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Fair enough. But that was always more of a theoretical or imagined problem than a real one. There was no need for an amendment. If a false-front organization sprang up during a campaign, charge its organizers.

The old distinction was always protection enough: Third parties used to be able to push their agendas during elections so long as they didn’t explicitly say vote for this party or vote against that candidate.

But Elections Canada’s new interpretation of the law is that ads containing messages in conflict with or agreement with a specific party’s or candidate’s platform are to be deemed to be partisan, too, even if the third-party buying the advertising has been pushing the same message for years.

So when Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party said it thought manmade climate change was not occurring, Elections Canada told groups such as Greenpeace, Climate Action Now and the Sierra Club that they would have to register with the federal government as players in the campaign and abide by all the spending and reporting regulations merely to keep espousing the same “green” messages they have been peddling for years.

This offends me (and I don’t even like environmentalists).

There are a whole bunch of problems with this rule, not the least of which is that it stacks the deck in favour of parties and against registered third parties. During the campaign period that begins about a month before election day on Oct. 21, each registered party will be able to spend $55 million to get its messages out. Third parties, on the other hand, will be limited to less than one percent of that amount.