Elections Canada Offices to Open Soon
Prince George, B.C. – Now that the federal election campaign has officially begun, it won’t be long before Elections Canada opens its offices for the ridings of Cariboo-Prince George and Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies.
“This is the first order of business for returning officers, to get those offices open,” says Elections Canada spokesperson John Enright. “They’ve identified the offices, the locations of where they’re going to be situated.
“But now it’s a matter of getting the keys in hand, turning on the lights, plugging in all the cables and the telephones and getting ready to serve electors. That should all come to a head by the end of this week.”
He says the names of those returning offices and locations of the offices will be made public shortly and says office hours will be “on a limited schedule” until September.
Enright says campaign spending limits (based on a 37 day campaign) vary per riding for each candidate.
(In Cariboo-Prince George $122,710.67 and in Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies $121,649.74. Under changes to the Fair Elections Act party and candidates’ spending can increase every day by 1/37th).
Elections Canada estimates the cost of running a 37 day campaign at $375 million.
That number increases when things like longer leases for offices, longer agreements for service providers and additional hours for key staff at Election Canada offices are all factored in.
For more information about Elections Canada, click here.
Comments
Why open an office at all until the last 37 days? Waste of money – just get a 1-800 number.
Harper said that this longer election will not cost taxpayers one extra cent, so he must be paying for the added days out of his own pocket!
Can you provide me a link to that?
He said it during his first day election announcement TV news appearance! Very impressive!
And the parties get to write off%50 of their election costs then get a dollar amount for each vote they get.. Yeah thus is going to cost us tax payers a small fortune
No, I believe what he said was “It is important that every political party’s campaign be financed by itself – not government resources, not parliamentary resources, not of all the other resources available to us when the campaigns are not on.”
Yeah and you believe that you are exactly the minions Harper loves :). Harper has been using tax payers money advertising pre election rhetoric already..he isn’t going to stop now
Rather toss a vote away on the Greens than the NDP or this Liberal stack
Well for the whiners the election was no secret. If the other parties where not ready then it shows they are not ready for prime time. Now that the election has been called all donations have to be identified and all parties cannot hide their donors. That is what gets the left upset, having to identify cross border NGO’s
Slinky, just keep up with the news! Re-imbursement of campaign spending to political parties from taxpayers’ money increases with the amount of money spent by the parties during an election campaign – the longer the campaign the greater the amount they can spend, the greater the amount milked from us, the taxpayers!
Facts are facts, whether raised by the left, the right or the middle.
By the way, it was Harp who amended the Elections Act to allow for longer campaigns and the higher allowable spending limits, costing us another 100 million or so. The early election call was well-planned ahead of time.
Seamutt said, “Now that the election has been called all donations have to be identified and all parties cannot hide their donors.”
More accurately, that is donations made during the campaign period. Not donations that have already been made. Harper’s party has been collecting millions of corporate dollars before the campaign period and they can still hide who those donors are, just like he hid who financed his run for the leadership of the Reform-Alliance-Conservative party. Those secret money can still be spent on the campaign. Now isn’t that that a fair provision of the Fair Elections Act? If your a Harper sycophant, I suppose it must be. How clever! How Strategic. How contemptible of the electorate!
Guess the other parties had no donations already hey ammonra, guess they have to raise 50 million in a hurry. Who funds the NDP? Mostly trade and teacher’s unions looking for a raise.
PrinceGeorge, make a false statement then deflect all you can
Harper said that the longer election process would not cost taxpayers anything extra. That, of course, is totally untrue.
He said that when new? Sorry just haven’t seen that anywhere but it could be true, got a link to look at?
Well, slinky, I guess you guessed wrong, again. Of course the NDP, Liberals and Greens raised money before the election was called. It would be ridiculous to say otherwise. I presume you said that to try and soften the impact of voters learning about the millions of dollars donated to Harper’s party by corporations which do not have to be identified.
The context of my comment was in reference to another comment from Seamutt. He said that the election date was not a secret so all parties had time to prepare. Then he made a statement that, “all parties cannot hide their donors”. I merely pointed out that disclosure of contributors applied to those given during the election period, not to the pre-election period. His statement was ambiguous since it inferred, probably unintentionally, that we would get to find out which corporations have underwritten Harper’s bid to buy another term as Prime Minister by secretly donating before disclosure is mandated.
Please do read postings in context, it makes so much more sense.
Who funds the NDP? Historically the largest pool of contributors has been private individuals making small donations. There are some contributions from unions, but I believe they are a smaller percentage of the money raised than from private donations. Contrast that to Harper’s party who disproportionally and overwhelmingly raise money from corporations with a small percentage from private individuals.
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