ibelieveinopen.ca: add provincial elections?

[Jennifer Bell]

I've gotten some questions on whether or not VisibleGovernment.ca will
be running ibelieveinopen.ca for the Quebec provincial election. I
was originally not enthusiastic, for the following reasons:

- scraping candidates is a lot of work -- also, some provincial
parties don't list email addresses on their site.
- there would have to be tweaks to the website database and format
- activity is squarely advocacy, and so counts against charitable
status for VisibleGovernment.ca
- trying to publicize the site is a lot of effort

However, there are upsides:

- there are already 85 people registered from Quebec, who could be
contacted via email to encourage their friends to sign up
- once the framework is set up, it could be used for all future
provincial elections, building a broader user base for the next
national election
- as site gets more popular, could offload scraping / candidate
collection to volunteers

What are your thoughts? Are the 5 pledges applicable for provincial
level, as well as federal? As a reminder, the five pledges for public
representatives are:

1. Support reforms that increase government transparency and
accountability.
2. Make campaign promises specific and measurable, and report progress
on promises and their metrics at least semi-annually.
3. Publish the content of his or her daily schedule, including
meetings with lobbyists and special interest groups.
4. Support reforms allowing free access to scientific and survey data
gathered by government institutions.
5. Support reforms that make it easier for Canadians to obtain
government information they have a right to know.

Jennifer

[Michael McGuffin]

If you do this for each province and territory, then there will be 13
provincial/territorial elections to keep up with plus 1 federal election
for each election cycle. That's 14 times more effort in maintaining the
various web site(s), to get Canadians exposed to it only twice as often.

I think if you've got other projects (that span the whole country in
scope) that you'd rather work on, then work on those. But it's really
up to you.

-mike

[Scott Hennig]

I concur. I'd rather see time and effort put toward the two other projects (expense db and foi tool).

That is unless you can manage all of them.

Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael McGuffin <michael....@etsmtl.ca>

Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:44:54
To: <visiblegover...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: {} [VG-Discuss] Re: ibelieveinopen.ca: add provincial elections?

[Andy Kaplan-Myrth]

I noticed that Jennifer wrote,

>> - as site gets more popular, could offload scraping / candidate
>> collection to volunteers

That's the only way I could see provincial election versions of the site
being feasible -- if VG provides the platform and users fill in the
content relevant to their election. We might be able to provide a
platform like that, but the user base in each province may not be big
enough to support it...

Cheers,
Andy

Scott Hennig wrote:
> I concur. I'd rather see time and effort put toward the two other projects (expense db and foi tool).
>

> That is unlss you can manage all of them.

--
Andy Kaplan-Myrth, M.A., LL.B.
Barrister & Solicitor
------------------------------------------------
email: an...@kaplan-myrth.ca
web: http://kaplan-myrth.ca
microblog: http://identi.ca/kaplanmyrth
friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/kaplanmyrth
------------------------------------------------

[Claire]

One cannot do advocacy in a Quebec election if not registered
beforehand and the spending limit is 300 $.
Obviously the value of your work on the web site is over 300 $.
This is not a joke and I am not misinterpreting the law. I had this
confirmed to me during the last election as I thought it was surreal
and could not believe me ears..

And they are taking this very seriously : a anarchist group was sued
by the Quebec Elections body for running a web site and printing
stickers urging people not to vote. They had not registered
beforehand.

The only way around the law is do to speak out through the media.
Obvisouly not everyone has access to media.

So I guess it's case closed.

Anyways, everybody does this election thing, there are exceptions but
for a small advocacy group it is not worth it. It would be wiser for a
group like OpenGovernment to wait for some related news to hit the
media and then take advantage of the opportunity to get coverage
(scandal, new law enacted, etc..).

I sympathize with Jennifer :) even the Chairman of my Board asked why
I was not doing the election thing. I just said no, I would not do it
as it was not cost effective at this time. He understood after I
explained why but it was not fun to go against the wish of my own
Chairman!

-----------------------------

Private intervenors

The Election Act reserves the status of private intervenor for
electors or groups, the majority of whose members are qualified
electors. Private intervenors cannot directly promote or oppose a
candidate or a party.

To avail himself (itself) of the status of private intervenor, the
elector or the group must first obtain an authorization from the
returning officer of the electoral division in which is situated the
domicile of the elector who makes the application. For the December
8th general election, the application for authorization must be made
during the period from November 11th to 25th inclusively. The
authorization number assigned by the returning officer to the private
intervenor will have to be mentioned on every advertisement,
regardless of the medium or information technology used, in addition
to the name of the elector or of the representative of the group, as
well as the words “private intervenor".

Private intervenors can incur, for the entire duration of the election
period, only election expenses of up to $300 to make known their
opinion on a topic of public interest or obtain support for such an
opinion as well as advocate abstention or the spoiling of ballots.
This status would enable, for example, a web surfer to disseminate
advertising on the Internet. However, private intervenors are
prohibited from making or incurring expenses jointly with anyone else,
namely another private intervenor, a political party, a candidate,
etc.

In the 30 days following polling day, private intervenors must submit
a return of all their expenses to the Chief Electoral Offic er in the
prescribed format.

[Claire]

Just wanted to point out that I clearly asked if setting up a web site
for instance was counting towards the spending limit of $300. I was
told the value of the work counts.

It is the mother of gag laws.

[Andy Kaplan-Myrth]

Wow. That is unreal. Does anybody know if other provinces have similar
restrictions?

I'm going to look into this more -- it would be nice to have a reference
for the action against the anarchist group you mentioned. Section 426 of
the Act does not seem to allow them to set limits on money not spent on
a party or a candidate.
http://www.canlii.org/qc/laws/sta/e-3.3/20080818/whole.html

Cheers,
Andy

[Scott Hennig]

Actually most provinces have some form of gag law. Although, this one is
more restrictive than others. Alberta does not, but will introduce one next
spring, and Manitoba has not proclaimed theirs, even though it is on the
books. BC recently brought theirs back after Gordon Campbell ran against it
and killed it when he was first elected.

I'd venture to guess that Quebec's would be unconstitutional because it is
such a low dollar amount. The federal one is $4,000 per riding or $150,000
overall. And that one barely survived the last Supreme Court challenge.

BC's is also something like $150,000, and I think it starts 6 months prior
to the election. Some have suggested it may be shot down if challenged.

The National Citizens Coalition has done some good work fighting these laws,
but I heard their last loss in court almost bankrupt them.


Scott Hennig
Alberta Director
Canadian Taxpayers Federation
202, 10621 - 100 Ave
Edmonton, AB T5J 0B3
780-448-0159

-----Original Message-----
From: visiblegover...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:visiblegover...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andy
Kaplan-Myrth
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 9:47 AM
To: visiblegover...@googlegroups.com
Subject: {} [VG-Discuss] Re: {} [VG-Discuss] Re: ibelieveinopen.ca: add
provincial elections?

[Jennifer Bell]

I guess I won't be doing provincial elections. :-)

Jennifer

> email: a...@kaplan-myrth.ca