Ontario’s municipal campaign finance regime is among the most robust in Canada, but is nevertheless flawed. These flaws make it more difficult for candidates to operate within the confines of the law and for citizens to hold politicians accountable for contraventions of the law. Based on Fair Elections Toronto’s experience and consultation with legal, academic and political experts, FET proposes the following reforms to Ontario’s Municipal Elections Act:

1. The review of a compliance audit decision should be subject to judicial review instead of appeal. It is perfectly plausible that an appeal of a compliance audit order would last more than four years, thus making any subsequent prosecution impossible and extending the process beyond the subsequent election. To solve this, the appeal of a compliance audit committee order should be removed. The decision of a compliance audit committee would still be subject to judicial review in Divisional Court.
2. Municipalities should be permitted to appoint election auditors. The Act should permit active oversight of municipal campaign finance returns. An election auditor would proactively review campaign finance disclosures, bring violations to the compliance audit committee, and initiate prosecutions.
3. The Act should require third party registration and impose spending limits. The Act currently permits unlimited third party spending. This permits third parties, such as corporations or trade unions, to monopolize the conversation. Third parties should be required to register with the clerk of their local municipality and only be able to spend the average amount of council candidates.
4. Candidates who switch from a mayoral race to a council race should not get a fresh spending limit. The Act allows candidates to run for mayor for eight months, drop out, and then run for council and receive a fresh spending limit. A candidate who does this should only be entitled to spend the difference between what they spent in their mayoral campaign and the spending limit of the councillor campaign or $5000, whichever is greater.
5. Spending limits should apply for the entire campaign period. Currently, spending limits apply only to the period between registration and voting day but not to the post-election period. This creates ambiguities and the potential for candidates to postdate expenses.
6. A campaign should continue as long as it incurs litigation expenses. A campaign formally ends on June 30 following an election year. But recent experience demonstrates that many candidates incur legal expenses well beyond this period and may need to raise funds to pay those expenses. This creates opportunities for improper influence and ethical dilemmas for candidates. A campaign should continue for as long as the litigation does.
7. Self-financing should be eliminated. Municipal campaigns should be governed by similar rules as provincial and federal elections in which all donors— including candidates – are bound by the same restrictions. To ensure that campaign suppliers get paid, an exception to this rule should be granted once the campaign has ended on June 30 of the year following the election.
8. Fund-raising expenses should no longer be excluded from spending limits. Our research has shown that this exclusion has been abused. It is often difficult to discriminate between expenses that should and should not be excluded from a campaign’s spending limit. As a result, enforcement has been problematic.
9. All municipalities, not just Toronto, should be permitted to ban corporate and union donations if they so choose.
10. The Act should permit prospective candidacy. The Act does not allow for any pre-registration expenses. To allow candidates to evaluate their candidacy before registering, we recommend that candidates be allowed to spend a small fraction of their spending limit before registering.
11. Candidates should be required to disclose contributions before Election Day. Electors should know who is funding candidates’ campaigns before they vote. Candidates should be required to disclose contributions over $ 100 prior to Election Day
12. The overall spending limit should be raised to compensate for these changes.