In a previous post, we looked at the 2000-2007 Balance Sheets of the Liberal Party, NDP and Bloc Québécois. Today I've been able to add Balance Sheet summaries for the Conservative Party and its antecedents (the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties), along with those of the Green Party. Summary tables for all the parties have been prepared, and can for now be found in a temporary location, here.

A reminder about data sources: most of the various returns that parties, ridings, candidates are required to file with Elections Canada can be found here. Except for the ones that can be found here. The rules on what needed to be filed by whom changed in 2000, 2004 and again in 2007, and each time Elections Canada changed their web interface in terms of how to search, and what you could find when you did.

Registered parties been required to file Balance Sheets with Elections Canada since 2000, and they are available up to the end of 2007 (2008 returns will be available in July of 2009 if past practice holds). On December 7, 2003, the Canadian Reform Alliance Party of Canada ("Canadian Alliance") and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada merged to become the Conservative Party of Canada. From an accounting perspective, each party issued final 2003 statements effective December 6, 2003, and the Conservative Party's 2004 Financial Statements reported on the period from December 7, 2003 to Dec 31, 2004.

Believe it or not, there are some interesting stories once you dig down into the statements. To help make this topic moderately interesting for numerophobes and non-financial gurus, I've included another quiz about the newly added parties' financial assets and liabilities:

• Q1. Which of the Conservative Party's ancestors brought a greater net worth to the merged party at the end of 2003?
• Q2. Which of the Conservative Party's ancestors brought more assets?
• Q3. Which party showed the highest Net Worth in 2000?
• Q4. Which party is paying the highest interest rate on its loans?
• Q5. Which party purchased a "Campaign Van" in 2005 and sold it at a loss in 2006?
• Q6. Which party bought the rights to a logo for $15K in 2005?
• Q7. Which party spent almost a quarter of a million dollars on a Computer Information Management System between 2003-2004?
• Q8. Match the lender to the party:
• Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
• An Anglican church official
• Bracken House Trust
• Cellular Networking Perspective
• A former activist who subsequently quit the party and sued Wikipedia, Google and other websites for alleged defamatory postings
• Consortium loan from six national banks
• Q9. Which party had the most cash on hand at the end of 2007?
• Q10. Which party had the highest Working Capital (Short-term Assets - Short-term Liabilities) at the end of 2007?

Score one point for each correct answer. A perfect score this time is 15.

• A1. A trick question in one way, because both partners had a negative net worth on merger day: $-2.5M for the Canadian Alliance and $-4.6M for the Progressive Conservatives.
• A2. The Canadian Alliance brought more assets into the merger ($4.9M) than the PCs ($1.3M).
• A3. The Green Party was the only one of these parties to have a positive Net Worth in 2000 ($8787 vs. $-1.2M for the Canadian Alliance and $-10.8M for the PCs).
• A4. The Conservative Party had no loans on the books in 2007, but was paying Prime + 1.5% in 2006. That year the Green Party obtained bank financing at Prime + 3%, but their rate dropped to Prime + 1% in 2007.
• A5. The Conservatives bought a campaign van for about $50K in 2005, and reported an $13K loss over depreciated value on its sale (for $26K) the following year.
• A6. The Green Party paid $15K in 2005 for the rights to the logo agreement that G4G Inc ("Goods for Greens") had with the Green Party of Ontario. The rights are recorded as "Goodwill", an Intangible Asset that depreciates at 10% annually.
• A7. The Canadian Alliance spent $160K in 2003 and expected to spend another $60K in 2004 and $10K annually thereafter on a Computer Information Management System. The Conservative Party appears to have assumed these costs along with the tangible assets.
• A8. Match the lender to the party:
• Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (Conservatives; also part of the consortium below)
• An Anglican church official (Greens)
• Bracken House Trust (actually a separate party trust fund, which was dissolved and whose assets of $4.2M were transferred to the Progressive Conservative Party in 2001 to reduce the party's bank indebtedness)
• Cellular Networking Perspective (Greens)
• A former activist who subsequently quit the party and sued Wikipedia, Google and other websites for alleged defamatory postings (Greens)
• Consortium loan from six national banks (Canadian Alliance)
• A9. The Conservative Party had $4.8M in cash on hand at the end of 2007, while the Green Party had $278K. Remember, the 4th quarter public party financing subsidies are payable during the first week of January, and are thus not included in these figures.
• A10. Again, the Conservatives led with $4.2M in Working Capital at the end of 2007 while the Greens reported $242K.

