Hey, Hi, Hello!
I’m sure you’ve seen that the UCP is struggling financially. They claim that because they spent so much on “political messaging” leading up to the 2019 election that they now don’t have enough credit to maintain their basic operations without fundraising revenues and may have to “cease operations”.
With $7.37 million raised in 2019, a 2.3 million deficit and 1.1 million in liabilities, it’s fair to wonder where exactly the UCP was spending all their money and if that deficit figure includes the hundreds of thousands of dollars of fines levied against the party by the elections commissioner in response to the UCPs questionable campaign.
The claim from UCP president Ryan Becker, “aggressive spending on political messaging” leading up to the 2019 election is what has caused this situation brings up some questions for me. For example, the UCP fundraising email claims that the pandemic is the cause of the party’s woes, so how close to their financial limits were they operating if they could find themselves at risk of insolvency in a matter of weeks?
You may be wondering what it would mean if the UCP “ceased operations”, unfortunately the UCP Communications Director Evan Menzies did not clarify that, so I tried to find out.
Shockingly, there is very little information about what happens to provincial parties that are unable to fund their operations, let alone what happens if that party is currently the majority government. There is the possibility that the UCP may find themselves defaulting on their payments to their vendors, which the Alberta Elections Act is clear would open the UCP up to potential legal action.
With the UCP losing support across the province, I have to say, I think it would be great if the UCP would cease their operations and let the NDP take over.
The Prolific Progressive 