They didn’t get everything they wanted but Vancouver city councillors are encouraged by a task force’s recommendations released Monday calling for electoral reforms on civic election campaigns.

Vision Vancouver Coun. Andrea Reimer said the task force’s recommendation to implement spending limits is a “pretty critical” step when considering the city’s multi-million dollar campaigns.

“Having some kind of rule framework is great,” Reimer told the Courier.

The Local Government Elections Task Force made 31 recommendations in its report released Monday. But the task force did not recommend limits on contributions to campaigns or call for frequent disclosure of donations.

In March, city council made several recommendations to the task force, including the call to ban union and corporate donations, limits on contributions and financial disclosures for candidates every six months.

“I’m going to guess that in many towns in the province, [annual disclosures] is not a big issue, so I can appreciate why the task force didn’t bring it to the floor,” Reimer said. “But here we absolutely would benefit from annual disclosure rules. They have them at the provincial and federal levels.”

The 2008 city election saw the city’s three mainstream parties—Vision, COPE and the NPA—spend about $5 million. All the parties raise money between elections but are not required to disclose names of contributors and amounts until almost five months after an election.

Minister of Community and Rural Development Bill Bennett, who co-chaired the task force, said Monday he was willing to meet with Vancouver city council to consider further changes for city election campaigns.

Vision Coun. George Chow said he was disappointed no limits were set on donations. He agreed with Reimer that more frequent disclosures by politicians are required in Vancouver.

Chow pointed out one of the task force’s recommendations is to increase three-year terms to four years. If that happens, it will give a candidate or party more time to raise money that will not be disclosed until after an election.

“That’s something that should be added to the recommendations,” Chow said.

Since Vision was founded more than five years ago, the party has made additional disclosures not required by law. It disclosed names and dollar amounts related to paying off its 2005 election debt.

COPE has also made additional disclosures and former NPA councillor Peter Ladner revealed who and where he got his money from for his 2008 mayoral nomination campaign.

COPE Coun. Ellen Woodsworth said the reality of Vancouver’s at-large electoral system was not recognized in the task force’s recommendation for spending limits. Toronto has spending limits but has a ward electoral system, where candidates don’t need huge sums of money to run or see the need to join a well-funded political party.

Neil Monckton of ThinkCity, a local think-tank on city issues, said he does not know of any jurisdictions in Canada where spending limits are used in at-large electoral systems. Contribution limits would have to be implemented to make it work, Monckton added.

“If you’re intent is to bring some fairness into the electoral system, how do you do that in an at-large system where you have candidates and parties competing for large pools of voters and between themselves?”

Bennett said the task force didn’t consider the question of wards in its mandate.

“It is something for the future,” Bennett said.

mhowell@vancourier.com