Newman and Spector: Election Speculation From Two Wise Men
Two important columns in as many days from a couple of wise men three time zones apart have me taking the possibility of a spring election seriously. Don Newman is arguing in a column on the CBC Website that the Prime Minister's prorogation is setting the stage for a spring election. And Norman Spector followed up with a column for the Globe and Mail Politics Online section, circling Tuesday April 13 as the most likely date.
I've taken most of the election scares over the past year with a grain of salt (even the one last September, when it put me distinctly in the minority), but the strategy and timeline proposed by Newman and Spector seem plausible now, even if they're fraught with some risk for the Prime Minister, and are being pooh-poohed by at least one Conservative insider.
I do have a small quibble with the date currently on Mr. Spector's column, however, because it doesn't fit the provisions of the Elections Act. Easter Monday is April 5 this year, not April 12. Thus even though the Globe and Mail online corrected the original date from Tuesday, April 12 to Tuesday, April 13 this morning, they were right the first time. Elections have to be held on a Monday (per s.57 of the Elections Act), unless the Monday is a holiday which is the only time they can be pushed to Tuesday. Thus, April 12 would have been the correct date alright, they just corrected the wrong part of the headline.
An election for Monday, April 12 would have to be called on or before Sunday March 7 to allow a 36-day writ. The Prime Minister is calling Parliament back for a Speech from the Throne on Wednesday March 3, with a budget to be tabled the next day on Thursday March 4. Impolitical is suggesting tonight that the budget could contain a measure to eliminate the public subsidies of political parties, which the government has certainly been pretty forthright about including in their next election platform for some time. However, Spector is not suggesting the P.M. would let the budget go to a vote; he's arguing that Mr. Harper would go straight to the Governor-General, and ask to have Parliament dissolved and an election called.
So, how ready are the parties, cash-wise?
Finally, there are a few outstanding legal issues affecting the financial situation of several political parties.
First is the case of L.G. (Gerry) Callaghan et al. v. the Chief Electoral Officer, also known as the "In and out" case, the hearings for which were being tweeted by Glen McGregor for the Ottawa Citizen before the holidays. A successful outcome for the Conservative candidates' official agents would result in the payment of remaining disputed candidate rebates for the 2004 and 2006 elections to certain Conservative candidates. A successful outcome for Elections Canada could result in a finding that the Conservative Party overspent the limit in 2006. I don't know when a ruling is expected.
Second is the case apparently just decided late yesterday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice between the Conservative Party's chief financial officer and the Chief Electoral Officer. The former sought to return a portion of the party's central rebates for the 2004 and 2006 elections to the CEO, arguing that the amount of GST for which they received a rebate from the Canada Revenue Agency as a non-profit organization, reduced their effective election expenses in 2004 and 2006, and thus the amount of the central rebate to which they were entitled based on those expenses.
Key to the case's implications is the fact that the Liberal Party also applied for such GST rebates, and could thus also be obligated to return a portion of its rebates, estimated at a half a million dollars or more. Unclear would be the situation for other political parties who never requested their GST payments be rebated by the CRA such as the NDP, according to Bruce Cheadle's story for the Canadian Press last September.
A successful outcome for the Conservatives could also see calculations of their central spending for 2004 and 2006 reduced by that amount, either reducing or eliminating altogether their risk in being found to have exceeded the 2006 spending limit as a result of the first case.
The ruling is still not published, and it's as yet unclear whether Elections Canada will file any appeal. I don't know if any other political parties had standing in the proceedings, or would seek it in an appeal, but I'm not a lawyer and so that's as much as I can discern about things at this stage without reading the ruling.
We are just learning about it now, because after an email bulletin was sent from Conservative Party headquarters to their own members, the victory was tweeted by Wild Rose, AB Conservative M.P. Blake Richards, then retweeted by Conservative spin doctor Tim Powers, and picked up on by the CBC's Kady O'Malley, shortly after which the bulletin itself was sent to Paul Wells who blogged it late Thursday night. I expect we'll see the first mainstream media coverage of the story either Saturday or Monday.
So, that's where we are on the election watch front on the first day of 2010. Happy New Year to one and all.
I've taken most of the election scares over the past year with a grain of salt (even the one last September, when it put me distinctly in the minority), but the strategy and timeline proposed by Newman and Spector seem plausible now, even if they're fraught with some risk for the Prime Minister, and are being pooh-poohed by at least one Conservative insider.
I do have a small quibble with the date currently on Mr. Spector's column, however, because it doesn't fit the provisions of the Elections Act. Easter Monday is April 5 this year, not April 12. Thus even though the Globe and Mail online corrected the original date from Tuesday, April 12 to Tuesday, April 13 this morning, they were right the first time. Elections have to be held on a Monday (per s.57 of the Elections Act), unless the Monday is a holiday which is the only time they can be pushed to Tuesday. Thus, April 12 would have been the correct date alright, they just corrected the wrong part of the headline.
