 Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff responds to Conservative attack ads while speaking to journalists in Toronto on Thursday, May 14, 2009. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese
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OTTAWA - The Liberals want to stop political parties from going on pre-election advertising binges.
They introduced a bill in the Senate on Tuesday, aimed primarily at the cash-rich Tories who recently unleashed their latest barrage of attack ads amid renewed election speculation on Parliament Hill.
Steven Fletcher, the Conservative minister of state for democratic reform, immediately slammed the bill as an anti-democratic and "un-Canadian" assault on free speech.
Currently, parties can spend as much as they like on advertising in the months leading to an election call.
Such pre-writ advertising is not considered part of a party's election expenses, which are strictly limited once an election campaign is underway.
The Liberal bill, introduced by Senator Dennis Dawson, would force parties to count the cost of all their advertising in the three months prior to an election call as an election expense.
Dawson said his bill would close a loophole that has allowed parties with overflowing war chests to circumvent election spending limits. And it would ensure that all parties compete on a level playing field, regardless of their finances.
"(The loophole) goes against the grain of everything we've done for the last 30 years in legislating elections in Canada," Dawson said in an interview.
"There's a loophole. Let's close it."
The change would apply to all parties but, at the moment, the Tories are the only ones able to afford costly pre-writ advertising blitzes. They recently launched ads that attack Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff as someone who is "just visiting" Canada, and that question his commitment to the country.
Dawson said his bill has been in the works for months, well before the Tories' latest ad barrage.
He said he's hopeful the Tories won't try to block his bill, noting that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has undertaken other reforms to the Canada Elections Act aimed at reducing the influence of money on politics.
"This is what this bill aims to (do). It wants to reduce the influence of money in politics. That has been Mr. Harper's supposed position for the last three years."
Conservatives weren't buying it. They accused the Grits of hypocrisy, noting that when the Liberal party was flush with cash prior to the 2004 election, it ran a massive pre-writ ad campaign against Harper.
Moreover, Fletcher argued that in a minority Parliament when an election could be forced at any time, a party that risked spending money on ads between elections could wind up unable to buy any ads during an actual campaign.
"It certainly seems like it will severely limit freedom of speech and that's un-Canadian and hurts our democracy," Fletcher said in an interview.
"A party might not ever have the opportunity to get its message out during an election, depending on what they do in the pre-writ (period)," he added.
"That is fundamental to our democracy that parties are able to communicate with the people of Canada and I don't think any party should be limited in that ability."
Dawson said the Senate's legal advisers have assured him the bill is constitutional. He said the bill does not limit parties' freedom of speech but simply forces them, "if they do advertise, (to) accept the consequences and put them in your expenses."
