A Huffington Post article today reported that outside groups spent over $1B in last year’s US presidential election, largely without transparency and oversight.  Closer to home, the Vancouver Park Board recently passed a motion calling on the BC provincial government to implement campaign finance reform;  their motion was endorsed by Integrity BC, which has a petition underway calling for such reforms.

Since the upcoming provincial election campaign is due to kick off shortly, we thought it would be timely to review the current state of campaign finance regulations in BC, Canada and in Vancouver (where both the Park Board and City Council have called on the provincial government to enact reforms).  The following table summarizes the main features of campaign finance regulations at these three levels of government: