Elections B.C. has fined three candidates in the October 2020 provincial election for problems with thei campaign materials.
The B.C. Green Party was fined $1,000 for a two-page cover wrap in the Times Colonist that failed to include a statement identifying the authorizing agent and providing their contact information, as required by the Elections Act.
“A penalty of $1,000 was assessed primarily based on the fact that the advertising was expensive and reached a broad audience,” said the media advisory.
In mitigation, Elections B.C. considered the fact that the advertising was clearly from the B.C. Green Party, the party itself reported the contravention and then took steps to make sure it did not happen again.
B.C. Liberal candidate Jane Thornthwaite was fined $50 for producing 16,898 campaign flyers that did not identify the authorizing agent. When her campaign team discovered this, they recovered all but 100 of the election flyers.
Elections B.C. found the self-reporting by the campaign team to be a mitigating factor, as well as the “extraordinary efforts to retrieve all the materials.”
North Island Liberal candidate Norm Facey was fined $250 after Elections B.C. received a complaint that an election ad in the Campbell River Mirror did not identify an authorizing agent.
Because of limited communications with Facey’s campaign team and the print schedule of the newspaper, a second similar advertisement ran. The penalty was based on the reach and cost of the advertising.
All of the contraventions were unintentional and all three subjects co-operated fully, said Elections B.C.
