| As the leadership race to replace Ralph Klein heats up the Alberta NDP is expressing concern about the complete lack of rules governing campaign financing for Conservative candidates.
In Alberta, leadership races for individual political parties are not governed by any legislation, meaning candidates can spend as much money as they want on their campaigns and there’s no limit on how much individuals, corporations or unions can donate. There’s also no requirement for Conservative candidates to disclose who funded their campaigns.
NDP leader Brian Mason is calling for new provincial legislation that would ban donations from unions and corporations during political party leadership races, cap the amount of money candidates could receive from individual donors and require candidates to disclose all their campaign donors.
"It’s unacceptable. By all accounts these Tory leadership candidates are bringing in enormous amounts of money – in the millions. Where does that money come from and once the winner becomes the premier what’s to say that person is treating everyone fairly or maybe they are giving special favours to major campaign donors. You’ll never know unless we bring in this change."
Mason says Alberta’s democracy "ought not to be distorted by big money and that’s exactly what’s happening."
"The concern is the large campaign donors get undue influence that ordinary citizens can’t afford and that is not how a healthy democracy should operate," he says.
University of Alberta political science professor Steve Patten agrees that change is needed. He says whoever is elected to replace Klein as the leader of the Conservatives will become the next premier, at least until the next election is called, which could take up to two years.
"We have really lax laws that don’t stop leadership candidates… from being funded by a small group of wealthy individuals or corporations or unions. We don’t have rules that really restrict the influence of money in politics and (the rules) don’t maximize the transparency of the whole process so people know what’s really going on," he says.
However, Patten says he doesn’t believe new legislation will be in the works anytime soon.
"Changing campaign financing seldom helps the governing party and in Alberta we’ve had the same governing party for a long time," he says.
Keith Brownsey, a political science professor at Mount Royal College, describes Alberta’s current campaign financing legislation as "very freewheeling shall we say."
"We talk about transparency and accountability in our political system and of course this province demands it at the national level. We have our premier talking about our corrupt national government and all the rest of it. But we ignore it in our own house. We don’t see it as necessary in Alberta," he says.
The NDP also wants to see changes in provincial election campaign financing. Currently corporations, unions and individuals are allowed to donate up to $30,000 to a political party during an election campaign. Other provinces, as well as the federal government, have much stricter legislation. In 2004, the federal government introduced legislation that bans unions and corporations from donating money to political parties and contributions from individual donors are capped at $5,000. |
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