An election for Monday, April 12 would have to be called on or before Sunday March 7 to allow a 36-day writ. The Prime Minister is calling Parliament back for a Speech from the Throne on Wednesday March 3, with a budget to be tabled the next day on Thursday March 4. Impolitical is suggesting tonight that the budget could contain a measure to eliminate the public subsidies of political parties, which the government has certainly been pretty forthright about including in their next election platform for some time. However, Spector is not suggesting the P.M. would let the budget go to a vote; he's arguing that Mr. Harper would go straight to the Governor-General, and ask to have Parliament dissolved and an election called.
So, how ready are the parties, cash-wise?
- We'll find out how well they did in the 4th quarter fundraising results by the end of January.
- The next installment of the public subsidy allowance is due on Monday, and will cover the period from October to December, 2009. The quarterly allowance for January to March of 2010 is payable on or around April 1.
- Central election expense rebates will have already been paid out to the parties' headquarters. But not every candidate rebate has been paid out from the last campaign yet. Using the number of candidate returns reviewed by Elections Canada versus the number still in "as-submitted" form as a rough indicator, we get the following estimates:
- Conservatives: 196 reviewed / 307 submitted (307 candidates; 300 rebate eligible)
- Liberals: 133 returns reviewed / 298 submitted (307 candidates; 270 rebate eligible)
- Greens: 119 reviewed / 291 submitted (303 candidates; 41 rebate eligible)
- NDP: 105 reviewed / 304 submitted (308 candidates; 243 rebate eligible)
- BQ: 61 reviewed / 75 submitted (75 candidates; 71 rebate eligible)
- We don't know what the parties' debt situation is at the end of 2009, and won't until their financial statements are filed at the end of June 2010. Some reporting will have to be done to see what the Liberals, NDP and Greens have to say about this now (over to you, Parliamentary Press Gallery). I don't believe either the Conservatives or Bloc took out any loans to finance the 2008 election campaign, beyond lines of credit repayable out of their central rebates.
- We also won't know about the riding associations' bank balances at the end of 2009 until the end of May 2010, either. Indeed lots and lots of ridings have still not even filed their mandatory annual returns for 2008 which were due this past May 2009 (all numbers for "as submitted" state, as none have yet been posted in "as reviewed" state):
- NDP: 279 of 307 registered electoral district associations have filed their required 2008 annual returns to date
- Conservatives: 264 of 308 registered EDAs have filed, as have
- Liberals: 254 of 308 registered EDAs
- Greens: 159 of 239 registered EDAs [UPDATE: I'm advised that only 200 EDAs were registered as of May 31, 2009, however. This filing obligation would have applied to active EDAs at the end of December, 2008, which could have been fewer still, but I haven't done a thorough count by date myself.]
- BQ: 56 of 56 registered EDAs
Finally, there are a few outstanding legal issues affecting the financial situation of several political parties.
First is the case of L.G. (Gerry) Callaghan et al. v. the Chief Electoral Officer, also known as the "In and out" case, the hearings for which were being tweeted by Glen McGregor for the Ottawa Citizen before the holidays. A successful outcome for the Conservative candidates' official agents would result in the payment of remaining disputed candidate rebates for the 2004 and 2006 elections to certain Conservative candidates. A successful outcome for Elections Canada could result in a finding that the Conservative Party overspent the limit in 2006. I don't know when a ruling is expected.
Second is the case apparently just decided late yesterday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice between the Conservative Party's chief financial officer and the Chief Electoral Officer. The former sought to return a portion of the party's central rebates for the 2004 and 2006 elections to the CEO, arguing that the amount of GST for which they received a rebate from the Canada Revenue Agency as a non-profit organization, reduced their effective election expenses in 2004 and 2006, and thus the amount of the central rebate to which they were entitled based on those expenses.
Key to the case's implications is the fact that the Liberal Party also applied for such GST rebates, and could thus also be obligated to return a portion of its rebates, estimated at a half a million dollars or more. Unclear would be the situation for other political parties who never requested their GST payments be rebated by the CRA such as the NDP, according to Bruce Cheadle's story for the Canadian Press last September.
A successful outcome for the Conservatives could also see calculations of their central spending for 2004 and 2006 reduced by that amount, either reducing or eliminating altogether their risk in being found to have exceeded the 2006 spending limit as a result of the first case.
The ruling is still not published, and it's as yet unclear whether Elections Canada will file any appeal. I don't know if any other political parties had standing in the proceedings, or would seek it in an appeal, but I'm not a lawyer and so that's as much as I can discern about things at this stage without reading the ruling.
We are just learning about it now, because after an email bulletin was sent from Conservative Party headquarters to their own members, the victory was tweeted by Wild Rose, AB Conservative M.P. Blake Richards, then retweeted by Conservative spin doctor Tim Powers, and picked up on by the CBC's Kady O'Malley, shortly after which the bulletin itself was sent to Paul Wells who blogged it late Thursday night. I expect we'll see the first mainstream media coverage of the story either Saturday or Monday.
So, that's where we are on the election watch front on the first day of 2010. Happy New Year to one and all.
Labels: 41st General Election, Election Timing
posted by The Pundits' Guide at
4:08 PM
7 Comments:
Pundit's Guide,
Do you know why the NDP is unaffected by this GST rebate decision ? Or what the status of the Bloc is on this matter ?
