Election Handbook “oops”
By now every potential Calgary Municipal Election candidate who has picked up a nomination package from the City should have received the following letter. The letter informs candidates of an error in the handbook that was part of their nomination package.
An “oops” to be sure, but no harm, no foul, right? I’ll give you one guess as to what Sections 147.3(1) (a), (b) and (c) of the Local Authorities Election Act deals with. If you have been following the relationship between the municipalities and the Province at all for the past three years you probably guessed right away: campaign finances.
Here is specifically what that section of the act says:
So what does this little “oops” mean?
At first glance it looks like it means that all bets are off and there are no campaign contribution limits. This is however not the case. Section 147.2 of the Act deals with limitations and it is in full effect still.
All this mistake means is that you don’t need to keep your campaign monies in a bank account. Sock it away under your mattress for all the Provincial Government cares.
Presumably these clauses have not been proclaimed because incumbents (and potentially others) who were fundraising for a run before April 22, 2010 would find it difficult to undertake the full letter of the law if they had already been spending funds prior to that date. 147.3(1) (c) being the hardest to do if you’ve already spent money on non-campaign related expenses prior to that date.
I expect the Premier to ask the Lieutenant Governor to proclaim these clauses within days of the October 18, 2010 municipal elections so as to ensure no more ‘gray periods’ can exist.
Read the entire Local Authorities Election Act visit the Queen’s Printer here: http://www.qp.alberta.ca/574.cfm?page=L21.cfm&leg_type=Acts&isbncln=9780779747795
Learn more about the process/history of 2010 Bill 9 including reading dates and Hansard links here: http://www.assembly.ab.ca/net/index.aspx?p=bills_status&selectbill=009
Cross-posted to CalgaryPolitics.com
Municipal elections and confusing legislation
Now that the spring is upon us and we are just six months away, many wonks are turning their thoughts to the municipal election in October. With Bill 9 receiving royal assent last week, you can include the Alberta Legislature in that group.
After the Bill was given assent into law, I gave it a read hoping to provide readers of my blog some insight beyond what has been given in the main stream media. Sadly I can’t give you any. I still have no idea what it says.
It’s a complicated mess of ‘this part is cut’ and ‘this is what it’s replaced with’ and ‘this is something new’. I felt stupid just trying to figure out what is new, what is old, and what is gone, let alone what it all means. Why can’t legislation be written for normal people? Why can’t it show the whole law as it stands now, instead of just an summary of all the changes, which forces you to go find previous versions to do some kind of legal, time-travelling mash-up? No wonder so many people breaking laws say things like “I didn’t know it was illegal” if we make finding out what is legal and illegal so hard.
(My solution would be to just have a bill that shows the deleted parts as text with a strikethough and new text as bold. Or new in green and deleted in red. Whatever. There just has be a better way. But I digress, because this is not what this post is about.)
Apparently the legal minds at the City of Calgary are having the same sorts of difficulty as I am. Although obviously they got through Bill 9 in enough detail to realize there is a section which don’t make sense.
Yesterday the Mayor sent the following letter to the Minister in charge of municipalities:
2010 April 27
The Honourable Hector Goudreau
Minister of Municipal Affairs
Government of Alberta
Municipal Affairs
104, 10800-97 Avenue
Edmonton, AB T5K 2B6Dear Minister Goudreau:
Re: Bill 9 – Local Authorities Election Statutes Amendment Act, 2010
I am writing you in respect of the above noted statute, which received Royal Assent on April 22, 2010, and is now in effect.
I understand that Bill 9 was intended to clarify certain issues raised by the amendments to the Local Authorities Election Act (RSA 2000, c. L-21) resulting from the Local Authorities Election (Finance and Contribution Disclosure) Amendment Act, 2009 (SA 2009, c.10; formerly Bill 203).
In particular, section 147.6 of the Local Authorities Election Act requires that:
(1) candidates for municipal office must file a declaration outlining the total amount of campaign contributions held by the candidate, including any surplus money from previous campaigns; and
(2) if the total amounts held by a candidate exceed $500, the candidate must pay the excess to the municipality.
Both of these requirements must be met within 3 months following the coming into force of the Local Authorities Election (Finance and Contribution Disclosure) Amendment Act, 2009. That statute came into force on February 3, 2010; accordingly, the above requirements must be met by May 3, 2010.
