Mr. Anderson: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’m just going to speak in favour of Bill 9. I think that Bill 9 is a very important bill. It’s a bill that the hon. Member for Athabasca-Redwater brought as a private member’s bill last year, I think. It had apparently some work that needed to be done on it, and that’s fine. That’s, I think, a good indication of what the parliamentary process should be like, you know, that we have bills that are referred to committees, they’re studied, they’re debated, and if we have to kind of reset and make it a government bill and look at it again, I think that’s perfectly legitimate. I would like to compliment the Member for Athabasca-Redwater on starting the process forward on this, and then we have this bill in front of us.

Our caucus has some disagreement on this bill. I’m going to be voting in favour of it, and I think there is going to be just one other that’s going to be voting against it. I think we have 15 bills before the House, and I think on about one-third our caucus has a split vote. I think that comes from what I like to call the novel idea of having free votes in the Legislature. It’s something that we need to examine because out of those 15 bills from the government side I’ve seen exactly not one of them stand up against them. It’s kind of sad. The content of this bill, speaking to Bill 9, is just definitely – I believe it’s needed. It’s needed for several reasons, really. You’ve got to have some controls, I believe, in place with regard to campaign finances for several reasons. First, you don’t want any politician to be especially beholden to any corporation or individual.

We see this in the United States all the time. I mean, the special interests are so powerful there, and the reason they’re so powerful is because, honestly, in order to run kind of a standard campaign in the House of Representatives, it takes close to $500,000 for a competitive campaign down there every two years. So you can imagine how important it is, especially in these competitive districts, for these representatives. They have to have continued support from the same donors for years and years and years and years to make sure that they, you know, can be elected every time, they can be competitive down there. Obviously, there are very noble representatives down in the United States, as there are in democracies across this world, but I think there is a lot of influence peddling that goes on there because of the special interests.

We do see this with a lot of the pork problems that they have down in the United States with little projects and special exemptions and lobbies that affect the final outcome of the bill during the actual bill debate process. It’s not to make the bill better generally. It’s generally because in order to get a vote, a certain Senator or a certain House member will make a deal and say: well, I really need to satisfy this person or this lobby, so I need this in there, and then for that you get my vote.

Constitutionally the province has jurisdiction over the municipalities to kind of provide a framework for municipalities. Obviously, the province has decided to give a good deal of autonomy, almost complete autonomy, to the municipalities to run themselves. I think that’s a positive thing. However, I do think that there is a space where, when it comes to the overall framework of how municipalities are governed from an electoral point of view, it is important that the province exercise its authority and make sure that things are fair and that the people are being elected fairly, the process is fair for electing town and city councils, et cetera. That would include, in my view, election finance law for municipalities. I think that this is very important for that reason.

The other reason is this. Even if there is no corruption, even if people were to – say there was no limit on the amount of contribution, and let’s say somebody donated a million dollars to a mayoral candidate for Edmonton or Calgary in the next municipal election. Even if that mayoral candidate went on to win and was a sitting mayor, even if that mayor didn’t do anything at all based on that donation, I think the public would think that that mayor would be pulled into that special interest. It’s kind of like we don’t want to bring the administration of justice into disrepute. It’s kind of the same. We don’t want to bring our democracy – we don’t even want the appearance of, you know, impropriety or the appearance of evil or not doing well or whatever. We want to stay as transparent and above board as possible so that people don’t get cynical about the political system. They probably will get cynical about the system on other accounts, but hopefully not on this account.

I actually do think that if you asked the average Canadian about our political system with regard to campaign finance and special interests and lobbyists, I think if you compare the reaction – I have seen polls on this, but I don’t have them with me, unfortunately – people do actually have a higher degree of confidence in the Canadian-Albertan system of actually putting caps on campaign contributions than the average person would in America, where virtually everyone down there when polled says that: yeah, special interests have an undesirable effect on the politics of the nation. I think, again, having this in there will actually strengthen the reputation of municipal politics, just as these election finance laws strengthen the reputation of provincial politics and federal politics.

Now, there is one difference. I’m glad to see that the Member for Athabasca-Redwater chose to go down this path. I don’t think it’s wise to make a spending cap on political campaigns. I think there’s a fundamental difference between capping what you can spend on a campaign and capping what can be donated to a campaign by any one individual, and I think that’s a very important distinction. If somebody can raise a huge amount of money from many, many donors because they have very popular policy and people want to get behind that policy on a massive scale by sending, you know, their $100 or $50 or $500 cheques, that’s a good amount of money, but it’s not enough, I don’t think, to sway a politician, incorrectly anyway. I would say that having that limitation is a good thing to do. But having that ability to get behind something with the kind of grassroots support in that way I think is a good thing.

I think that if someone can raise a million dollars or $2 million or $5 million because, you know, 10 per cent of the electorate donates $50 to them because they think it’s such a great idea – you know what? – I think that’s totally above board. I think they should be able to spend that on advertising their campaign. I think that’s wise because instead of forcing the municipal politicians to try to appease four or five developers or four or five people of a certain group, they’re going to try to have a more broad mass appeal to many different people and many different interest groups, et cetera. I do think that it’s an important distinction to make. Again, I really do like the provisions of the bill in that respect.

I do know that there were some concerns expressed by the AUMA and the AAMD and C on this bill, in particular the predecessor to this bill, and I do feel that they have some warranted concerns. Perhaps the House could have consulted a little bit more broadly at the front end with this and maybe alleviated some of their concerns. But I will say this, that last year when the bill was first brought forward kind of as a first draft as a private member’s bill, the pushback was quite substantial, and I’ve noticed that with the second version of this bill, Bill 9, the push-back has not been nearly so acute. I mean, there are some people that kind of have their noses out of joint. You know: why don’t you trust us to govern ourselves? That type of thing. Fair comment.

At the end of the day I think for the reasons expressed that it’s goodbill, that the government did go through the proper consultation process at the end of the day, and that we should pass this bill into law.

With that, I would again congratulate the hon. Member for Athabasca-Redwater. Those are my comments.

Thanks, Mr. Speaker.

Video:

Limiting Campaign Spending Will Keep Elections Fair (Part 1)
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Limiting Campaign Spending Will Keep Elections Fair (Part 2)
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