NDP leadership hopeful aims to remove influence of major donors from politics

Provincial NDP leadership candidate Ryan Meili says he won’t accept corporate or union contributions to his campaign.

If he becomes premier, Meili said his first piece of legislation will ban corporate and union political donations.

Meili said the GTH and other scandals in the Saskatchewan Party government were a factor in his decision. He wants to take the influence of big-money donors out of politics.

“I think it’s really time that we make a change. Other provinces have made significant changes in reducing that type of influence,” Meili said. “Alberta’s got very strong laws and we’re really far behind.”

He said there are even public institutions donating to political parties “which is recycling public money into party coffers, it’s very strange.”

Meili also promised to legislate a cap on donations by individuals, although the dollar amount remains to be determined.

He acknowledged that businesses, unions and other institutional donors could attempt to channel donations through individuals.

“There will still be potentially ways that people could game that system but right now the system itself is a game,” he remarked, saying the current system of political financing erodes public trust in democracy.

“It has people look at us in the legislature and say ‘Ah they’re just doing the bidding of the people who have paid for their campaigns, they’re not really working for us.’ ”