However, the Bill 9 amendments to the Local Authorities Election Act included the addition of the following section:
147.92(1) Sections 147.5,147.6,147.7(2) and (3) and 147.91(b) apply to campaign funds on or after December 1, 2011.
(2) Subsection (1) is deemed to have come into force on February 3, 2010.
Can you clarify that it was the intention of the Legislature in adding section 147.92 to delay the operation of section 147.6 until after the upcoming municipal elections taking place in October of this year? In other words, was it intended that a candidate would not be required to file his or her declaration and pay any surplus campaign funds pursuant to section 147.6 until December 1, 2011?
Furthermore, if the above was in fact intended, how is this to be reconciled with section 147.4(1} of the Local Authorities Election Act, as amended by Bill 9, which is a similar disclosure provision and which requires that candidates for municipal office file disclosure statements and pay any campaign surplus in excess of $500 to the municipality by March 1,2011?
In short, kindly clarify on what date candidates for municipal office are to file declarations or disclosure statements and pay any campaign surplus to the municipality.
I appreciate your assistance with clarifying this issue.
Sincerely,
Dave Bronconnier
MAYOR
I barely understand the question being asked here, but after several readings it seems to me the Province has multiple pieces of legislation, which are either contradictory, or mandating required time travel on the part of candidates. Either way; I agree, clarification is needed.
And I’m happy to see I’m not the only one who is confused.
Live tweeting #rebootab for Metro Calgary
Reboot Alberta 2.0 is underway! Granted so far all we’ve done is mingle and drink at the bar while watching Olympic highlights and the Canada/Slovakia hockey game.
As part of Reboot Alberta I will be live tweeting the event. As an added challenge, not only will I be tweeting for my followers and myself, but I will also be tweeting for Metro Calgary and their readers.
Last week I was approached by Metro Calgary Managing Editor Darren Krause (who you can follow on Twitter here) about my willingness to participate in a journalistic experiment for his publication. Coming out of the Manning Centre Conference on the Alberta’s Future he was looking a way to potentially integrate information about events such as that and Reboot into a format that is interesting to his readers AND allows for ongoing, in the moment, updates from the conference.
There is something very different from writing a post event review. Theoretically this will allow readers to get the feel of what the event was like in the moment. So, the idea he had – the idea we are going to try to implement – is that I will live tweet the event and Metro will publish a selection of my tweets that provide the feel of the event in their Monday edition.
This obviously provides a bit of pause for me. Not only are my tweets going out to my 1,300 followers but they are also going out to Lord knows how many Metro readers. Will this change what I write? Maybe. I guess time will tell. At the very least it provides a more serious attention to Reboot Alberta’s Chatham House rules. These rules, which Reboot operates under, state that anything you hear can be repeated, but it can only be attributed with expressed permission.
So look out what you say around me! Who knows, it may end up in the paper. Just let me know if you want your brilliance attributed.
Finally, a big thanks the Darren Krause and Metro Calgary for trying something new and different. Hopefully this experiment works and is interesting. Either way, credit is due for MSM trying to integrate a new kind of journalism. I’m looking forward to it!
Alberta’s proposed electoral boundary MAPS!
Yesterday the Alberta Electoral Boundary Commission released its interim report. You can download a full copy of it here [PDF]. But let’s face it, all you really care about is the maps section. What area do you live in now? What new constituencies have been created?!
Well, me and my mad Photoshop skillz are here to help you out.
Below are three maps I put together to help sort out the changes for you. I’ve layered the current (black) boundaries over top of the proposed new boundaries (red). Feel free to click on each of the images for a better view of the changes.
Alberta:
(Sorry, this one is big so it’s harder to see the changes without getting up close.)
Calgary:
Edmonton:
If you are looking for larger copies, I’ve uploaded them to my Flickr account. If you need still larger copies, I have those too. Just email me.
