The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission has devised the following rules for allocating time for paid political advertising:
- There is a limited total amount of time to be purchased - set at six and a half hours in 1990.
- Only parties properly registered with the election authorities are eligible to purchase time.
- The CRTC then calls a meeting of the representatives of all eligible parties to divide the time among them. If the party representatives are unable to reach agreement the CRTC makes its own allocation. In the 1979 and 1980 general elections the formula agreed by the party representatives was composed of the proportion of the vote each party received in the previous general election; the number of seats held in the national House of Commons before dissolution and the number of candidates nominated in the previous elections, with the first two factors double-weighted. This method allows flexibility between elections so that, for example, a different formula could be utilised in the event of a new party fielding candidates at any particular election.
- Once the total time has been allocated, each party is free to purchase as much of its allotted time as it wishes and to use that time as it wishes. However, the overall spending limits set on election spending mean that usually none of the parties is able to purchase its full allocation.119
