Candidate fixes "non-compliant" posters
District 7 council candidate Mavis Young had to do some quick damage control on her campaign posters this week after her opponent, incumbent Cynthia Lulham, alleged that she had broken the law by using posters and other campaign materials that didn’t comply with the strict regulations imposed by Quebec’s Director General of Elections.
“Currently in my neighbourhood there are posters on every pole from Ms. Young and there’s no name,” Lulham said on Monday. She claimed that Young’s posters bore neither the name of her official agent — Patrick Barnard — nor name of the printer.
By Tuesday, stickers providing the requisite information had been added to Young's posters.
“You’re supposed to put the name of the agent and the printer," Lulham said. "The printer is for when they verify it. At the end when you give in your expenses, you show your printer’s bill and the poster. That’s how they control your expenditures. On her web site she doesn’t have her official agent, either, and on some material she gave out she didn’t have her printer.
“The agent’s really the important issue, because that says he or she is aware of the expenditure and has to report it,” added Lulham. “It’s not a technicality. It’s a very important part of the electoral law, and what she’s doing flies in the face of that. It’s not a level playing field. The law is there to make it a level playing field so everybody doesn’t spend more.”
Responding to Lulham's allegation, Young said that some people on her team of supporters, who are “really enthusiastic and some of them are young,” may have gone too far when they made copies of campaign materials and inadvertently left off the name of the agent and printer.
“We will rectify that, of course,” she said. “I have two kinds of posters. I’ve got one up in colour that has the printer and the agent on it, which is, I believe, what I must have. And there have been some photocopies put up. I think the people who put them up, either they’re young and very enthusiastic and they just forgot about that, and we will be rectifying that.”
Photo: Martin C. Barry