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More than $850,000 was spent on Burnaby council, mayoral campaigns

More than $850,000 was spent by Burnaby mayoral and council candidates in the 2018 civic election.
Mike Hurley, Derek Corrigan
A lot of money was spent trying to elect Mike Hurley and Derek Corrigan. NOW FILES

More than $850,000 was spent by Burnaby mayoral and council candidates in the 2018 civic election.

Elections BC released all the disclosure statement data for candidates today and a look at the documents reveals campaign spending reached some dizzying heights – possibly the most money ever spent for a Burnaby campaign. (We’ll have a story up today about the money spent in the Burnaby school board election. This is just mayor and council.)

The biggest spender, of course, was the Burnaby Citizens Association. According to the statements online, the BCA had total outflows for the campaign of $502,362. Oh, and 29 cents – can’t forget that. Now, Elections BC divides up that money into two categories, "election period" and "campaign period". The election period on the disclosure forms read dates leading up to Sept. 21, 2018, and the campaign period is Sept. 22-Oct. 20, 2018. 

I personally lump both of those periods together as a "campaign" because there is campaigning going on that entire time. For instance, the BCA spent money on advertising, including brochures.

The BCA had total inflows of – wait for it - $632,655. This included $79,220 in campaign contributions on or after Oct. 31, 2017, and $553,435 raised before that date.

That’s, uh, quite a warchest the BCA amassed.

Was the money well-spent? Well, the BCA did re-elect seven councillors, but failed to re-elect Derek Corrigan as mayor or Baljinder Narang – a former BCA school trustee – as councillor. Considering that the bulk of the BCA’s campaign seemed to be focused on Corrigan – the advertising messaging was almost exclusively about the former mayor – then it was a bit of a fail.

The BCA wasn’t the only big spender in the campaign.

New Mayor Mike Hurley spent a truckload of cash on his campaign – a whopping $280,572.89. Hurley raised $291,700.47, so the campaign spent nearly every dime it raised. That total is split between what Elections Canada terms as election period campaign expenses ($129,405.23) and campaign period expenses ($128,697.58) – there are limits to what you can spend during these periods.

Hurley won by a wide margin, so I guess it was worth it.

Things dial down a lot when you look at what others spent on the campaign.

The Burnaby First Coalition spent $33,792.82 and elected zero candidates.

The Burnaby Green Party spent just $9,511.61, but managed to elect one candidate to council – Joe Keithley – out of the six candidates it fielded in the race.

It’s nearly four years until the next civic election and you can expect the amount raised to drop thanks to new spending limits for candidates and third-party groups that kicked in last fall.

Unless people find a way around the spending limits.

Keep following the Burnaby NOW for more stories as we dive into the disclosure statement data.

Follow Chris Campbell @shinebox44 on Twitter.