Financing a campaign

Where the parties get their money

CBC News

Well, money may not make the world go round, but it sure helps come election time.

How much money the parties have determines how much campaigning they can do and how much attention they can generate.

The money that parties receive is watched and regulated by Elections Canada.

As of January 2007, new rules came into effect for financing political parties.

The changes include:

• Restricting donations from individuals to a maximum of $1,100 a year to each of: a registered party, a leadership candidate or an electoral candidate.
• Forbidding corporations, trade unions and other associations from donating to a candidate or riding associations. These groups were already forbidden from making direct contributions to political parties.

As of June 2007, candidates were also forbidden from accepting gifts or in-kind donations.

Parties that receive at least two per cent of the vote nationally, or at least five per cent in any riding, also receive about $1.75 annually for every vote they get in the previous election.

The money means stable financing and less reliance on donations.

In the past, Canada's election law focused more on spending limits and expenses than contributions. Changes in 2004 saw new attention paid to who was contributing and how much. The changes in 2007 imposed more restrictions, with an aim of countering the perception that money buys influence in government.

Parties have to submit a list of their donors to Elections Canada.

Spending limits

Regardless of how much money a party collects, there are limits on what it can spend during an election campaign. For a party, it can spend 70 cents on each voter in the ridings where it has candidates. For the 2006 election, parties with candidates in all 308 ridings were allowed to spend about $18.2 million on campaigning. Limits are set separately for parties and for candidates. Candidates also have a per-voter limit, with the amount changing depending on how many voters are in the riding.

Parties have to submit reports on what they spent their money on to Elections Canada. The bigger parties (Conservative, Liberal, NDP) tend to spend close to the limits. The other parties, for the most part, can't. The Bloc Québécois has a much lower limit since it only runs candidates in Quebec. In the last election, it spent close to its limit.

So-called third parties also have limits on how much they can spend during a campaign. Individuals and groups that are not parties or candidates can spend $3,000 per riding and $150,000 nationally.