Was something preventing the NDP from recieving the GST rebate or were they ignorant of campaign finance law ?
None of the news stories seem to explain why, they just provide a quote from the NDP saying they're unaffected because they didn't apply for a GST rebate in the first place.
Shadow, you're asking the very same question I was on Twitter and the comments at Paul Wells' blogpost.
However, applying for a GST rebate from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has nothing to do with campaign finance law. Non-profit organizations are entitled under the legislation that governs the GST to claim a rebate for half the GST they pay in a given year.
Perhaps the NDP did not consider that a registered political party would qualify as a non-profit organization under that legislation. If the CRA has ruled that it does, I presume all political parties will now be making retroactive claims for this money as well.
The legal issue in the court case as I understand it, however, was whether the fact that the half the GST was being rebated by the CRA means that only half the GST is an election expense (or at least a *paid* election expense).
Up to this point, parties and Elections Canada have been counting all their election expenses (including GST and PST) towards their limit. Paid election and candidate expenses are eligible for rebates from Elections Canada where the vote share thresholds are met, and such rebates are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the GST rebates from the Canada Revenue Agency.
The Conservative Party has an interest in finding a legal way to reduce its central spending after the fact, in case it loses the other court case and those advertising expenditures of candidates are found to have actually been advertising expenditures of the central campaign.
From the email bulletin distributed by the Conservatives, it appears they may have won a finding that because only half the GST was payable, only half was an election expense.
Another possible finding might have been that the full amount of the GST was an election expense, but half as a *paid* election expense and half as a contribution in kind by the CRA (which seems unlikely), meaning that only the "paid" half of the GST was eligible for an election rebate.
Because the Conservatives sent the note to their members and not the media on New Year's Eve, and because the national media and senior political operatives are (a) still trying to enjoy their holidays like you and me, and (b) in the latter case also considering their options in the prorogation situation, it's not surprising to me that no new reporting has emerged on this story as yet.
I expect to see further reporting on it come Monday, though, and perhaps more still once the ruling is published.
By then, we'll probably find out more about whether the other parties had standing in that case and what position they took, what their own situations were in terms of GST rebates, and whether the Chief Electoral Officer intends to appeal the ruling.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
It'll be interesting to see what steps the Liberals take.
Can they appeal the ruling themselves, or sue to force elections to appeal ?
It sounds like they'll be forced to refund over half a million dollars if they can't over turn this ruling somehow.
Combine that financial hit with a ruling that effectively increases spending limits in the next election and you have a rather significant tactical advantage for the Tories because of this ruling.
New info monday would be great. I think the complexity of the story and the inability for legal experts to properly comment until the ruling is published is probably what's holding this up as well as the holiday.
I'm reasonably sure it might fall upoon you and other non-MSM sources to figure this one out though. It just doesn't strike me as the type of thing conventional outlets would want to spend any time/money on.
I'll certainly be following along with interest.
But there are a number of political reporters on the Hill with an interest and mandate to cover issues like this. For one, Bruce Cheadle who wrote about it for the Canadian Press to begin with last September, and did a pretty good job explaining a complex issue in reasonably simple terms if you ask me. Also, I expect Kady O'Malley and Glen McGregor to weigh in, amongst others.
I'm no lawyer, though, so I don't know if the Liberals can launch an appeal. It may have mattered whether they had legal standing at the original trial, or it may not. These are questions I know enough to ask, but don't know the answers to. So, you're right about needing lawyers to understand the story properly; and they won't want to comment without reading the ruling, as you say.
So to sum up, if GST expenses is $x, and the rebate from CRA is $y, then the amount that is deducted from the election expenses limit is x-y. Is that about right?
Why is this such a big deal worthy of a PMO press release to the media? Is it anything other than an attempt to bury the much more volatile prorogation story?
I don't think the PMO was trying to make a BIG deal of it. Understandable they at least want it known they won the case, and sort of serve notice on the implications.
All just meant for inside Ottawa spin, not somethng for changing the channel.
Your blogpost raised a number of broader questions about the parties relative financial readiness.
I don't see the Liberals or NDP having any significant trouble. For the Liberals, IMO, even if they have to pay the half million and even if there was a significant dip in the 4th quarter fundraising.
If there is an elction now I think they are at least OK. And even if the financial picture has got worse recently, I doubt we'll see a repeat of the 2008 late campaign spending triage.
I'm pretty certain the GPC will be doing significantly less central campaign advertising, less money on the Leaders tour, and less transfers to the local campaigns that will effect the local media buys.
They just don't have the money and can't borrow it.
i don't know if there will be one and one of the side effects of this minority parliament has been constent election rumors that never seem to go away no matter what. one could happen in the spring but when considering so many mp's ( think about 70 ) by then would only need about 2 more months of service to qualify for there pensions and the senate situation doesn't change much this year and no liberals are due to retire until this fall so not much urgency there . the though of one then doesn't exact make sense to me or really seem that likely . and one mp from ontario was quoted as saying the earliest one could happen would be the fall . but who knows as this parliament has been anything but predictable somedays .
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