A by-the-numbers view illustrating an unusual number of individual third party advertisers supporting a single candidate

This post will be updated as new information is obtained

Yesterday I wrote about concerns I have regarding the use of the race card in the local race in my riding, Vancouver-Kingsway. Without editorializing on the content of the advertisement I thought it would be interesting to look at the issue of third-party individuals running advertisements in this riding strictly from a numbers perspective.

If one trawls through the Elections Canada databases for riding and candidate contributions, and the list of third party advertisers, you can come up with the following by-the-numbers view of the issue too. What you'll find is that third-party advertising by individuals in support of an individual candidate is extremely rare. There are thousands of candidates country-wide yet it would appear only one has attracted the individual support of multiple individual third party advertisers.

These facts and numbers infer no wrongdoing, but the facts alone do cause one to ask questions and want to look deeper at third party advertising in general and in Vancouver-Kingsway in particular. The facts as they are known today include:

1. Of the 51 entities found within Elections Canada's national list of registered third parties as of October 13, only 7 are individuals as opposed to organizations, and of those 7 one is connected to VoteForEnvironment.ca which is a multi-candidate multi-party advocacy internet site.
2. Of the remaining 6 individuals, all are from B.C.
3. Of those 6, half or 3 of the B.C. individuals are supporters of Ms. Yuan. Each of the 3 are running Chinese language advertisements in her support. Another, apparently as yet unregistered individual, appears to be also running a supporting advertisement which would have a cost such that registration of this individual would be required under the Elections Act. Each of the four third parties have been identified by the required English language text at the bottom of advertisements printed in Chinese media. The three registered individuals are:

• Alan Deng
• Wu Zhi Dong
• Yi Xin Chen

The three registered individuals have authorized advertisements benefiting Ms. Yuan in the following publications:

As might be expected, certain of these names will be found in Elections Canada reports on donations to the riding association. Nomination donations for Ms. Yuan were not available on the Elections Canada web site at time of writing.

Of thousands of candidates running in 308 ridings across the country only one candidate - Wendy Yuan - appears to have multiple third party individuals running election advertising in her support. The by-the-numbers view looks like this:

• Number of ridings: 308
• Number of candidates across the country: more than a thousand
• Number of third party advertisers in total: 51
• Number of third party advertisers supporting causes rather than individuals: 45 (best available estimate)
• Number of individual third party advertisers not supporting multiple candidates or causes: 6 (best available estimate)
• Number of other candidates having no third party advertising support: all but a handful
• Number of other candidates having multiple individual third party advertising support: zero (best available estimate)
• Number of other candidates having multiple individual third party advertising support: zero (best available estimate)
• Number of registered third party advertisers supporting Liberal candidate Wendy Yuan: 3
• Number of unregistered third party advertisers supporting Liberal candidate Wendy Yuan that likely should be registered under the Elections Act: 1
• Number of third party advertisers supporting Wendy Yuan's campaign: 4
• Number of times Wendy Yuan's campaign or third parties have used a racial appeal for votes: many