POLITICIANS ON SALE.

We take inflation more or less for granted these days but in fact two things have been getting cheaper and cheaper over time: computers and politicians.

In the country’s first big pay-for-play dust-up, the Pacific Scandal, John A. Macdonald, who was something less than a George Washington, supposedly sent a telegram to the head of his favourite railway syndicate with the unforgettable request: “I must have another $10,000. Will be the last time of calling. Do not fail me. Answer today.” This was in the last days of the 1872 election campaign. Whether the telegram ever existed or was a fake news Russian plant — sorry, a fake-news Liberal plant — is disputed to this day. But Macdonald lost the following election and, lucky for him in retrospect, got to sit out the economic depression of the 1870s. Returned to office in 1878 he remained PM until his death in 1891.

What’s interesting in view of today’s pay-for-play scandal is the dollar amount involved back then — $10,000 — which even in the dollars of that day is almost seven times the access fee, $1,500, that is giving our current prime minister such trouble. The Bank of Canada inflation calculator only goes back to 1914. It shows that prices have increased by a disgraceful 21-fold since then. Getting all the way back to 1873 is harder. What indexes we have suggest prices were relatively stable at the end of the 1800s, rising by a little less than a fifth between 1870 and 1910. As a rough guess, let’s say $10,000 in 1873 translates to about $250,000 today.

Of course, Canadians were a lot poorer in 1873. The OECD’s “How Was Life?” project says per capita inflation-adjusted income in the countries it calls the “Western offshoots” (Canada, the U.S. and Australia) rose 12-fold between 1870 and 2010. To be conservative, say 10-fold. So to someone from 1873, $250,000 looked like really big money, the way $2.5 million looks to us 21st-century folk.

So maybe $2.5 million really was enough to buy Sir John A.’s favour. In recent weeks, otherwise serious people have seemed to suggest Justin Trudeau’s is available for just $1,500. Maybe there’s a Moore’s Law for politicians as well as computers, though no one I know thinks politicians’ productivity really doubles every 18 months. But something is bringing their price down fast. Not many people in the Canada of 1873 had $10,000 with which to buy the prime minister’s attention. In the Canada of 2016, several hundred thousand people, maybe even millions, could afford $1,500 (if they wanted to) to have a meet, greet, and maybe even dine and schmooze with the PM. But if we can all buy him, well, that’s like no one being able to buy him.

Strangely enough, the people who really can’t buy him now are those with the most money. My guess is the Bahamas holiday at the Aga Khan’s place was completely innocent, a case of longtime friends, one extremely rich and the other just modestly rich, relaxing in agreeable surroundings.

I have no idea what a helicopter ride to and a few days lolling about on a private Caribbean island might be worth; maybe $10,000, just to pick a number. But if the Aga Khan had really been trying to reinforce his influence by hosting the PM and his family, how do you suppose he feels about his gift now? National Post reports estimate his foundation received over $300 million from Ottawa since 2004. What are its chances of getting more any day soon? From now on, to the usual substantive cost-benefit analysis of any proposal from the Aga Khan Foundation will be added a careful political plus-minus analysis of the optics of giving him money after this Bahamas scandal.

It seems the federal ethics commissioner is now going to weigh in on the vacation. Why bother? The system has already worked. Transparency, which the prime minister’s people tried hard to resist, has enabled Canadians to form their own judgment, and it’s largely unfavourable. As long as we know what’s going on — and to that end, what we really need is a Transparency Commissioner — Canadians can apply their own ethical standards.

Some people believe we should drain all the money we can out of politics. Unfortunately, politics does cost money. The same commentators who complain about $1,500 pay-to-play also complain the PM’s party isn’t paying for his self-promoting Timbit Tour. If Sir John A. wanted to visit every pub between Kingston and Belleville, which he may well have done in his day, it cost him carriage or train fare, lodging and the price of a few drams (or maybe in his case, quarts). Moving a 21st-century prime minister is a whole different order of expense. Still, Barack Obama and, after him, Bernie Sanders have shown that politicians people believe in can raise piles of money through small contributions. Let the micro-contributing begin.

THE ETHICS COMMISSIONER IS GOING TO WEIGH IN ON THE VACATION. WHY BOTHER?