CFRU Gears Up Election Coverage

CFRU, the campus and community radio station, recently sent out this press release about their coverage of the municipal election. It's conveniently reprinted for you all to read here below.

CFRU 93.3fm’s dedicated municipal election radio show, aptly called Municipal Election Radio, will take place every Tuesday morning from 7-9 a.m. starting September 14. The show, co-hosted by Royal City Rag’s Jan Hall, The Working Week’s Scotty Hertz and former host of Gen X for Gen Y, Oliver Rockside will discuss election issues, profile candidates, cover the debates, as well as report from the campaign trail. We will also be live from the River Run Centre on election night, October 25.

Voteguelph.ca will be the online home for all of CFRU93.3fm’s municipal election coverage. On our website you will find all the audio from our radio shows including information on candidates, discussion of issues, debates, news from the campaign trail and interviews.

As part of our coverage we will be extending an invitation to all of the mayoral candidates for an interview on Municipal Election Radio. We regret that we are unable to invite individual ward candidates in for a full interview however we will be assigning a reporter to cover each individual ward race and hope to include some audio from the ward races as part of our radio coverage.

Campaign For Municipal Election Financial Transparency
As part of our election coverage we are asking all candidates whether they are willing to report contributions to their campaign before the election takes place on October 25. The current Municipal Act requires only that all donations greater than $100 are recorded and reported in a financial statement, however that information is only made public long after the election has taken place.

http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/AssetFactory.aspx?did=7269

We do not believe that this is in the public interest. To ensure election transparency, we believe the information on who is donating to individual campaigns should be available to the public before they go to the polls.

We also do not believe it is appropriate that municipal election candidates accept donations from corporations and unions, groups that are not eligible voters. Campaign donations from corporations and unions have already been barred in Toronto.

We are therefore asking ALL candidates in the election to answer the following questions:

1. Are you willing to make all donations to your campaign greater than $100 public during the election campaign period rather than requiring citizens to wait for the post-election financial report?

2. Will you be accepting donations from corporations?

3. Will you be accepting donations from unions?

4. If you are willing to make all donations to your campaign greater than $100 public during the election campaign period, how will you make this information available to the public?

5. In other municipalities, 10 days before election day, candidates will disclose via their website or Facebook page, all contributions received up until 2 weeks before election day. Do you support this for Guelph?

Jan Hall
www.voteguelph.ca