’ll have candidate against candidate and other people muddying the waters.”

Under the new rules, “third party advertising” would allow messaging in any medium (billboard, newspaper, radio, etc.) that supports or opposes a candidate.

Legislation prohibits corporations and trade unions from being eligible to contribute to municipal election campaigns, but they can register as third party advertisers and make contributions to third party advertisers.

The possibility for third party advertising is common in municipal campaigns. However, registration of third parties has been added “to account for advertising that was already taking place” but “never accounted for,” according to city staff.

“There isn’t anything less transparent than third party advertising,” said Regional Coun. Elaine Moore, arguing corporate and unions have been handed a loophole on making campaign contributions.

“I think it was absolutely put in place to compensate for corporate and union contributions.”

New rules also place maximums on the amount of money candidates can contribute to their own campaigns (self contributions). Staff pointed out that third party advertisers face no such restrictions. A decision on maximum expenses on third parties hasn’t been determined, but the prospect has made some incumbents uneasy.

“For me, it’s just alarming,” Moore said. “Unless there are some very strict guidelines on how much a third party advertiser can spend, this is not a transparent process.”

Wednesday’s discussion around the council table is the latest on proposed changes to municipal election rules.

During a meeting last October, local politicians voiced opposition to many of the voting changes introduced by Queen’s Park to help level the playing field in local democracy.

Council took a firm position to not support ranked ballot voting, where voters pick candidates in order of preference (potentially first, second and third). The candidate with the most votes - 50 per cent plus one - wins, just as in the current system. Proponents of the system say ranked balloting creates a more representative democracy.

At the time, some councillors, including those who have been on council for decades, argued ranked balloting is too complicated and prefer the status quo.

During that October meeting councillors also pulled the plug on the idea of allowing voters to use the Internet to cast a ballot in municipal elections over concerns over voter fraud and after experiencing "sticker shock" over the $1 million cost.