Ontario Election 1999 Background Papers By York University Professors Robert Macdermid & Fred Fletcher

Backgrounder #8: Advocacy Groups and the Ad War

TORONTO, May 26, 1999 --

Advocacy advertising in election campaigns has been controversial in Canada for more than two decades, but little research has been done on it. The controversy began in earnest during the 1988 federal election, when groups supporting and opposing the FreeTrade Agreement with the United States spent considerable amounts of money. Pro free trade groups, dominated by business, spent about $3.6 million, while anti free trade groups, supported by unions and other groups, spent about $878,000 (Janet Hiebert in "Interest Groups in Federal Elections," Leslie Seidle (ed.) Interest Groups and Elections in Canada (Toronto: Dundurn, 1991), one of the research reports of the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing).

Ontario does not regulate advocacy groups' spending on advertising in elections unless it specifically supports a party or candidate, and only if this is done with the knowledge and consent of a party or candidate. It then constitutes a reportable election expense. Five other Canadian provinces restrict this kind of partisan advertising by interest groups, either by imposing a spending cap on the groups, as in British Columbia, or outlawing it altogether, as in Saskatchewan and the Maritime provinces.

In the 1995 Ontario election, groups favouring the agenda of Conservative Leader Mike Harris and opposed to the NDP government supported a considerable amount of advertising. For example, a group called Ontarians for Responsible Government erected billboards that attacked NDP Leader Bob Rae.

ANALYSIS

Advocacy groups enter the electoral fray and the advertising wars when they believe important policy issues are at stake. To convey their concerns, they choose billboards, pamphlets, newspapers ads, and increasingly, radio and television, though the latter are often too expensive. Few groups could even consider spending the $2 million or more that each party will spend on broadcast advertising in this election.

In this election thus far, a handful of organizations have run a limited number of television spots, but province-wide political party advertising greatly outnumbers the advocacy advertising. Ads in support of the Conservative Government sponsored by the business-based group, Coalition for a Better Ontario, have started to appear on TV. Ads opposed to the Tory record have been sponsored by the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario and the Ontario Teachers Federation. A number of groups have concentrated on print advertising to criticize the Government's record. The ads dealing with education and health, although mentioning the government's record on these issues, have not been explicitly partisan, though we may yet see ads that support or oppose a particular party or candidate.

Ontario, like all Canadian provinces except Alberta, has a system of "regulated competition," for parties and candidates, which is supposed to ensure that the quality of the candidates and their ideas, not how much money they can raise, determines the outcome of elections. It would be easy for political parties or candidates, however, to encourage groups to advocate for them in order to evade the spending limits, especially since the collusion referred to in the Ontario Election Finances Act would be almost impossible to demonstrate.

Another concern: Advocacy groups, which do not answer to the electorate, may engage in the kind of character assassination that no political party would risk. Just look to U.S. election campaigns where advocacy groups have broadcast nasty attack ads, sometimes with the collusion of a party or candidate, that were disturbingly negative. There have been similar instances of such advertising in Canada -- for example, in the 1997 election billboard campaign associating candidates with notorious criminals.

The nature and extent of advocacy advertising in the 1999 Ontario election remains to be seen. So far, some groups opposed to the policies of the Harris government and, it appears, a smaller amount from those in favour, have advertised. In 1995, there was considerable advertising by groups favouring the Harris agenda and opposed to the policies of the NDP government, and we may see that again in 1999.

-30-

For more information on fund-raising by Ontario's political parties see the paper by Robert MacDermid, Funding the Common Sense Revolutionaries: Contributions to the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, 1995-97 on the website www.socialjustice.org.

Robert MacDermid teaches Political Science at York University and is the author of "TV Advertising Campaigns in the 1995 Ontario Election," in Revolution at Queen's Park: Essays on Governing Ontario. Sid Noel, Editor, (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1997). Fred Fletcher teaches political science at York University and is among the co-authors of Government and Politics in Ontario. He has written extensively on election campaigns.

For more information, please contact:

Professor Robert MacDermid
Political Science
York University
(416) 736-5265
(705) 357-2459
rmacd@yorku.ca

Professor Fred Fletcher
Political Science
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 88819
ffletch@yorku.ca

Sine MacKinnon
Senior Advisor for Media Relations
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22087
YU/061/99