posting
01-22-2009, 11:23 PM
CATCH News – January 22, 2009
Call for reform of election financing
In the wake of a comprehensive review of 2006 campaign donations in ten Toronto area communities, there are renewed calls for the province to reform municipal election financing. Corporate donors, many of them developers, provided the vast majority of election funds to at least nine of Hamilton’s councillors.
Pointing to a study (http://www.votetoronto.ca/docs/CityPolitics_half.pdf) released earlier this month by York University professor Robert MacDermid, the Toronto Star is calling (http://www.thestar.com/article/573792) on the McGuinty government to fulfill its six-year-old promise to clean up the Municipal Elections Act.
“With corporate donors – mainly developers – supporting those already in office, it is hard for new candidates to challenge an incumbent,” wrote the Star’s editorialists on Tuesday. “And, although the politicians deny it, a nagging suspicion remains that the donations tilt municipal councils in favour of developers' interests.”
MacDermid left little doubt that is the case.
He found (http://www.votetoronto.ca/docs/CityPolitics_half.pdf) that corporations made at least half of total donations in seven of the municipalities, with the highest percentage in Pickering at nearly 77 percent. In Hamilton (http://www.hamiltoncatch.org/view_article.php?id=132), the average in 2006 was 53 percent, even though six of the sixteen (including the mayor) took no money at all from corporations. Nine of the remaining ten councillors each received at least 69% of their total election donations from corporate sources.
Examining the GTA donors in detail, MacDermid found that “the development industry is by far the most important financier of the majority of winning candidates’ campaigns” in eight of the ten municipalities. Noting that “real estate development is the prime purpose of municipal politics”, he concludes that the purpose of these gifts is obvious.
“The pattern of giving by large backers in the development industry suggests some very calculated decisions about which candidates to support,” MacDermid says. “Developers want councils that are favourable to rapid development and to their own development proposals and they spend accordingly.”
Of the 110 ward-based councillors elected in the ten cities, he found 52 received every penny of the development-related contributions made in their ballot battle. In another 21 contests, at least 70 percent of developer donations went to the winning candidate. “This is an impressive level of coordination of giving,” notes MacDermid, “and to be clear it was not achieved because just one or two developers were contributing. On average [the 52] candidates received 15 contributions from development industry sources.”
In over half the remaining contests, the winners received no corporate donations whatsoever – many of them refusing to accept gifts from other than individuals.
In Hamilton, thirteen of the top 15 corporate donors were developers or development-related companies. Each gave at least $2500 and distributed the money among five or more candidates. The top six donors overall were all from the development sector and spent at least $4500 each on the campaigns of seven or more candidates.
MacDermid’s report also points to other major problems with Ontario’s election donations law, especially the provision that allows companies to pay their employees to “volunteer” on campaigns.
“There is no way of knowing the extent of these contributions,” he notes. “It seems very likely that in the 10 GTA cities the total could be in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Corporations, and to a much lesser extent unions, surely take advantage of this provision to pay employees to work full-time or part-time on favoured candidates’ campaigns. This allows employers to make a mockery of both campaign contribution and spending limits.”
Toronto is moving toward (http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/562795) banning corporate and union donations – but they are the only Ontario municipality with the power to do that. A draft bylaw was ordered by the city’s executive committee earlier this month.
Toronto and a handful of other municipalities including Ottawa, Ajax and Markham, already provide rebates to citizens who make donations to municipal candidates – a well-established system at the provincial and federal levels, and one that Hamilton council does have the authority to implement.
CATCH (Citizens at City Hall) updates use transcripts and/or public documents to highlight information about Hamilton civic affairs that is not generally available in the mass media. Detailed reports of City Hall meetings can be reviewed at www.hamiltoncatch.org (http://www.hamiltoncatch.org/).
Call for reform of election financing
In the wake of a comprehensive review of 2006 campaign donations in ten Toronto area communities, there are renewed calls for the province to reform municipal election financing. Corporate donors, many of them developers, provided the vast majority of election funds to at least nine of Hamilton’s councillors.
Pointing to a study (http://www.votetoronto.ca/docs/CityPolitics_half.pdf) released earlier this month by York University professor Robert MacDermid, the Toronto Star is calling (http://www.thestar.com/article/573792) on the McGuinty government to fulfill its six-year-old promise to clean up the Municipal Elections Act.
“With corporate donors – mainly developers – supporting those already in office, it is hard for new candidates to challenge an incumbent,” wrote the Star’s editorialists on Tuesday. “And, although the politicians deny it, a nagging suspicion remains that the donations tilt municipal councils in favour of developers' interests.”
MacDermid left little doubt that is the case.
He found (http://www.votetoronto.ca/docs/CityPolitics_half.pdf) that corporations made at least half of total donations in seven of the municipalities, with the highest percentage in Pickering at nearly 77 percent. In Hamilton (http://www.hamiltoncatch.org/view_article.php?id=132), the average in 2006 was 53 percent, even though six of the sixteen (including the mayor) took no money at all from corporations. Nine of the remaining ten councillors each received at least 69% of their total election donations from corporate sources.
Examining the GTA donors in detail, MacDermid found that “the development industry is by far the most important financier of the majority of winning candidates’ campaigns” in eight of the ten municipalities. Noting that “real estate development is the prime purpose of municipal politics”, he concludes that the purpose of these gifts is obvious.
“The pattern of giving by large backers in the development industry suggests some very calculated decisions about which candidates to support,” MacDermid says. “Developers want councils that are favourable to rapid development and to their own development proposals and they spend accordingly.”
Of the 110 ward-based councillors elected in the ten cities, he found 52 received every penny of the development-related contributions made in their ballot battle. In another 21 contests, at least 70 percent of developer donations went to the winning candidate. “This is an impressive level of coordination of giving,” notes MacDermid, “and to be clear it was not achieved because just one or two developers were contributing. On average [the 52] candidates received 15 contributions from development industry sources.”
In over half the remaining contests, the winners received no corporate donations whatsoever – many of them refusing to accept gifts from other than individuals.
In Hamilton, thirteen of the top 15 corporate donors were developers or development-related companies. Each gave at least $2500 and distributed the money among five or more candidates. The top six donors overall were all from the development sector and spent at least $4500 each on the campaigns of seven or more candidates.
MacDermid’s report also points to other major problems with Ontario’s election donations law, especially the provision that allows companies to pay their employees to “volunteer” on campaigns.
“There is no way of knowing the extent of these contributions,” he notes. “It seems very likely that in the 10 GTA cities the total could be in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Corporations, and to a much lesser extent unions, surely take advantage of this provision to pay employees to work full-time or part-time on favoured candidates’ campaigns. This allows employers to make a mockery of both campaign contribution and spending limits.”
Toronto is moving toward (http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/562795) banning corporate and union donations – but they are the only Ontario municipality with the power to do that. A draft bylaw was ordered by the city’s executive committee earlier this month.
Toronto and a handful of other municipalities including Ottawa, Ajax and Markham, already provide rebates to citizens who make donations to municipal candidates – a well-established system at the provincial and federal levels, and one that Hamilton council does have the authority to implement.
CATCH (Citizens at City Hall) updates use transcripts and/or public documents to highlight information about Hamilton civic affairs that is not generally available in the mass media. Detailed reports of City Hall meetings can be reviewed at www.hamiltoncatch.org (http://www.hamiltoncatch.org/).