Follow the money

If neither Vision Vancouver nor the NPA are listening to average voters, says Benson, the reason is obvious: Average voters don't fund Vision and NPA campaigns.

"NSV doesn't take any financing from development companies or any large private interests that might influence our decision making," she says. "It's clear that Vision Vancouver and NPA received a lot of funding from development companies during the last election."

Patrick Smith is a political science professor at SFU who has made his academic career of trawling through campaign financing records, much to the chagrin of city clerks across the province.

"In this case, the money speaks a lot," he says. "If you look across the range of contributions and you try to group them broadly, the property development and construction business is the largest collective group of contributors."

Be that as it may, Vision's executive director, Ian Baillie, insists that there is no quid pro quo relationship between campaign donors to his party and the candidates they support.

"The backbone of accountability is the disclosure process," he says. "The fact is, we're the only party that has disclosed our financial records since the election. No other party has done that."

Under provincial law, municipal political parties are required to make donation and spending information available to the public within the first 120 days after election day. Following the election this year, current candidates across B.C. will have until March 19, 2012 to submit their financial records to their respective municipal clerks. After that, there are no additional disclosure requirements.

For its part, says Ian Baillie, Vision has pushed the province to implement contribution limits and more rigorous transparency standards across B.C.

"In the meantime, we follow the rules that are in front of us."

The B.C. free-for-all

On a list of principals published on their website, the NSV declares its intention to restrict campaign donations to individuals, limit the size of contributions, mandate ongoing full disclosure of campaign contributions and consider public financing of campaigns.

"We want to look at the issue of campaign financing and we want to look at having much smaller scale elections," says Benson. "These are different ways we might be able to weed out the big corporate spending on campaigns."

But according to Patrick Smith, city halls can only do so much weeding on matters of campaign finance. The rules that regulate how much money can be collected or spent by or on behalf of political parties and candidates are made and enforced at the provincial level.

That's unlucky for us, says Smith.

"We're essentially where we were in 1880," he says. "To make an absurd point, it would be possible for the President for Life of North Korea to give a candidate for mayor in Vancouver $5 million. There's nothing in the law that doesn't allow for that and the only time that people would find out about it would be six months after the election."

Equally laissez-faire across the province, this lack of regulation and transparency is all the more evident -- and potentially worrisome -- in a city with the population and political structure of Vancouver's. Without a ward system, which would reduce the size of each contest, there are over 90 candidates running for 27 available positions at Vancouver city hall. One of the few ways for a candidate to stick out in such a crowded field -- short, perhaps, of being publicly cursed at by the mayor -- is to outspend the competition on advertising. And advertising can be very expensive.

With such little regulation, there is obvious reason to worry that campaign cash -- from large development companies or elsewhere -- can influence electoral outcomes and, worse yet, policy. But equally toxic for a healthy democracy, says Smith, is the mere perception, true or not, that such corruption exists.

"The idea that four months from November people will find out about campaign contributions through some unaudited statement is a blight on our local democracy," says Smith. "Money matters and that impacts on trust in government."

Running against a broken system

That basic lack of trust in city hall's ability to impartially govern is exactly what NSV is building its campaign upon.

"NSV is really about public input and that's why I'm with this organization," explains Benson. "I really believe in their mandate for participatory forms of democracy where citizens actually have a say in the decision-making."

That is, according to Benson, in notable contrast with the current system in which citizens do not have a say. Hoping to ride a groundswell of political disillusionment to city hall, the central tenant of Benson, Helten and NSV's philosophy -- that important decisions around development should be made at the neighbourhood level -- is premised on a fundamental skepticism about the current political and electoral systems.

Luckily for them, distrust in the system has never been higher.

[Tags: Politics, Urban Planning and Architecture]