Local campaigns are a fiction anyway

The so-called “in and out” affair has been bubbling away just below the surface of public consciousness since about last August. For most of that time, the media has paid it little attention, aside from the occasional puzzled yawn. That it is all over the media now, since the RCMP’s heavily publicized raid of Conservative headquarters, is because a) we now have pictures, b) we have a piece of paper -- the search warrant -- that we were not permitted to see before, and above all because c) the Tories’ heavy-handed attempt to massage the story via selective leaks of the document’s contents backfired horribly....

What has not changed since last August are the facts of the case. It’s easy to get very meta about this sort of thing -- “just the image of the Mounties carting all those boxes out of Tory HQ has got to be very damaging... in politics, the perception is often the reality... etc.” -- but we are obliged, I think, to pay some attention to the actual substance of the charges: in Elections Canada’s brief, that the Conservative Party evaded federal campaign spending limits by routing party advertising expenses through local riding associations. And these remain as obtuse as ever.

For all the opposition hyperventilating about Tory “shell games” and “money-laundering,” it is not clear the Tories did anything wrong. There is in fact no law preventing parties from transferring funds back and forth between the national head office and local riding associations: the Canada Elections Act expressly allows it. See Sect. 404 (2.1): “A transfer of funds is permitted ... if it is (a) from a registered party to an electoral district association of the party; (b) from a registered association to the party with which it is affiliated...”

Similarly, if the local associations choose to pool their resources to purchase advertising -- even through the party -- there is, again, no law against it. Indeed, as the Tories correctly observe, all the parties do it. For example, in the last election, the Conservatives claim the Liberals transferred $1.7-million from the party to the ridings, who in turn purchased $1.3-million in goods and services from the party, without provoking Elections Canada’s wrath.

So it is a bit of a mystery why the present case should be an exception, or why a series of transactions that would each be acceptable on its own should be considered unacceptable when taken together. The closest Elections Canada’s affidavit comes to explaining this is to note that the 67 riding associations who took part in the scheme did not authorize the national party in writing to purchase ads on their behalf, as required by Section 446 (c) of the Act.

But leave aside the letter of the law. Surely this sort of thing is wrong in principle? I’ll grant the Tories were gaming the system. But the “system” assumes that a bright line can be drawn between local and national campaigns, and that however promiscuously funds may be transferred back and forth between them, the actual spending of these can and should be kept separate. That’s highly debatable.

Let’s accept for the moment Elections Canada’s contention, that by expensing local assocations for what were really national ads, the Conservative national campaign was permitted to exceed its legal spending cap of $18.2-million by $1.1-million. Does that mean the Tories had an unfair advantage -- that, as the opposition maintains, they “stole” the last election? It would, if the national campaign, and national spending limits, were all that mattered. But in fact elections to Parliament take place at the riding level -- 308 separate races, each with its own spending limit. A party’s overall ability to bend the electorate’s ear is the sum of the two, national and local. All the Tories did was to transfer funds from one to the other; the total outlay didn’t change. Funds were transferred, as Elections Canada itself observes, only to those ridings with unused spending “room,” and only within those limits.

Of course, as anyone who’s ever followed an election will know, local campaigns are largely a fiction. Probably 80% or more of a voter’s choice has nothing to do with his riding or the candidates in it. The leader, the party, the platform -- these are what matter (probably in that order) and the parties know it, which is why most local ads are more or less indistinguishable from the national ones. Yet Elections Canada appears to believe there exists somewhere a purely local campaign, where party affiliations are unknown and the issues are all contained to the riding. Indeed, had the Conservatives used that extra $1.1-million to purchase more identifiably “local” ads, it is unlikely they would have had a problem, as several commentators have noted.

So this whole business turns on the question: How local is local? Run an ad with a big picture of Stephen Harper and the slogan “Vote Joe Blow, Your Stephen Harper Candidate in Central West,” and it’s local. Run the same picture with the slogan “Support The Harper Team,” followed by a line in smaller type noting “In Central West, Your Conservative Candidate is Joe Blow,” and it’s national. Or might be -- it all depends on Elections Canada’s interpretation. Maybe if the second line were bigger? Or the camera lingered on it longer?

If you want something to get upset about, you should know that a good part of all this spending, national or local, is on your dime: whether through the tax credits for political contributions, or the reimbursement of candidates’ expenses, or the infamous $1.75-per-vote “allowance” brought in under the Chretien reforms. If you ask me, that’s a scandal. But whether a party spends with its left hand or its right? Meh.