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The Ontario NDP spent more on its 2022 election campaign than Doug Ford’s winning Progressive Conservatives, according to new financial statements from the parties.
Documents recently filed with Elections Ontario show that New Democrat campaign expenses totaled nearly $13 million, while the PC Party spent $11.5 million and the Ontario Liberal Party spent $9.6 million.
The New Democrats enter the 2022 election saying their campaign is better funded than ever. They emerged on election night with just 31 seats, nine fewer than in 2018, prompting leader Andrea Horwath to resign, while Ford’s PCs won an even bigger majority of 83 place
The Liberals only won eight ridings, so that means it cost the party’s provincial campaign about $1.2 million for every seat it gained.
Advertising is the largest campaign expense for all of Ontario’s major political parties. Financial statements show the NDP spent the most on advertising during the campaign, $7.1 million, followed closely by the Liberals at nearly $7 million, while the winning PCs spent $6.5 million.
“We feel like we got good value for the money we spent in terms of getting our message across to the people of Ontario and we’re obviously very pleased with the end result,” said Kory Teneycke, Ford’s campaign manager. in both the 2022 and 2018 elections.
“The Ontario NDP can now fundraise and campaign like a governing party,” Lucy Watson, provincial director of the New Democrats, said in a statement Thursday. “We are the only party that can run the kind of campaign it will take to defeat Doug Ford.”
The Green Party of Ontario spent $1.6 million on its provincial campaign, with nearly $880,000 in advertising, Green Leader Mike Schreiner was the party’s only winning candidate, riding Guelph.
Beyond advertising, the financial statements filed by each party break down how they spent their campaign funds on things like travel, polling, staff salaries and even the election night “victory party.”
Ironically, the defeated NDP spent more on its “victory party” ($293,200) than the PCs ($198,644). The Liberals spent just $18,610.
Party spending during the election campaign is subject to limits, and advertising spending is restricted to the six-month period before the official start of the campaign.
Before the pre-campaign advertising restrictions came into effect in November of 2021, the New Democrats and Progressive Conservatives undertook advertising efforts that greatly undermined the Liberals’ choice offering.
Financial statements for the past year show the New Democrats spent $4.9 million on advertising in 2021, while the PCs spent $4.3 million. In sharp contrast, the Ontario Liberal Party spent less than $35,000.
The disparity in spending became particularly apparent in the fall of 2021 when the NDP and PCs launched attack ads against then-Liberal leader Steven Del Duca, while Liberal advertising was nowhere to be found .
Those 2021 statements also show how the PC Party is leading fundraising ahead of the election year. The PCs received $9.8 million in political contributions in 2021, more than the combined total donations to the NDP ($3.4 million), Liberals ($2.35 million) and Greens ($277,000).
Preliminary figures for 2022 posted under Elections Ontario’s real-time disclosure rules show the PCs reporting $9.1 million in donations, the NDP $2.2 million, the Liberals $1.5 million and the Green Party $1 million.
Those numbers likely underestimate total contributions because parties are not required to report individual donations of less than $100 to the real-time disclosure database. The full fundraising total for 2022 must be reported in the party’s year-end financial statements, which are due next May.
The Elections Ontario website lists 63 organizations that are not political parties (such as unions, advocacy groups and business lobbies) registered to spend money on political advertising in the run-up to and during the election campaign. 2022.
Although these groups have a Dec. 2 deadline to submit their financial statements, Elections Ontario has so far only posted a portion of them on its website.
Among those groups whose financial reports are posted, one of the biggest spenders is the Ontario Home Builders Association, the main lobby group for developers. Its statement shows it spent $185,769 on political advertising, the largest amount ever before the election campaign season.
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