A political party that is willing to adapt!? Meet the Alberta Party
It is not very often you hear about a political party being willing to rethink all of its policies and principles. Somehow in the process of moulding themselves into representing what the majority of citizens want, these core ideals that formed the initial impetus for the creation of the party – sometimes decades old and potentially out of date or irrelevant – escape scrutiny. I believe in order to really affect change, we must all be willing to take a deep look inside ourselves to find what flaws may be holding us back. Without doing this, and examining our principles, we would really just be rearranging the deck chairs (policies) on an extremely poorly designed ship that runs the risk of sinking if it were to innocently graze an iceberg.
This is why I have to applaud the Alberta Party. After decades of near irrelevance, the party has lifted up its eyes and has publicly stated it is willing to temporarily suspend its policy document to entertain if there may be a better way.
In case you haven’t heard yet, the Alberta Party, which has been in existence since 1985, last month began having conversations with a group of political upstarts calling themselves Renew Alberta. The culmination of those discussions resulted in an announcement this past week of a “merger” between the two groups.
I know several of the Albertans involved in Renew Alberta. The one thing they share in common, is a passion to find a better path toward creating a better Alberta. While they, like the Liberals, Wildrose Alliance and Alberta NDP, believe we deserve a better government, what really sets them apart is their belief that there must be a more participatory form of democracy in our province. Their focus is not so much on what the other parties are doing, as it is on the 60% of Albertans that did not vote and those of the remaining 40% that felt their vote really didn’t matter. Engagement can be a powerful thing – and it something that the majority of Albertans obviously don’t feel.
The enthusiasm and work ethic of the Renew Alberta people is admirable. As is the vision of the Alberta Party to accept them into their fold to help determine if their policies really do connect with Albertans or if there is a way for them to course correct.
The Big Listen is what the Alberta Party is billing as the focus of this collaboration. And again, I think it is commendable that a political party is willing to let the public at large dictate what their policies should be, instead of a small group of members who may or may not represent the views of Albertans.
Will the Alberta Party be right wing or left wing at the end of The Big Listen? Who knows?! But that’s the thing that excites me. If done right and fair, the one thing we will know for sure, is that they represent the ‘average’ Albertan. If they can build a regular feedback loop into their governing structure, this could make them… well, dare I say it?, the perfect party. One that is not governed by petty politics or the whims of its caucus, leadership or members; but instead one that is directly governed by the average citizen.
Of course all this utopian talk is more than likely ‘pie in the sky’ dreaming. Let’s be realistic for a moment and not get too far ahead of ourselves. Many folks out there appear to be skipping over this step. Jane Morgan, the former executive director of the Wildrose Alliance has raised some very good questions about how this merger came to be within the structure of the Alberta Party’s constitution. Alberta Party board members have done a decent job of responding to her criticism, but at the end of the day it is the current Alberta Party membership who will have the final say. Either they will embrace this new way their party will operate in the future, or they re-trench and leave. I certainly hope it is the former, and that they, as well as their board, improve their governance structure down the road. They will have to to be able to control the beast they could potentially be releasing by putting policy decisions in the hands of the public.
A few people have also questioned the merger of these two groups: The Alberta Party previously dismissed as a ‘right-wing’ fringe party, and Renew Alberta as ‘lefties’. How could it be two groups of people, so different in make up, could come together so seamlessly to work for a better future? Well, if the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ can, in this instance, put aside their differences and come together in the ‘centre’ – which is by definition where the majority of Albertans reside on the political spectrum – then their may just be hope for intelligent discussion free of rhetoric after all.
(Another thing that excites me about this new party: the diversity. The Alberta Party stereotypically is seen as older and rural, while Renew Alberta, rightly or wrongly, is seen as younger and urban. How nice to see differing people getting along for once.)
I think the ground work for this partnership is laid out very well in the Alberta Party’s (now temporarily suspended) policy document entitled, “Reforming Alberta”.
From the introduction to the Alberta Party’s Policies and Procedures document we can see what the two groups may share in common when it says: “We demand accountability and responsibility from our elected officials and civil servants… [T]he Alberta Party has created a bottom up organization in which the power resides with the members…”
Even it’s mission statement could be seen as something the two groups might commonly share: “To protect and promote the freedoms and best interests of Albertans.” One of the tactics outlines for how the Alberta Party will fufill this mission is “increase citizen participation in democracy by improving the process.”
I for one, can’t wait to see where this new group may go with lofty goals such as these. Either way, it will certainly be a thrill to watch.
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