Levelling the electoral playing f ield

money out, allowing only individual donations (plus some government assistance, via the tax credit on contributions and reimbursement of candidate expenses), themselves subject to limits.

But this led to other problems. The ceilings on party spending, and even more the limits on donations, were a direct incentive for so-called “third-party” groups to proliferate, ostensibly independent — collusion is prohibited — but free to participate in campaigns, often in overtly partisan ways, without being subject to the same limits. Sometimes, as in recent Ontario elections, the result was a free-for-all, in which party spending was dwarfed by the millions spent by thirdparty groups. Federal rules at present are almost as lax.

At other times, spending limits on third-party groups have been set so tight as to effectively ban them from participating. But this only replaces one excess with another. Sometimes a citizen may genuinely feel that none of the parties represents his views, or that an issue he cares deeply about is being ignored. To prohibit him from spending money, on his own or in combination with others, to promote his views in this way is a serious violation of his freedom of speech.

So the Public Policy Forum has it half-right, with its latest policy paper (“Transparent leaving individuals of different means with very different abilities to influence the national conversation. What’s needed, rather, is to limit not contributions but overall contributing

— the total amount an individual may contribute to all politically active groups, so far as these attempt to influence the outcomes of elections. Any money they spent supporting or opposing a party or candidate would have to come out of funds capacity is the closest practical equivalent to this.

That leaves the question of how much that annual ceiling should be set at. I’ve come to the conclusion it need not be very high at all. That’s partly a matter of equity — how equally would we be treating individuals if one person’s contributions were limited to $10,000 annually, while another only earned that much in a year? But it’s also a matter of observation: we don’t need to spend nearly as much as we do on political campaigns.

I’ve made this point before: there’s no objective necessity to current spending levels. The parties only spend as much as they do because the other parties do. And what they spend it on is, by and large, not only unnecessary — mostly their efforts cancel each other out — but harmful: attack ads, push polls, robocalls and, increasingly, frantic efforts to raise still more funds. Sometimes the latter is invoked as an argument for public subsidy, to relieve parties of this pressure. But surely the simpler remedy is just for all of them to spend less.

What of value would be lost if, say, we converted the current $1,575 per-contribution limit to a total annual contribution limit? I’m guessing fewer pollsters, strategists and advertising copywriters would be employed. But what would be the downside?

THE CANADIAN PRESS/CHRIS YOUNG Parties only spend as much as they do because the other parties do. And what they spend it on is, by and large, not only unnecessary ... but harmful, Andrew Coyne writes.