Tagged: Elections Nova Scotia
Chief Electoral Obfuscation Officer
Before the end of June, each year, Nova Scotia law requires the Chief Electoral Officer to a publish all the political contributions made in the previous year. For the years 2007, 2008, and 2009, Christine McCulloch complied with the law, posting the information to the Elections Nova Scotia website in a manner that was accessible, searchable, printable, and even, with effort, downloadable to a citizen’s own database.
This gave every citizen the tools to determine whether contractors who won big roadbuilding contracts, storeowners who won liquor commission franchises, or communications consultants (like me!) who were selected for Communications Nova Scotia’s Standing Offer List were also disproportionate donors to the governing party (or any other party). The system was accountable, transparent, and fully compliant with the law and with the province’s website accessibility standards.
This summer, McCulloch quietly kneecapped it.
The data is still there; It’s just that McCulloch has deliberately impaired the citizen’s ability to access it in a useful way. The 2010 political donations appear in a locked, graphic PDF file. This means a citizen can read it, but can’t search for a name, address, donation amount, or any other information it contains, other than by leafing through it. It’s as if Canada411 replaced its searchable database with a hard copy phone book.
In an email, Elections Nova Scotia spokesman Dana Philip Doiron defended the change on grounds that the agency is ”bound by the Privacy Act, which requires that we guard against misuse of private information — names, addresses, etc.’ [My emphasis.] Doiron didn’t say whether he meant the Nova Scotia Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPOP), or the federal Privacy Act. The latter has no application to the provincial government. Since the Chief Electoral Officer reports to the Speaker of the House of Assembly, it’s extremely doubtful whether the provincial act applies either, even if one excepts the dubious claim that the FOIPOP Act prohibits release of names and addresses specifically mandated by another act.
In any case, the new restrictions don’t shield the names and addresses of donors. They’re all there for anyone willing to take the time and effort to find them. They’re just unsearchable and un-copyable. This makes the information less useful to citizens, researchers, and reporters. Whether McCulloch’s retreat from accessibility is an actual violation of the law requiring disclosure, or merely an affront to its spirit, a skeptical citizen would be forgiven for concluding that she deliberately chose a method of publication that would subvert accessibility, openness, and transparency. The fact that the news release announcing the 2010 donations list failed to disclose the change, and that it listed a link to the document that does not function, doesn’t increase confidence.
It’s extremely disappointing that Ms. McCulloch would behave like this. If the Nova Scotia’s Chief Electoral Officer won’t stand up for transparent and accessible disclosure of political donations, who the heck will?
H/T: Wallace McLean
Greens face imminent deregistration – Update
Chief Electoral Officer Christine McCulloch’s annual report has been posted, and it confirms our report last week that she has initiated deregistration proceedings against the Green Party for failure to comply with financial disclosure laws.
As the chart above shows, the failure appears to be complete across the board: No audited financial statements, no public access thereto, and no copies or accounting of tax receipts. The Green Party of Nova Scotia received $133,469.90 in public financing last year.
McCulloch’s report doesn’t say when deregistration will take effect, but over the weekend party officials told contrarian they had until July 17 to avoid losing official party status.
Greens face imminent deregistration – Update
Nova Scotia Green Party leader Ryan Watson says the party will publish its 2008 audited financial statements “within a few weeks.” Based on regular conversations with Elections Nova Scotia, he believes this will be soon enough to avoid loss of official party status.
By law, the financial statements should have been filed by April 30. Elections Nova Scotia communications director Dana Philip Doiron told contrarian earlier today that Chief Electoral Office Christine McCulloch had issued the required 30-day notice of deregistration required under the Elections Act, and a report due for release Tuesday would detail the issue. He said deregistration could follow shortly.
Watson said the late filing resulted from the party being new, its treasurer taking an untimely vacation, and its reliance on volunteers who were “wading through the election regulations,” and busy preparing for and fighting the June election. Read more »
Greens face imminent deregistration
The Green Party of Nova Scotia, and riding associations for the Greens and two other recognized parties, face imminent deregistration under the Elections Act for failing to publish audited financial statements for the last fiscal year as required by law.
Dana Philip Doiron, communications director for Elections Nova Scotia, confirmed that Chief Electoral Officer Christine McCulloch will file her annual report under the Members and Public Employees Disclosure Act (MPED) Tuesday, and deregistration could follow shortly thereafter.
“Sometimes [the report's release is] a ho-hum event, and Frank is the only one interested,” Doiron said “In this particular case the report will be looking at compliance for reporting, and that report will be interesting.” Read more »
Union tries end run around election rules — feedback (cont.)
Halifax arts and culture activist and New Democrat Andrew Terris weighs in on the union donation flap:
As I understand it, there are two critical factors:
1. Are the members of the [Building and] Construction Trades Council separately incorporated bodies? If they are, their donations are not illegal. The [Members and Public Employees] Disclosure Act says “a trade union and all its members and affiliates are considered to be one organization.” But it looks to me like the Council is an association of unions rather than a single, inclusive entity under the act.
2. Given #1, the NDP could well have accepted the donations in good faith. The real problem was the offer of the Council to reimburse the unions, an offer about which the NDP might well have known nothing until it was leaked to you and other media bloodhounds… Read more »
Secret donations (cont.)
The NDP have joined the Liberals in insisting that voters go to the poll without knowing who donated to their campaign. The party revealed the names of labour unions and corporations that gave to the campaign, but withheld the names of individuals who contributed a total of $287,013.12.
“The initial advice we received from [Chief Electoral Officer] Christine [McCulloch] is that there were privacy concerns,” said N-dip campaign director Matt Hebb. “If she has different advice now, I will take a look at it.’
McCulloch’s press aide Dana Philip Doiron told contrarian last week that, in response to requests for an opinion, McCulloch merely told the parties they should seek their own legal counsel, because it was not appropriate for her to issue legal advice. Read more »
Secret donations
Well this is disturbing. In defending his decision to keep the names of private donors to his campaign secret until after election day, Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil cited privacy concerns. Since provincial law requires the names and addresses of all donors, and the amounts of their donations, to be disclosed and published annually by Elections Nova Scotia, this looked like a feeble excuse to avoid drawing pre-election attention to any embarrassing donors on the Liberal list.
Now it turns out that Chief Electoral Officer Christine McCulloch handed McNeil—and the other three party leaders—a fig leaf they could use to hide any sketchy contributors from voter scrutiny.
Contrarian suspected as much when a candidate for the Green Party said they had intended to post their list of donors on the campaign website today, but were holding off because, “The Chief Electoral Officer apparently has concerns about compromising the privacy of individual donors by releasing their names.”
This sounded absurd, so we checked with the Chief Electoral Office, where spokesman Dana Philip Doiron responded:
[T]he Chief electoral Officer has advised all registered political parties… that they should seek their own legal counsel before publishing the names and other personal information of contributors as they may be subject to the Protection of Privacy provisions of FOIPOP [the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act], while the reporting by Elections Nova Scotia is deemed to be in the public interest and not subject to FOIPOP.
A quick read of the FOIPOP act confirms the obvious. It applies only to “records in the custody or under the control of a public body, including court administration records.” It has no conceivable application to records held by a political party. Read more »