I'm continuing to work on the parties' other annual financial statements and reports. This is slow-going work and is competing with other priorities, which is why I haven't been posting a lot here lately. However I do plan to post something soon on another recent topic of interest ... the proposed changes to Ontario's seat count in the House of Commons ... which I've received some reader inquiries about.

So, Happy New Year to all Pundits and other readers of the Pundits' Guide, and thanks for reading!

Labels: Conservatives, Greens, Party Finance

A Monday morning column by the Halifax Chronicle-Herald's Dan Leger on Liberal parliamentary strategy for the forthcoming session argued that, were Michael Ignatieff to prop up the Conservative government, it might in some ways be beneficial for a party that is "still broke and scarred by internal battles dating back to the Chretien-Martin years."

This assertion earned a gentle rebuke all the way from Montego Bay. Liberal pundit and Ignatieff supporter Warren Kinsella countered that:

Leger's observation deserves a quick response, because I've heard it from a few other pundits, too.

First off, the Liberal Party of Canada isn't "broke." In fact, it's got its lowest post-election-loss level of debt ever, somewhere between two and three million. And with the Elections Act-mandated subsidy - you know all about that now, don't you? - the LPC will be quite election-ready, thank you very much.

That's not all: on the former leadership campaign of Michael Ignatieff, our web site was attracting a significant number of donors. Our web team - a very impressive bunch - were very effective at getting folks to donate.

As luck would have it, I was already working on compiling and organizing the party's financial reports for inclusion in the Pundits' Guide, so whether the Liberal Party is broke is a factual question we should be able to answer. Sort of. I might be a database programmer and retired political organizer, but I'm no accountant and the securities course is a distant memory. Luckily there's Wikipedia on balance sheet basics. And hopefully some readers to help out.

First a note on data sources: most of the various returns that parties, ridings, candidates are required to file with Elections Canada can be found here. Except for the ones that can be found here. The rules on what needed to be filed by whom changed in 2000, 2004 and again in 2007, and each time Elections Canada changed their web interface in terms of how to search, and what you could find when you did.

In a previous post, I compiled all the Annual Subsidy Allowance payments made to registered parties. This time we look at party Balance Sheets, which registered parties been required to file since 2000 and which are available up to the end of 2007 (2008 returns will be available in July of 2009 if past practice holds). So far, I've completed my look at the Bloc, Liberals and NDP. See if you can guess which of the coalition partners (or supporters) is the correct answer to each of the following:

• Q1. Which party just moved into the black (i.e., Net Worth, aka Members' Equity or [Total Assets - Total Liabilities] > 0) for the first time since 1999?
• Q2. Which party shows the highest Net Worth in 2007?
• Q3. Which party is paying the highest interest rate on its loans?
• Q4. Which party rented a warehouse from 2005-2006?
• Q5. Which party owns its own office building and earned $192K in net rental income last year?
• Q6. Which party owns its own printing equipment?
• Q7. Match the lender to the party:
• Citizens Bank of Canada
• Caisse Desjardins
• Royal Bank of Canada
• Consortium loan from six national banks
• Fonds Lauzière pour la souveraineté
• Banque Nationale
• Canadian Labour Congress
• Q8. Which party had the highest level of outstanding bank loans and/or bank indebtedness at the end of 2007?
• Q9. Which party had the most cash on hand at the end of 2007?
• Q10. Which party had the highest Working Capital (Short-term Assets - Short-term Liabilities) at the end of 2007?

