I've been an electoral administrator for over 30 years. From watching elections being conducted federally, provincially and even municipally, it is clear that campaigns start much earlier than the 28-day or 35-day writ period.
Messaging and people's perspectives on political parties, leaders, etc., can often be informed in that pre-writ period. We were seeing an unequal balance between some political actors who had extensive funds and could fund many of these campaigns.
From my perspective, it effectively violated the core principle of our democracy, which is a fair and level playing field. We needed to ensure that those who had more funds than others could not just dominate the airwaves and, in effect, have a direct impact on the electoral result at the end of the writ period.
In Ontario, there was considerable debate amongst us. I travelled with the committee across the province. I heard from a number of stakeholders who supported some form of a pre-writ advertising limit.
I can't honestly say where $1 million came from. There was a lot of debate about different figures. Ultimately, that's what the government landed on and it made its way into the final versions of Bill 2.