Expense reports for the by-elections
Posted November 3, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: By-Election
It will be very interesting to see the financial resources the respective parties poured into the by-elections; each political party could spend up to $162,217, while the candidates could spend roughly $84,000 in Vancouver-Burrard and $75,000 in Vancouver-Fairview.
The deadline to report such election expenses will be on January 27, 2009, which is 90 days after the by-election date.
I would suspect the BC Liberal candidates would be in a better position financially to go near the limit (especially Arthur Griffiths), as the BC Election Act allows corporate contributions (unlike the Canada Elections Act).
The parties, however, have a different story - at the end of 2007, the BC Liberal party had net liquid assets (loosely defined as cash and near-cash assets minus liabilities) of approximately $600,000, while the NDP’s net liquid assets of negative $510,000.
Oddly enough, however, the NDP’s balance sheet was in better shape than the BC Liberal party, as the NDP has a $1.5 million asset in the form of “Lands and Buildings” which could presumably be liquidated even in today’s real estate environment (BC Property Assessment - $1,317,000).
The BC Liberal party’s fundraising abilities, however, appear to be better than the NDP’s, so it is likely that the BC Liberals would have more to spend for this election if they chose to do so. Still, both parties are very far away from the maximum $5.5 million expenditure allowed in the 2009 general election ($1.1 million in the 60 days before the campaign period to the campaign period and $4.4 million during the campaign period) so it would not surprise me if both parties put in a minimal amount of funding in this election to save their gunpowder for the general election.