Score one point for each correct answer. Yeah, I know some of the lender ones were gimmes. A perfect score is 16.

• A1. The Bloc just moved into positive net worth territory in 2007 ($478,885), after being down as much as $1.8M just two years before.
• A2. The NDP had the highest net worth of the three parties in 2007: $4.7M, to the Liberals' $2.8M and the Bloc's $479K.
• A3. The Liberals were being charged Prime+3% on their last loan, as reported in 2007, while the NDP were paying Prime+1.25% on their loans (all discharged by 2007), and the Bloc pays Prime+1% for their lines of credit.
• A4. The Bloc leased a warehouse in 2005, with a lease expiring Jan. 31, 2006.
• A5. The NDP bought a commercial building in downtown Ottawa for $4M in 2004, and earns rental income from other tenants. It earned $80K in 2004, lost $27K in 2005, earned $74K in 2006, and earned $193K in 2006 2007. The Bloc and the Liberals lease their office space.
• A6. The Liberal Party specifically reports its printing equipment as a separate line item in the Tangible Assets notes to their financial statements.
• A7. Match the lender to the party:
• Citizens Bank of Canada (NDP)
• Caisse Desjardins (Bloc)
• Royal Bank of Canada (Liberals)
• Consortium loan from six national banks (Liberals)
• Fonds Lauzière pour la souveraineté (Bloc)
• Banque Nationale (Liberals)
• Canadian Labour Congress (NDP)
• A8. The Liberals had $1.5M in outstanding bank loans at the end of 2007, while the NDP and the Bloc had no outstanding loans, but were into their lines of credit a bit (the NDP by $230K, and the Bloc by $25K). The fourth quarter subsidy allowance is not payable until the first week of January, however, so that might explain the low cash reserves and high receivables all-round.
• A9. The Liberals had $2.7M in cash on hand at the end of 2007, while the Bloc had $11K (less its $25K dip into the line of credit), and the NDP stood at 0 but were into the line of credit by $230K.
• A10. Thanks to that cash on hand, the Liberals also had working capital of $2.3M at the end of 2007, while the Bloc had $465K and the NDP had $422K

Now I know you can't read the Balance Sheets without looking at the Statements of Income and Expenses and the other party returns. But honestly that's a longer project, because the data is not, shall we say, terribly well organized. However, if there are readers out there who know what other metrics should be applied to assess financial statements, I'll run them and see where the parties are.

Meantime, here are some summary tables from 2000 to 2007 (in a temporary location until I can integrate them into the site a bit better). Note that, especially in 2000 and 2004, returns may not be comparable with previous years due to regulatory changes. Also, where values were restated or corrected in a later year, I've used the later numbers rather than the ones from the original document (which is hyperlinked from the Elections Canada logo under each year).

Next up: the Conservatives (and their antecedents), and the Green Party.

Labels: Bloc Québécois, Liberals, NDP, Party Finance

I've been trying to avoid commenting on the coalition-prorogation-confidence situation, because it's not largely numbers-based and revolves around a parliamentary rather than an electoral coalition.

However, one reader asked me to calculate what the outcome of the recent election would have been if, outside Quebec, only the higher of the Liberal and NDP candidates ran against winning Conservatives, assuming their votes could be combined. I did this calculation, with the following results:

• Of 31 ridings won by the Conservatives outside Quebec, combining the votes of the two coalition partners would have shifted 26 seats to the Liberals and 5 seats to the NDP, for a House of Commons composition of 112-Cons, 103-Lib, 49-BQ, 42-NDP, 2-Ind.
• But the coalition had also been endorsed by the Green Party, so I also tested adding in the Green vote: which would have put an additional 23 Conservative seats into play, giving 3 more to the NDP, plus now 2 to the Green Party (Central Nova, NS and Bruce – Grey – Owen Sound, ON), for a Commons composition of 89-Cons, 121-Lib, 49-BQ, 45-NDP, 2-Grn, 2-Ind.

At first blush then the Liberals would appear to benefit from an electoral coalition more than the NDP, although they would be facing a very divided House.

