The race is already off on the road to Canada’s 42nd general election.
The election was called early, but no, the date hasn’t changed, it’s still set for October 19 – we’re just in store for a whopping 11-week campaign.
A normal election campaign runs four or five weeks. Why is this one twice as long? Well that’s a question Stephen Harper would have to answer, but we think we know some contributing factors.
For starters, one is a financial incentive for the Tories. Outside of the campaign window, parties are free to spend what they can afford to run advertising. The same applies to third parties such as unions, special interest groups, and corporations.
With this new 11-week election, individual candidates are capped at spending $214,248 and political parties are now limited to a total bill of $53 million.
This puts the Conservatives at an obvious strategic advantage. Financial reports at the end of 2014 showed the Conservatives with a net worth of over $19 million, compared to the Liberal party’s $8 million in assets and the New Democratic Party’s $4.4 million. Connecting the dots, we can see that this election is part of a larger strategy of attrition.
In 2014 the Conservatives created a bill called the Fair Election Act, which allows political parties to spend more if there’s a longer campaign.
Extended election campaigns were possible prior to the Fair Elections Act but there was no increase in spending limits for the prolonged period. So there was no point of calling an extended campaign because parties would be bound to spend their five-week budget over the 11-week campaign.
While all three parties are entitled to spend the same $53 million over the course of the campaign, it will be much tougher for the Liberals and NDP to pony up the cash to spend it.
You may be asking “Who cares? It’s not my money.” Well, actually it is. In addition to the very generous tax credits given for political donations, taxpayers subsidize election spending by 50 per cent for parties and 60 per cent for individual candidates. This means that if the election costs $375 million, as predicted by Elections Canada, taxpayers will be coughing up to an extra $200 million for Harper’s strategic advantage.
Unfortunately, we can’t avoid being on the hook for this money, but we can control the outcome of this election. So vote wisely.
