A controversy has broken out in the provincial election campaign in the Battlefords over the unusual location of the NDP's Cut Knife-Turtleford campaign office.
The location of the office of NDP candidate Bernadette Gopher, running in Cut Knife-Turtleford against Larry Doke of the Saskatchewan Party and Vinessa Currie of the Green Party, has raised eyebrows from an opposing campaign in the Battlefords constituency over its location on 22nd Street in downtown Battleford.
That places the office firmly within the boundaries of the Battlefords constituency and not neighbouring Cut Knife-Turtleford riding, which includes various towns such as Cut Knife, Turtleford, Maidstone and Meota within its boundaries.
Also raising eyebrows is a prominent election billboard for Gopher located on Territorial Drive in North Battleford, again within the boundaries of the Battlefords constituency.
The location of the campaign office and the billboard, in which the orange NDP colours and logo are prominently displayed along with Gopher's name, has drawn the ire of the provincial Liberals who lodged a complaint with Elections Saskatchewan alleging NDP campaign spending irregularities within the Battlefords constituency.
Essentially, the Liberals are claiming Gopher's campaign office location is designed to aid the bid of Battlefords MLA Len Taylor's re-election bid. Taylor is currently in a dogfight for his Battlefords seat with Herb Cox of the Saskatchewan Party and Ryan Bater of the Liberal Party.
"What we have a concern with is it comes down to their spending limits per constituency," said David Kramer, campaign advisor and supporter of the Bater campaign.
He points to a limit of $52,000 that can be spent to run a campaign per constituency.
"When we looked at that, when we saw the signs up and saw the constituency office up, it seemed very clear to us what market that advertising and money was geared to," said Kramer. "Obviously it wasn't geared to Cut Knife-Turtleford, it was geared to the Battlefords. And it was being paid for by the candidate from Cut Knife-Turtleford."
The formal complaint submitted Oct.16 to the Chief Electoral Officer by Josh Haugerud, business manager of the Bater campaign, and released to the media Monday, reads as follows:
"The NDP campaign in The Battlefords has a candidate and campaign office located in North Battleford. In addition, the NDP candidate from Cut Knife-Turtleford, Ms. Bernadette Gopher has a campaign office and billboards located in the riding of the Battlefords. It is the opinion of the Ryan Bater campaign that the funds being spent by the NDP candidate from Cut Knife-Turtleford to promote the NDP are both directly and indirectly promoting the campaign of the NDP candidate from the Battlefords and as such should be counted toward that campaigns expense limit.
"We would like to request at your earliest convenience, a decision and ruling, in writing, be provided to us with respect to this campaign and the expenses incurred by the Cut Knife-Turtleford NDP candidate. It is the opinion of the Ryan Bater campaign that this is a flagrant violation of campaign expense limit laws."
The Liberals point to a provision of the Elections Act, 1996, that defines an election expense as " . . . the cost of goods and services used during an election for the purpose of promoting or opposing, directly or indirectly, a registered political party or the election of a candidate, regardless of whether those costs are incurred before, during or after the election "
So far no ruling has been made by Elections Saskatchewan. However, it has not been unusual in this election campaign for campaign offices to be located in different ridings than the ones where the party's candidates are running.
There have been several instances of NDP campaigns either locating or sometimes consolidating their local riding campaign offices outside their home ridings, with the practise particularly notable in Saskatoon and Regina. As for billboards, the Saskatchewan Party was spotted with billboards up in the Saskatoon area alongside Circle Drive near the exhibition grounds area, promoting different identifiable candidates from various neighbouring city ridings.
The whole issue has drawn a prompt response from volunteers in the NDP campaigns in the Battlefords and Cut Knife-Turtleford, who say they are following all the rules and claim the Liberal complaint has no merit.
Bernadette Gopher's campaign manager Bill McBain said the Liberal complaint was "frivolous, there's no other word for it."
"Campaign offices go often where it is most convenient to serve the community they are running in," said McBain.
In the case of Cut Knife-Turtleford, he said, "we have our office in Battleford because it gives us easy access to the rest of our campaign we are serving in providing the facilities we need to do a good job with that."
They "obviously have a lot of spare time on their hands over at the Liberal campaign," adds McBain, who says the NDP will stick to the tone set by both Jack Layton and Dwain Lingenfelter in running a positive campaign.
