Elections Canada is out this afternoon with the reports on third-party advertising during the last election campaign. Under Elections Canada rules, any organization that is not a political party and that spends more than $500 during an election campaign has to file a report with Elections Canada, within four months of the election, spelling out how much they spent and where they got the money.
Some highights:
- The “Anybody But Conservative” campaign that was quarterbacked by Newfoundland's Progressive Conservative Premier Danny Williams was certainly successful. It managed to sweep Stephen Harper's Conservatives from Labrador and the island. (Harper would have his revenge, I suppose, by naming defeated MP Fabian Manning to the Senate). The ABC campaign said it spent $81,389.62 during the election campaign and it all came from one donor: The Progressive Conservative Association of Newfoundland and Labrador. That money was spent to develop an ABC Web site, put up an ABC highway billboard, and run some TV and newspaper ads.
- Combined, third-party groups spent about $360,000 advertising their points of view during the federal election. To put that in perspective, the combined spend of the national campaigns for the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP would have been around $60-million.
- The third party that spent the most was the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, which spent $167,000 during the campaign. The ABC campaign ranked second. And then a social justice/union group in Montreal, Les Sans-Chemise spent the third most at about $41,000, most likely spreading some messages that would have helped the Bloc Quebecois. The National Citizens Coalition spent $24,727.82 on advertising even though it collected $86,516 from individuals whose donations were specifically targetted for election advertising. Former Encana CEO and Harper government support Gwyn Morgan donated $20,000 to the NCC for this purpose.
- Here's the list of third party donors and the total amount of money each group donated:
Third Party's Name Amount Tourism Industry Association of Canada $167,067.67 ABC Campaign $81,389.62 Les Sans-Chemise $41,503.23 National Citizens Coalition Inc. $24,727.82 Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC) $8,975.80 Canadian Union of Postal Workers $6,581.96 Guihua, Li $4,271.41 Dong Yu Zhi $3,514.34 One Step at a Time $3,463.32 Ontario Business Network $3,453.45 Alan Deng / Zhiliang Deng $3,394.81 Canadian Shooting Sports Association $2,923.08 Wei Lang $2,859.38 CommunityAIR $2,513.54 Nanaimo, Duncan and District Labour Council $1,995.00 Coalition of Childcare Advocates of BC $1,796.00 Friends of Bill Casey $605.68 Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions $0.00-
David, the story may be in which returns have *not* been posted yet.
So, what ads did the Tourism Industry run? “Come to Canada and watch less than half of us vote”?
Is the full report concerning ABC Campaign ($81,389.62) available for the public? This campaign was to be financed by the provincial PC Party, which received most of is revenues from company contributions. While this would be illegal contributions for Federal elections it is not for provincial. Danny used that loop hole to open a back door to finance the “ABC”. What other manipulation occurred? If it is available, I am interested in seeing the full report.