Election signs can't take root in Ottawa until Aug. 20

OttawaCitizen.com
Aug. 4, 2015
Andrew Duffy

Election signs have already started to sprout on lawns in Windsor, Hamilton, Oakville, Toronto and Kingston, but in Ottawa, the federal campaign will bloom late this year.

A City of Ottawa bylaw will delay the flowering — some would say blight — of election signs until Aug. 20.

The city reminded candidates this week of that official restriction through a news release. The bylaw prohibits election signs from being posted on private property until 60 days before the Oct. 19 vote. Signs can only go up on public property, such as road allowances, on Sept. 19 — 30 days before the election date — but must not interfere with the safe movement of traffic.

Roger Chapman, chief of bylaw and regulatory services, said the city’s sign bylaw was a compromise.

“The rationale was about trying to strike that balance between residents’ right to express their political opinions and, for the city, to regulate the proliferation of signs,” he said.

Chapman said he’s hopeful that this year’s federal election candidates will comply: “I don’t anticipate any problems, and there haven’t been any so far.”

Ottawa takes a more restrictive approach than many municipalities in the province, including Toronto, where lawn signs started to go up as soon as the election writ was issued Sunday.

“I already have 200 lawn signs up,” Toronto Liberal MP Adam Vaughan, a candidate in the newly-created Spadina-Fort York riding, boasted in an interview Tuesday.

Vaughan said lawn signs are one of the few measures that candidates have to secure a commitment from voters. “Signs are important,” he said. “They show some organizational capacity, but as a candidate it’s also about the only way you can lock in a vote. If I get a sign location, then I know it’s a vote.”

The Canada Elections Act says a federal election campaign must last at least 36 days, but it sets out no maximum length of time. Given that fact, Prime Minister Stephen Harper opted for an unusually long campaign — 78 days — because he believes it offers his party some strategic advantages, not the least of which is the ability to spend more money on advertising.

Recent federal elections have lasted five to seven weeks, so the city’s sign bylaw was not an issue in previous campaigns. This year’s 11-week campaign, however, brought the restrictions into play.

In the newly formed riding of Kanata-Carleton, candidates welcomed the limitations. Liberal candidate Karen McCrimmon said the extraordinary length of this year’s election campaign means Canadians will be “overwhelmed and sick and tired of this” by election day. “And I’m sure that’s part of plan,” she charged.

Green Party candidate Andrew West said he supports in theory the idea of being able to put up an election sign anytime. But in the context of this election, he said, the city’s restrictions are helpful.

“I personally think the election was called way too early,” he said. “I think the Conservatives did so because they have the most money and they wanted to step on the necks of parties that are newer and don’t have as much money. So I personally think this helps to level out the playing field.”

NDP candidate John Hansen said Ottawa’s sign bylaw is not a problem as long as it’s applied evenly, but he warned there’s risk of confusion when election signs are going up in many other municipalities.

The riding’s Conservative candidate, Walter Pamic, did not respond to an email message Tuesday.

Several Ontario municipalities, including Mississauga, have banned election signs from public property because of residents’ concerns about the clutter and waste generated by frequent election campaigns.