I saw in the Edmonton Journal today that Airdrie-Chestermere MLA Rob Anderson has moved Bill 205, a private members bill that would limit third-part advertising expenditures.This is a delicate topic. In a democracy, you expect there to be freedom of speech, and that includes the freedom to do with your property as you see fit. But in reality, human beings are susceptible to the forces of effective advertising.I know, I know. Advertising doesn't effect you. It's just everyone else on the planet that they are aiming at when people pay millions of dollars for 30 seconds on Superbowl day.That, in and of itself, is not a problem. If we were all able to bombard one another with effective advertising all the time, then who cares? No, there are two associated problems. The first is that not everyone has access to very expensive media campaigns. That's the motivation for placing limits on how much can be spent on this sort of thing. The second problem is that you don't necessarily know who's spending the money. You can't always judge the message by its source.So Bill 205 requires donation limits to third-party advertising accounts, and it requires reporting of where those donations came from.Of course, the donation limits are around $30,000 during an election year, so all that does is prevent the uber-wealthy from single-handedly running third party advertising campaigns. I haven't actually noticed any uber-wealthy individuals running third party advertising in elections. Have you?So the limits aren't strong enough. But then again, neither are the donation limits to political parties. Why? Probably because there is another reality to be dealt with: democracy costs money, and someone is going to have to pay for it, or what we've got is not really democracy. The Alberta government doesn't like the idea of public funding for political parties outside of donation tax credits, so that's not going to happen. So the limits are basically meaningless.The disclosure rules exist, though. So that's good. Except... I don't remember anyone running third-party advertising and hiding their identity. Do you?So this bill will kinda solve a couple of problems that don't really exist.Meanwhile, the Chief Electoral Officer (who was fired) has repeatedly recommended that the same law be amended to incorporate rules that say that if a political party accepts illegal contributions, it can't keep them. For the time being, there's only a $1000 fine. So a $2000 illegal donation is a really good deal. He also says that he has recommended half a dozen times that people be prosecuted for offences under the act, and nothing has ever happened.Those are real problems. I wonder why Bill-205 isn't addressed to them.