Liberals, NDP promote party donation transparency

The provincial Liberal party and the New Democratic Party both say they are on the road to greater transparency in how they raise money after a war of words on party funding.

Liberal Leader Brian Gallant says his party will soon release the list of financial donors to his successful 2012 leadership campaign.

And the NDP says it has sorted out an accounting mess with Elections New Brunswick, the agency that regulates party fundraising in the province.

"Every step of the way we've followed Election New Brunswick's guidance on this over the last couple of months," said NDP Leader Dominic Cardy.

His comments were confirmed by Elections New Brunswick spokesperson Paul Harpelle, who said the supervisor for political financing has been advising the NDP on "proper accounting."

The two situations had led to accusations and counter-accusations between members of both parties on social media.

The Liberal party’s board voted on May 26 to release Gallant’s donor list, but it had still not been made public as of Wednesday.

"From what I understand, from what I've heard, everything should be fine," Gallant told CBC News.

"They're just trying to get it into the right format. They're also trying to make sure they give everybody a heads-up."

Gallant said his donors were being notified as a courtesy and were not being given the right to veto release of their donation information.

The rules for the leadership race, adopted by the party in 2011, said that the party would consider requests from the public for access to financial donations to leadership candidates.

The NDP requested the information after Gallant’s victory and members have repeatedly used Twitter to point out how long it was taking for the Liberals to comply.

But Liberals have responded by alleging the NDP wasn’t above reproach itself on party funding issues.

Public finance reports for the NDP for the first half of 2012, the last to be filed with Elections New Brunswick, showed three outstanding loans to the party from three unions, totalling more than $66,000, dating back to 1999.

The three unions were the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Canadian Auto Workers, and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union.

Liberal party members argued that if the loans were not repaid, they should be considered outright donations — donations that would violate the annual donation limit of $6,000.

Cardy says the outstanding loans were a symptom of poor bookkeeping in the NDP office that dated back more than a decade. He pointed out there have been three party leaders and several administrators since then.

"The party’s executive director has enjoyed telling people that she’s been spending her time fixing mistakes that were made when she was in junior high," he said.

The NDP reached an agreement with Elections New Brunswick to have the loans written off as part of Cardy’s efforts to get the books in order.

Elections New Brunswick's Harpelle confirmed that because there is a two-year limit on prosecutions under the Political Process Financing Act, there’s no penalty to the NDP even if the loans became donations.

Cardy says once the party’s books are in order, likely by the end of 2013, the NDP will begin posting all its financial information online for everyone to see.