by Kevin Libin - from the National Post
This election may go down as the one where the Internet broke Elections Canada’s control over our electoral process. It’s already fairly certain that social media users will make hash of s. 329 of the Canada Elections Act: defiant Facebookers and Twitterers are promising to flout the ban on reporting eastern poll results early, despite the risk of fines.
But a U.S.-based Internet activist group is also shaking up traditional boundaries on the influence that foreign groups can bring to bear on Canadians’ voting intentions.
The Avaaz Foundation, a left-wing non-profit organization registered in New York and Delaware, isn’t hiding the fact that it’s crusading to defeat the Conservatives, buying ads urging Canadians to “vote strategically” in their riding to ensure “all the opposition parties together … win a huge majority of Parliament.”
And on Tuesday, the group announced it was bankrolling a lawsuit demanding the release of the Auditor General’s report into G8 spending, that might show the previous government “illegally handed 50 million taxpayer dollars to a Conservative riding and covered it up.” It’s even using Canada’s Charter of Rights to back its argument, claiming access to certain government documents are guaranteed.
Avaaz has turned up before in the midst of an election to campaign against Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. But its reappearance highlights how our elections laws seem increasingly ill-fitted to the digital era. In 2008, Avaaz registered as a third-party with Elections Canada, subletting space in Ottawa, only to decamp back to New York after the vote. It ran ads in ridings across Canada encouraging readers to vote strategically for whichever candidate stood the best chance of beating the Tory incumbent.
One target, former environment minister John Baird, called the group a “shadowy foreign organization” and complained to Elections Canada that Avaaz was demonstrating “possible” violations of restrictions on ad spending and foreign interference. Avaaz’s third-party returns did reveal some curious items: what the Tories alleged were breaches of spending limits by riding; ads bought in Halifax newspapers seemingly allocated to allowances for B.C. ridings; and while its American tax return reported US$137,724 of “political expenditures” in Canada in 2008, an Elections Canada third-party filing listed just $57,733.83. Nothing came of the complaint. Read more...