But I just don't buy the assumptions that have to be made in order to run that kind of analysis. As Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe said last week, echoing the famous quote of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, "if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a tractor".

Here's why:

• Turnout matters too. Turnout dropped significantly in the most recent general election. Early speculation is that it was Liberals who stayed home for whatever reason (leadership, policy reasons, regional reasons, negative advertising, who knows). Would those voters have been more or less likely to vote under other conditions?
• Would Liberal voters and non-voters have supported a coalition candidate, or would they have been more likely to vote Green or Conservative?
• Would all NDP voters have supported a coalition candidate, or might some of them have voted Green or stayed home?
• Who would have led the coalition, because clearly that would have mattered when answering the above questions?

Meantime, Glen McGregor ran a similar analysis for this morning's Ottawa Citizen, but extended it to account for recent opinion surveys by using second choice preferences reported in the recent Ekos survey to redistribute the votes of the junior coalition partner in each riding.

This approach tries to address the 2nd and 3rd points above, but also fails to take turnout into account. Also, while it's probably highly unsafe to rely on polls while leadership issues are in such flux, the approach suffers doubly from using a national result with a sample much too small to extrapolate to riding-level results, which was one of my major criticisms of the methodologies used by the so-called strategic voting websites during the last election.

Look, it's easy to criticize, and I love the work Glen McGregor has been doing with data analysis for the Citizen (he's the author of the definitive compilation of voting and non-voting records in the last Parliament, and a very impressive recent cross-reference of party fundraising and results by riding). If an election were held today, the results might indeed be similar to those McGregor projects using his methodology. But if we've learned no other lesson from the massive effort invested in strategic voting in the last election and the results it produced: voters will make up their own minds when the times comes, a week is a lifetime in politics, and if my grandmother had wheels ...

Labels: Electoral Coalitions, Strategic Voting, What-if scenarios

One of more frequent enquiries I receive concerns the availability of poll-by-poll results after an election.

Well, in case you missed this news amidst all the other political coverage yesterday: Elections Canada announced the availability of "validated" poll-by-poll results on their web-site.

You can get them by riding, by province, or for the entire country by clicking here.

As explained elsewhere on this site, "validated" results represent the second step of a three-step process; and as Elections Canada explains, these validated poll-by-poll results will be superceded by the "official" results once they become available. Given that validated poll-by-poll results have not been made available for recent by-elections (and I don't recall them as having been made available for previous general elections), this represents an improvement in service from the Elections Canada site, so bravo!

Unfortunately, they have not included the number of electors in these validated results, presumably because that number itself would not be finalized until the various amendments to the National List of Electors were processed and verified for the Official Voting Results (but they've provided an overall preliminary number elsewhere, which presumably could have been made available on a poll-by-poll basis as well).

Moreover the published results do not include party affiliation of the candidates, so you need to join them to another list to get those. These omissions were unnecessary and make the data less helpful than they could have been.

Another small gripe I have, while I'm on the subject, was the omission of the number of polls reporting from the downloadable Election Night Results they provided here. That data was supplied by Elections Canada to the Broadcast Consortium, so I don't know why Canadian citizens and taxpayers should not have had access to comparable data without looking it up manually one riding at a time.

And, of course, I'm still equally at a loss to comprehend why "as reviewed" data could not be made available either in a downloadable form or online for the 1997 General Election, rather than simply the "as submitted" data, or why researchers should have to file an Access to Information request to get it, when comparable data is available for later elections online.

OK, I'll stop grumbling now. I know they're over-worked, and I'm sure more than one person over at Elections Canada groaned at the prospect that they might have to organize ANOTHER election in case the Governor-General did not approve a prorogation or dissolution. Perhaps one of the best outcomes for me of a majority government would be the opportunity it gave Elections Canada to get its public data offerings in better shape. But, of course, the era of perpetual minority governments is probably what drives traffic to this site, so I should not look a gift horse in the mouth.

Labels: 40th General Election, Elections Canada Data