Alberta elections has fined the group of conservative activists Take Back Alberta and founder David Parker plus $ 120,000 for political financing violations.
The fines, revealed in the Electoral Agency website On Tuesday, they are for more than a dozen violations of the Albert .
The agency does not publish the reasons for their sanctions or comments on them.
But Parker told CBC News that the researchers did not agree with their insistence that the meetings of their group and their speeches about United Conservative Party (UCP) and the NDP throughout Alberta did not equal political advertising.
“If I cannot express my disgust for a political figure in my own meetings of my own group, that is Boca to Boca announced, then we no longer live in a democracy,” Parker said Tuesday in an interview.
The group and its founder have 30 days to pay for fines, or have the option to appeal in court. Parker said he will fight against penalties, but that he has not yet decided how he will.
TBA has emerged in recent years as a powerful activist movement within the UCP.
Parker, a former organizer of the Federal and Provincial Party, helped encourage albertaos discontent to Push the then Prime Minister Jason Kenney Outside the UCP leadership in 2022. Then he brought together the party members to choose related ideas activists for the UCP Board of Directors for TBA I could have “control” About the government party.
Parker has been political and personally close to Prime Minister Danielle Smith, who was invited at her 2023 wedding. But she had Ties After some of his inflammatory comments on social networks, and he campaigned against his UCP leadership review last fall, where he won a resounding support.
TBA is registered as an advertiser of political and electoral third parties, a designation that allows him to promote and oppose provincial parties and candidates, but also requires that he denounce his donations and names of donors for all those activities.
The group and Parker, its financial director, had not submitted financial reports in 2023 or 2024, according to Alberta Financial Portal elections, despite Parker’s many speech events and defense efforts within the UCP.
“My statement is that we did not make political advertising. His statement is that the municipalities were political advertising,” Parker said on Tuesday.
“No one who gave money to recover that Alberta was donating to political advertising. They were under the assumption they were donating to operations.”
The Alberta elections discovered that Parker contributed knowing about the annual limit of $ 30,000 to their own third -party advertiser.
His organization landed in the Court last year, since Parker had resisted revealing the elections of documents that Alberta had demanded as part of an investigation into financial irregularities.
He Edmonton Journal reported which received a fine of $ 5,000 more legal costs in August after not complying with a deadline to reveal the names of donors to the agency.
In a letter to the supporters of the TBA last summer, Parker said that the group had $ 680,000 in income in 2023 and $ 688,225 in 2022, although that year the group reported only $ 22,309 in contributions.
In July, Parker called Alberta’s investigation elections a “witch hunt for the unleashed bureaucrats” in a publication on social networks.
Parker was personally fined for $ 7,500, while the Alberta group was fined $ 112,500. Jonathan Heidebrecht, former financial director of the group, received a fine of $ 500 for a false statement in a quarterly financial report.
