Pre-election advertisements: the DGEQ would have preferred to frame them before the election

Since its entry into force in 1989, Quebec’s electoral law has imposed limits on expenses incurred during election campaigns by candidates or political parties, but nothing before the start of official campaigns. The law even provides for the reimbursement of half of the authorized election expenses, under certain conditions.

Moreover, when he took the reins of the General Directorate of Elections of Quebec, in 2015, Pierre Reid immediately recommended to integrate the expenses prior to the campaigns, in particular advertising, in the electoral law. However, his recommendation was not followed, and the next election campaign, the first to be launched on a fixed date, suffered.

The year 2018 allowed us to see that yes, pre-election expenses had been made at that time. The parties had started posting earlier, in Junehe says.

The phenomenon is repeated again this year. As early as May, we noticed the hasty distribution of pre-election advertisements by almost all the parties. The CAQ, for example, launched a vast advertising offensive in the spring, although the campaign will not officially begin until the end of August. Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette even had to apologize to his colleagues in the National Assembly because advertisements suggested that Bill 96 had been adopted when it was not.

The PLQ recently presented short capsules featuring Dominique Anglade. Québec solidaire ensures its presence on social networks.

The Parti Québécois has just launched a new website, levraibilan.com (New window), and a poster campaign to counter, he said, so-called partisan government advertising. The government has considerable means that it uses, and in addition, it has the resources of the Stateaffirms Pascal Bérubé, PQ MP for Matane, who denounces the 135 million spent over the past year on advertising.

” When we look at government spending on advertising, it is the government’s image that is highlighted. It is also that of the ministers. “

In an email, the Treasury Board supports that no government communication campaign has been made concerning a report. The government does not do election advertising either. We must be careful not to confuse the campaigns currently being conducted by political parties and government campaigns..

Thierry Giasson, director of the Department of Political Science at Laval University and researcher at the Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, disagrees.

We have a government at the moment which is not in an election campaign and which has launched a huge poster and communication campaign on its resultshe notes. It is not its record like the Coalition avenir Québec, it is its record as the government of Quebec. And that is a huge problem. It is electoral communication. It should be accounted for in his election expenses.

Pierre Reid has recommended, so far without success, that a pre-election period be defined in Quebec in order to preserve the rules for controlling expenses during elections, as has been done at the federal level, by limiting the amounts spent in pre-election campaigns.

In an email sent from her office, Minister Sonia LeBel, responsible for electoral reform and democratic institutions, denies not listening to the recommendations of the DGEQ.

Given the practice of amending the Elections Act by consensus, it was not possible to implement this recommendation of the CEO. The parliamentarians chose to follow up on a priority basis on the DGE’s recommendations on which there was consensus and to ensure that voters can exercise their right to vote in the next general elections in the context of COVID-19.

For Thierry Giasson, the inaction of the Legault government and elected officials in general is problematic. There are holes in the law that must be filled in order to ensure the principles of transparency and accountability as well as the principles of protection of electoral integrity, he decides. And this is fundamental.

The researcher believes that changes to electoral law should not be left to the government and MPs alone. The problem with the issue of electoral reform is that the legislator is in a conflict of interest. What is the interest of a leader, a representative of political parties, in amending a law which will impose more restrictions on their way of winning elections? supports this expert.

” From the moment the election date is set by law, we should mark out a predetermined period during which all the expenses that will be incurred by the political parties will be recognized, because that is the reality. All the research shows it: these are election expenses. “

For various reasons, the political parties have all refused to communicate their data on their pre-election expenses since September 2021 until now: on the QS side, because it is considered confidential; to the PQ, for strategic reasons; at the CAQ, only after the publication of the party’s 2022 financial report. At the PLQ and the Conservative Party, we received no response to our requests.

The fragile balance between freedom of expression and electoral fairness?

Pierre Reid also advocates the registration of third parties (eg unions, pressure groups, etc.) during official election campaigns, as Elections Canada does, but he does not envisage extending this measure to pre-election periods. Free speech is a right, says Reid, but if situation evolves to jeopardize either fairness or electoral democratic transparency, we should intervene.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that limiting election advertising by third parties leveled the playing field for those who wish to enter the electoral race with less substantial financial resources.

Last week, Radio-Canada reported that the pressure group Québec Fier was communicating to its 85,000 Facebook subscribers a lot of content from the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ), Éric Duhaime. Asked about the need to control the expenses of legal persons before the elections, such as Québec Fier, the Conservative Party refused to comment.

Minister Sonia LeBel’s office points out in an email that in Quebec, contrary to what generally happens elsewhere in Canada, a third party cannot incur expenses in order to influence the conduct of elections during an election period. This may help, we are told, to explain why the phenomenon of third-party intervention (both during the pre-election period and during the election period) is less present in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada.

This is not the opinion of Thierry Giasson. There are third-party organizations, such as Québec Fier, that have disseminated information that was problematic in the pastexplains this Laval University researcher, alluding to controversial statements about the abusive sanitary measures of this organization before and during the 2021 federal election campaign.

Documents filed with Elections Canada show that Québec Fier was funded in 2021 to the tune of $45,000 by the Manning Center for Building Democracy, a think thank you right-wing Calgary.

This is another problem that needs to be better defined in Quebec. The space we leave… You can do a lot of damage on digital social media in a very short time and with very little money.

With the collaboration of Michael Deetjens and Daniel Boily