First We Take Alberta,Then We Take the Hill...
When the NDP swept into Quebec four years ago almost to the day, I was flabbergasted. Long a stalwart, I knew there was support for progressive candidates, but nothing prepared me for the sight of 58 new MPs elected to join my own MP Thomas Mulcair. There was a down side to this, which people that night didn't seem to appreciate: a Conservative majority government. We've seen what King Stephen Harper has accomplished sinceas he turned many of the things that were good about Canada inside out.
Yesterday, voters in Alberta swept a majority NDP government into office, which means that new Premier Rachel Notley should be able to make some major changes in that province. She's not going to be a left-wing as many feared or hoped, but this victory shows how vulnerable Harper's Conservatives are in their homeland.
We need to get the Cons out of Ottawa, we need to take the Hill...
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Ray
(last edited May 13, 2015 11:00AM)
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May 13, 2015 10:58AM
How much money do Canadians spend on their elections compared to Americans on ours? Some of our candidates will spend close to $2 billion dollars and a lot of that money goes to just pay for political advertising.(I can dream about what even half of $2 billion dollars could buy in investment for a alternative fossil-free energy economy) Is there a need in Canada for an equivalent 'repeal Citizens United ' movement up there? Is there a 'Occupy Canada ' organized group against powerful central banks?
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Canadians spend much less than in the US. Contributions have to come from indivdiduals, not from corporations or unions. There are caps on spending by individual candidates and for parties during the election period. Here's some info from the last election in 2011: "The amounts political parties can spend in the ridings varies according to the numbers of voters.The more voters there are in a riding, the more a party can spend to get its candidate elected. So a party running a candidate in Oak Ridges-Markham in Ontario can shell out $132,251 during the campaign, while parties fielding candidates in the riding of Nunavut can spend $14,860.
There are separate spending limits for the political parties and the individual candidates.
Any party that fields a candidate in each of the 308 ridings can spend just more than $21 million in the election campaign, according to Elections Canada. The spending caps on the parties hovered close to $20 million in 2008. the last time."
But that said, parties spend more before the 35 day electoral period, since they can run ads about whatever they want before then.
The situation in provincial elections is somewhat different: I have no idea what the rules are in Alberta are, but there are spending caps too.
Do candidates in Canada start campaigning and raising funds almost two years before they actually announce that they are running for office like in the United States? An American prospective political candidate's SuperPac can raise insane, unlimited amounts of money so long as they 'make-believe' that they are not interested in the candidate's election.
The major difference is that this is a parliamentary system: voters choose their local representative (Member of Parliament), and the leader of the party with the most seats becomes Prime Minister (or in the quaint way that it's put, is invited by the Governor General to form a government.)That means that the race for party leader can be pretty hot and furious. There are spending limits on those races too. The most recent race, in 2013 when Justin Trudeau was elected leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, had a spending limit of $950,000 for each candidate with the proviso that no candidate could carry more than $75,000 in debt. Contributions had to come from individuals with a cap of, I think, $1,200.
This said, it's clear that the parties are always campaigning, with events all the time, and much made of interventions in the House of Commons. But in general, it's much less a money race than in the US.
