Elections BC sides with IntegrityBC on prohibited donation to B.C. Liberals
By Dermod Travis
IntegrityBC has called on the B.C. Liberal party to stop behaving as though B.C. charities are a private piggybank to help beef up party coffers, this after Elections BC told the party to return a 2011 donation from the Vancouver Art Gallery Association.
It was the second time in as many months that Elections BC has had to instruct the B.C. Liberals to return donations from a registered charity. IntegrityBC believes the fault in both cases lies entirely with the B.C. Liberal party.
“There’s absolutely no ambiguity in the law. It’s prohibited for a political party to accept donations from a charity, point finale” said IntegrityBC executive director Dermod Travis. “The law prohibiting political parties from accepting such donations was passed in 2002 and ignorance of the rule as an excuse is long past its best before date.”
In May, Elections BC instructed the Liberals to return donations they had accepted from TRIUMF, the nuclear physics laboratory located at UBC and a registered charity.
TRIUMF’s director Nigel Lockyer in an interview with UBC’s student newspaper The Ubyssey explained that the donations were made because “It’s a cost-effective, time-effective way to interact with the people in the government. That’s the way the system works.”
Last October, IntegrityBC launched its “Who really runs BC?” campaign calling for an overhaul of B.C.’s antiquated electoral finance laws, including an outright ban on corporate and union donations and a cap on individual donations.
This article is a press release from IntegrityBC.
