Buying time, one plate at a time
Man cannot live on pasta alone.
Neither can premiers, not even a premier of the people: It’s heavy on carbohydrates and sodium, and even tougher on your fiscal health.
Spaghetti dinners — served at these iconic $25-a-plate fundraisers cited by Tories as evidence of their close connection to the people — only go so far. You can’t look the little people in the eye, or the big donors in the pocketbook, while charging $1,250 for a plate of wet noodles.
Which is why Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives are primed for a prime rib upgrade — or whatever’s on the menu for their posh fundraiser Wednesday night. You can’t serve spaghetti when you’re trying to make a meal out of it — or make $2 million out of the evening.
At that price point, donors deserve a succulent fundraising feast. But the main course is merely a sideshow for the main attraction, which makes the 2019 Toronto Leader’s Dinner a must-see (and must pay up) event.
At centre stage, all eyes will be on the premier and his trusty teleprompter. On the sidelines, all ears will be attuned to his cabinet, cheerfully strolling and trolling the hall, backslapping and whispering in the ears of well-heeled donors as befits Ontario’s Government for the People.
The message has gone out that this is a command performance. Not to be missed, if you ever want to get a hearing from this government.
In case you didn’t get the memo, and as my colleague Robert Benzie first revealed last week, high-powered lobbying firms are having their arms twisted by the governing Progressive Conservatives to twist, in turn, the arms of their clients, so that everyone’s backs will be properly scratched. Even if that means twisting the rules out of shape.
Consider it the quid pro quo for well-connected lobbying firms: Connections are a twoway street, and when it’s party time, it’s time for the party to call in favours from lobbyists who spend their time (and their clients’ money) seeking favours.
As Benzie disclosed, Sussex Strategy Group told clients that it “has been asked to help with the event,” to the tune of $12,500 for a table of 10.
But wait — isn’t it against the law to donate more than $1,600 per person, let alone a big bundle of $12,500? Isn’t it unlawful for any corporation to make campaign donations in any amount?
No problem. “We can assist you in assembling individual registrations to then be sent in as a package,” Sussex explained to its corporate clients.
It’s not that complicated. You just repackage the package.
In fact, it’s a lot less complicated ever since Ford’s Government for the People took power last year and promptly rolled back the campaign finance reforms voted in by the legislature in 2016. Under pressure to clean up Ontario’s Wild West after revelations of Liberal pressure tactics to raise big bucks, and columns detailing how all three major parties consorted with the big beer lobby, the government of the day banned corporate and union contributions.
It also barred cabinet ministers and all MPPs from appearing at cash-for-access events that traded on their high office, or prospects for high office in future. Back then, the Tories cried in their plates about having to miss all those iconic spaghetti dinners, downhome affairs where they could raise an honest dollar or two.
Fittingly, the first fundraiser convened by the Tories in power hewed to those finetuned optics: A $25-a-plate spaghetti dinner.
Quietly, the PCs rewrote those campaign finance rules to remove the requirement that donors certify they were paying the money themselves, not ponying up on behalf of anyone else — like, say, a corporation. Now, it’s just an honour system. And as the people’s premier protested last week, he’s an honest man.
“We’ve put fundraisers together that are $25 spaghetti dinners … and then we have the big fundraiser,” he told reporters indignantly, before finishing with a third-person flourish: “No one can influence Doug Ford.” Fear not, for “we’re going to do the right thing for the people.”
Never mind the finding by Toronto’s integrity commissioner that as a city councillor, Ford breached the code of conduct to benefit clients of his own private company, lobbying city staff on their behalf and then breaking the rules on taking gifts.
Never mind that Ford quietly attended a $250-a-plate cash-for-access party fundraiser that wasn’t on his public itinerary, contravening the law and forcing the party to return the donations when discovered.
Never mind Ford’s private boast to donors during his party leadership campaign that he would open up the Greenbelt for private developers, until a video of his secret promise forced him to backtrack.
Trust him. As the premier will tell anyone who lends him an ear — or a $1,250 donation — the previous government was “lining the pockets of their friends and Liberal insiders.”
Not him. Ford promised to do things differently, and indeed he did — by undoing Ontario’s campaign finance reform, so that the premier could do it his way. That promise — and $25 — will buy you a spaghetti dinner.
But it won’t get you into Wednesday’s $1,250 fundraiser. For the People.