The NDP are mortified by the thought of non-politicians introducing new ideas at election time. So much so, that last week Premier Gary Doer announced a gag law designed to muzzle citizen group advertising. It's an open and shut case of censoring free speech.

The NDP dress up the elections act amendments in the name of "equality" and "a level playing field." But the changes are stacked in favour of well-heeled political parties and candidates who can freely express their views with a virtual monopoly on issues and ideas.

So-called "third parties" - citizen groups or individuals - will be limited to spend only $5,000 on election advertising and be forced to comply with a new set of onerous rules and regulations or face fines of up to $50,000.

Citizens will be expected to keep still during campaigns, and like good little drones, queue up at the ballot box every four years. The NDP are reinforcing lazy democracy.

The only available option for citizens is to join a political party or keep their opinions to themselves because the new law will not tolerate a challenge to the conventional wisdom of the registered parties and candidates.

Meanwhile, political parties can lay-out $1 million in an election campaign, or 200 times more than what a citizen group or individual would be entitled to spend. The political parties will have access to 21st Century media technologies while citizen group advertising will be reduced to archaic flyers and posters pasted on telephone poles.

A spending limit of $5,000 works out to a paltry $87 of advertising in each of the province's 57 ridings. That will buy no more than one 4-inch ad in a rural weekly newspaper. With an advertising budget as meager as that, why not outlaw citizen group spending all together

Conveniently, the new rules apply to everyone but government. They can still run their feel good ads about the wonders of public health care just prior or during elections without the party footing the bill.

The proposed law is based on the false assumption that too much money is spent on election campaigns. But Manitobans already spend ten times as much on alcohol than on elections in a given year and 190 times more on tobacco. Clearly Manitoba are not getting burnt from any overexposure to election campaigning.

The other argument is that access to big money could affect election results. Not so. In 1992, the "Yes" side of the Charlottetown Accord outspent the "No" side by a factor of 13 to 1, yet the "No" side prevailed and the Accord was defeated.

Most recently, Alliance candidate Tom Long is reported to have outspent his two rivals but finished the leadership race in a distant third.

Citizen group advertising complements the electoral process by presenting new policy goals or ideas outside the limited confines of a three party system. The passage of the Balanced Budget Law was introduced in this way in the 1995 election by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and has since become a landmark decision endorsed by all three provincial parties.

It's a mystery why the NDP is trying to pass identical legislation that was struck down by the B.C. Supreme Court in March this year. The court ruled that a $5,000 restriction on citizen group advertising in B.C. was an unjustified violation of free speech. It's the fourth time in Canada that the courts have struck down a gag law.

A culture of secrecy and statism is quickly taking hold of the new government. Upcoming changes to our freedom of information laws threaten to limit access to government documents. Disdain for the law was displayed just last week as a senior bureaucrat ordered departments not to comply with the information laws.

Now freedom of expression is under siege with Byzantine amendments to the elections act. Election campaigns are not an exclusive club. All should be able to participate.