Chief Financial Officers

Being a CFO is an important job. The Chief Electoral Officer will provide you with detailed guidelines to clarify your responsibilities under the Act.

You are responsible for all the financial aspects of the constituency association's business and/or the candidate's campaign. The duties include the maintenance of complete financial records and the preparation of reports that must be filed with the Chief Electoral Officer. For this reason the Chief Electoral Officer advises that the CFO have experience in accounting or bookkeeping.

Since the financial records have to be audited, and the statements filed with the Chief Electoral Officer must be accompanied by an auditor's report, a meeting with your auditor following your appointment as CFO would be helpful and is strongly recommended.

There are other responsibilities too:

• You must ensure that all funds received are deposited in the Ontario bank, trust company or credit union account you have registered with the Chief Electoral Officer.
• Contributions consisting of goods and services must be valued and recorded as described in the Act.
• Tax credit receipt forms given to you by the Chief Electoral Officer for the purpose of acknowledging contributions must be issued for all contributions received (accepted) after they have been deposited in the financial institution.
• The audited financial statements accompanied by the auditor's report must be filed with the Chief Electoral Officer by the deadline dates.
• All payments, with the exception of minor disbursements from a petty cash account, must be by cheque.
• During an election, you must authorize all expenditures made on the campaign. To ensure that you do not go over the set spending limit, you should draw up a comprehensive budget in advance.

Contributions from Fund-Raising

In the Fund-raising Section on page 14, full details are provided about the limit on contributions, the sources from which contributions may be accepted, unlawful contributions, the holding of social functions for the purpose of raising funds and the need for all funds to be turned over to the CFO.

As CFO you must be familiar with all matters set forth in Section 4 on page 14 It is your responsibility not to accept contributions that are prohibited under the Act, and to refund contributions improperly accepted.

Tax credit receipts are only issued for the value of donations that are considered contributions under the Act.

Contribution Records

The name and address of every person, corporation or trade union who makes a donation should be recorded. Wherever the total contributions received (accepted) is more than $100 from any single source over the period of a year in the case of a constituency association, or through the election campaign period in the case of a candidate, you will have to file with the Chief Electoral Officer the exact amount and the full name and address of the contributor.

The candidate's organization and the constituency association can accept funds from the provincial party and trust funds that have been registered with the Chief Electoral Officer and need only record the amount and source. Candidates can accept money from their constituency associations, recording only that it came from the association. Any such funds must, of course, be deposited in the financial institution account registered with the Chief Electoral Officer.

In both these cases, the group that originally accepted the contributions -- the party or the constituency association -- should record the name and address of the individual contributors.

Contribution of Goods and Services

When services are donated, the basic rule is that work done by people acting on a voluntary basis does not count as a contribution. Also, if a corporation or a trade union voluntarily makes people available to help in your campaign and does not pay them extra for doing so, this does not count as a contribution so no tax credit is available.

However, some goods or services you receive as donations may be considered a contribution. If the goods and services are valued in excess of $100 they are considered a contribution and must be recorded, together with the name and address of the contributor. This remains true whether the contribution consists of one large donation, or is the sum total of a number of smaller contributions of goods and services from a single contributor during a year or campaign period. Therefore, it is important that you keep records of all such contributions, just as you would with money.

If the total value is $100 or less, then it will be considered to be a contribution unless the donor specifies it is not a contribution. Whenever the goods are considered to be contributions, they should be acknowledged with a tax credit receipt.

The rule for setting the value of donated goods is that they must be considered contributions equal in value to what their normal cost in your area would be. For instance, if a donation is made of letterhead and envelopes that would normally cost $120, you must record it as a contribution of $120, along with the name and address of the contributor. This also applies to any goods you receive at a reduced price, in which case the value of the contribution would be the difference between the price you paid and the normal selling price of the goods. If it exceeds $100, it must be recorded as a contribution.

The same applies to election advertising placed by anyone other than your provincial party, with the knowledge and consent of your candidate. If its normal cost is more than $100 it must be recorded as a contribution, and it also counts toward the candidate's spending limit under the Act.

Contributions Not Acceptable

Contributions cannot be accepted from any person who does not live in Ontario, a corporation that is a registered charity or that does not carry on business in the province or a trade union that does not represent employees in the province.

Cash contributions in excess of $25 cannot be accepted. Contributions over this amount must be by cheque, money order, or credit card. No contributors may contribute money that is not their own.

Contributions payable to a candidate's campaign cannot be accepted until the candidate is registered with the Chief Electoral Officer.

Contributions cannot be accepted from political parties, constituency associations or candidates in other provinces or at the federal level.

No candidate or constituency association can accept contributions from a single source over the limits set out in the Act.

Except for donations of $10 or less into a general collection at a meeting, anonymous contributions cannot be accepted.

If you find you have received contributions prohibited by the Act, it is up to you to return them, provided you first retrieve the tax credit receipt issued. If the donor is anonymous and cannot be found, or if the tax credit receipt is not recovered, you are required to forfeit the contribution to the Chief Electoral Officer.

Details about the limits on contributions from individual sources are spelled out in the Fund-Raising/Contributions Section on page 14, and in the Chief Electoral Officer's Guidelines for CFOs.

Non-Contribution Sources of Funds

Donations of $10 or less received by "passing the hat" at a political meeting are not considered contributions.

You may choose to consider annual membership fees of $25 or less not to be a contribution provided you keep a membership list, stating how much each individual has paid.

Funds may be transferred to or from your association to a political party or candidate registered with the Chief Electoral Officer. However, funds may not be transferred to federal or municipal levels.

Both a candidate and a constituency association may borrow money (see the Candidate Section on page 3 and the Constituency Association Section on page 7) but you must record the terms of the loan and report it to the Chief Electoral Officer. Loans may not be accepted from any person, corporation, or trade union or from any other organization, including a federal party.

Also, at the option of the donor, goods and services with a total value of $100 or less may be considered not to be a contribution.

In some circumstances, part of the income from the sale of tickets to a fund-raising activity, such as a dance, will be non-contribution funds.  Complete information regarding this can be found in Section 4 on page 14.

Campaign Subsidy

The candidate's CFO should be aware that when the campaign financial statements have been filed, your campaign is entitled to funding by the Chief Electoral Officer if your candidate received 15% or more of the popular vote in the riding and if both your campaign and endorsing constituency association financial statements are approved.

The subsidy to which a candidate may be entitled is the lesser of 20% of the actual campaign expenses or 20% of the maximum allowable campaign expenses. Details of this can be found in Section 5 on page 20.

If your campaign ends with a deficit, you must use the subsidy from the Chief Electoral Officer to pay off the incurred debts. If a further deficit remains, it becomes the responsibility of the constituency association. If you end with a surplus, the extra money must be turned over to your party or constituency association.

In the case of an independent candidate the surplus must be turned over to the Chief Electoral Officer.

Audit Requirements

The Chief Electoral Officer will provide forms to fill out for the required information whether in respect to the candidate's campaign, the campaign period of the association, or the annual statement which every association must file covering its financial activities. Details of your total contributions and expenses will be required, together with the name and address of every person, corporation or trade union who donated more than $100.

The financial statements submitted to the Chief Electoral Officer must be audited. The Chief Electoral Officer will pay the costs of the audit up to a maximum of $1,240 for a candidate's campaign statement and $744 for each of the campaign and annual statements of the constituency association.

A financial summary of your candidate's campaign income and campaign expenditures as well as that of the constituency association will be published in The Ontario Gazette and on an Internet website, and the names of contributors who gave more than $100 will be kept on file at the Chief Electoral Officer for public inspection.