Why the Pro-Life Alberta party is chasing donations, not votes

It's hard to find out much about the leader of Alberta's third-wealthiest political party.

Murray Ruhl appears to have no presence on social media. He's not been quoted in any Alberta media outlet, despite leading the Pro-Life Alberta Political Association for five years.

No photo online, seemingly anywhere. If you looked on the party's website recently, there's no sign of Ruhl, who's also its president.

In fact, the party won't share any details about who the leader is, or even where in Alberta he lives. (Calgary, according to campaign finance documents.) It's inconsequential, because Pro-Life Alberta is a team without emphasis on individuals, executive director Richard Dur said in an interview.

This is just one of the many things that makes Ruhl's party irregular.

It runs political ads on its single issue — opposing abortion rights — but they sound more like third-party advocacy marketing than anything else on the partisan landscape.

There's no mention of candidates or the looming election on the group's website, and Pro-Life Alberta has actually advocated how to participate in the governing UCP's leadership race.

One thing makes it quite similar to other parties: the prominence of the DONATE button on its website. The party mentions that its donations count for tax credits — up to 75 per cent of a contribution's value — on most of its web pages.

That, the party boasts, gives it a huge competitive edge over Alberta's other anti-abortion groups. "Pro-Life Alberta is Alberta's only political pro-life organization that can issue tax receipts and engage in politics — including during provincial elections," the group's website states.

It's become a fundraising powerhouse, through this appeal to anti-abortion activists, and lack of any mention of candidates, the leader or anything else a normal party might promote. 

Pro-Life Alberta raised $672,000 between 2021 and 2022.

While this is peanuts compared to the millions the NDP and UCP haul in, it's far more than any of the other smaller parties. In fact, it's almost as much as the once-strong Alberta Party and the provincial Liberals combined raised over that period.

Ahead of this spring's election, everything Pro-Life Alberta has done appears to be within the letter of Alberta's election and political finance laws, even if no other party functions like this.

But to a longtime political organizer, it's exploiting the rules of the party system and political contribution tax deductions, for the benefit of a group that's more interested in influencing politics than joining the electoral fray itself.