The consultations are now complete and the special committee on local elections expense limits will deliver its recommendations in a final report this June.
The all-party committee was formed on Oct. 9, 2014 at the request of the legislative assembly with the mandate to recommend “expense limit amounts for candidates, including, but not limited to, the general relationship between limits for the various offices, and for third party advertisers in local elections.”
More than 900 submissions from the public were received by the committee between October and December. A report on that feedback, as well as the committee’s proposed principles for expense limits for third party advertisers and candidates, was released on Dec. 15.
“The committee report endorses the principles of fairness, neutrality, transparency and accountability in developing statutory provisions on local elections expense limits, and supports including third party advertising in an expense limits framework, with an overarching, cumulative limit as exists in provincial elections,” a press release from the B.C. Legislative Assembly said.
Using the developed principles, the committee will now work on setting local election expense limits, which will be published in a June 12, 2015 report to the Legislative Assembly.
See the full Dec. 15 special committee report at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/leel.
