August 15, 2005

VANCOUVER – Unions running negative attack ad campaigns on behalf of the NDP made up over half of all “election advertisers” that registered with Elections BC for the 2005 provincial election campaign, BC Liberal Executive Director Kelly Reichert said today.

“The big unions spent millions of dollars leading up to the election in their attempt to put the NDP back in power, money that didn’t fall under the NDP’s election spending limit,” said Reichert.  “While Carole James and the NDP relied on union dues fighting their campaign, our party worked tooth-and-nail for donations at the grassroots level.”

Today is the deadline for all registered political parties to file an election financing report with Elections BC.  Although Elections BC will not release the reports until August 22nd, the BC Liberal Party is immediately releasing a summary of their report to the public.

“Unlike the NDP, we have been open and accountable with our election contributions and expenses,” said Reichert.  “Carole James’s hollow calls to ban union and trade donations are simply a smokescreen to hide the outlandish third-party spending from big labour.”

As of August 12th, there were 198 groups and individuals registered as “election advertising sponsors” – 106 of them unions.  The BC Federation of Labour, the BC Teachers’ Federation, the HEU, CUPE, the BCGEU, and the Canadian Office and Professional Employees’ Union were all registered election advertisers running campaigns on behalf of the NDP.  According to media reports, over $10-million was set aside by the big unions for the lead up to the election campaign. 

The BC Liberals raised $6.8 million at the party level from January through Election Day, with a further $4.6 million raised by the 79 local constituency associations.

Today is also the deadline for election advertising sponsors to file their financing reports – although any expenses incurred outside of the 28-day writ-period by third-parties will remain unknown.

“Carole James and the NDP are tied at the hip to big labour,” said Reichert.  “Regardless if major unions are directly involved in the NDP, they are going to spend money where the NDP leadership wants it to go.”

Full versions of the election financing reports will be available for public inspection at the office of the Chief Electoral Officer and on Election BC's web site on Monday, August 22, 2005, starting at 9 a.m.

Click here to view - Summary of Political Contributions by Class
Click here to view - Summary of Election Expenses