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The child is napping and I have some thoughts on this news given my familiarity both with the folks breaking elections financing law and the elections financing laws themselves. #ableg
Both the Alberta and federal governments have introduced laws to regulate elections advertising. This is, by and large, a good thing. We don’t want billionaires buying elections.
So how did the Alberta government do this specifically? They put financial reporting requirements on orgs doing political/election advertising and introduced spending limits around elections.
We can quibble about the specifics and how the laws work but that is the meet of what they do. So then the question becomes what is considered political/election advertising and are the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and Rebel Media doing it.
Meat
Here’s how the act defines political advertising. (Head to section 44) qp.alberta.ca/documents/acts… 
So when Ezra Levant and the CTF bought billboards saying Fire Eggen or Scrap the Carbon Tax or whatever that’s considered elections advertising, and rightfully so.
No one is fining Ezra or the CTF because they wrote an editorial it’s because they engaged in elections advertising and didn’t register as an elections advertiser.
Here’s the thing though. If you don’t want to pay the fines in the future all you is you fill out a two page form, do some regular disclosures and then you can only spend $150k pre-writ and $150k during the writ on your advertising expenses. That’s it.
So what did the Rebel do? Well Ezra did what he always does and turned it into a fundraising drive targeted at his herd of bellowing chuds. He’s also going to court to fight it.
If his legal complaint isn’t just procedural I am very curious to see if he goes with a freedom of expression charter case. I don’t believe that these restrictions are onerous (Progress Alberta complies) but I’m curious to see it play out
On the other hand we haven’t seen any CTF reaction yet and that is curious. They got dinged for the exact same thing but didn’t go the Ezra route of fighting it in court and fundraising.
The CTF seem almost quaint now. They’ve been overtaken by much more reactionary right wing groups and organizations. And now they’ve got to decide whether they want to play politics or not.
This might be a fatal blow to the credibility of the CTF - an organization that was already teetering on the edge of irrelevancy. Will the media still call them for canned quotes on why taxes are bad?
Ok baby’s up gotta go. Feel free to ask any questions and I’ll try and get to them later.
