Ford is playing footsie with our democracy
Doug Ford says there’s no need to clean up dirty money in Ontario politics.
He can’t be bought. And won’t sell out. Trust him. So said the premier when I put him on the spot the other day:
“No one, no one can influence Doug Ford, no matter what the amount is,” the premier told a Ryerson Democracy Forum I hosted.
Money politics has corrupted U.S. politics. But it has also contaminated Ontario’s election campaigns.
It distracts politicians, distorts their decisions and detracts from democracy. It gives fat cat donors an outsized say in who does what for whom.
And it comes at the expense of all voters. The good news is that it can be cleaned up because we’ve done it before.
Ahead of the last election, after a series of investigative columns in this newspaper exposing the Wild West of Ontario politics under the last Liberal government, all parties came together to support the cleanup (because all parties were part of the problem). Ontario’s legislature banned contributions from business and labour unions in 2016, so that vested interests wouldn’t trump voter interests.
To compensate for the millions of dollars that all major parties were forsaking, the province followed the old federal model of public funding based on per-vote allocations. Every vote would count, not just at the ballot box but in annual remittances to the parties based on their performance in the last election — initially set at $2.71 per ballot cast.
(Based on the results of the 2018 election, the victorious Tories were in line to receive $6.3 million annually while the NDP would get $5.2 million, the Liberals about $3 million and the Greens around $700,000.)
But then Ford won the election — not only overthrowing the Liberals, but also overruling his own Progressive Conservatives to overturn the all-party consensus on public funding. Lashing out at the idea of “subsidies” to political parties, as if they are somehow unethical and antithetical to democracy, he ordered them phased out by the end of next year.
By Ford’s biblical logic, it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul — or more precisely, robbing the people to pay politicians. That’s the sloganeering, but let’s look at the slippery sophistry here.
Calling them subsidies distorts the true cash flow. In fact, we already heavily subsidize contributions from the most affluent Ontarians thanks to generous tax credits (starting at 75 per cent of the donation), so why does Ford still support a “rich voter subsidy” while complaining about a “regular voter subsidy?”
As Ford acknowledged, our current laws allow people to donate up to $1,625 a year (up from $1,250 under the Liberals). Who can afford to front that money in the best of times, let alone the worst of times amid COVID-19?
The unfortunate political paradox is that while only the well off contribute that kind of money, they get much of it back from the treasury in tax credits at the expense of everyone else — as in, subsidies. How can Ford defend those subsidies for some but not all?
“Well Martin, really good question — you make a really good, valid point,” Ford began — every politician’s favourite way of disarming a questioner. “I just don’t believe that everyone should be forced to pay if they don’t support a certain political party, or any political parties — they might not even vote.”
No, you’re not forced to pay for a party you don’t support — only parties that win your support get the allocation from the general treasury (not from a voter directly, but through our relatively progressive tax system). As for non-voters whose taxes would be crosssubsidizing the political process, it’s hard to imagine Ford is truly losing sleep over folks who forfeit their say.
What’s truly peculiar about Ford’s boast that he can’t be bought by donors is that he’s willing to vouch for all politicians all the time:
“I truly believe no one can influence the NDP, the Liberals, the Greens or the PCs.”
That’s a hard case to make with a straight face. There’s good reason most big donors, notably property developers, give money most of the time — to get their calls returned and their interests served.
Even with business and union contributions now banned, individual donors can get around it by parcelling out the maximum amount through multiple corporate officers (later reimbursed, illegally, for channelling the funds). Yet Ford’s Tories bizarrely removed the new legal requirement that donors sign a declaration verifying it’s their own money, not someone else’s cash scam.
That means big donors are now back on the honour system: Trust them.
Just like the premier who keeps professing his honesty: Trust him.
But let’s connect the dots here: It’s hard to forget Ford’s private pledge to donors in 2018 that he’d open up the Greenbelt for property developers.
Only when a video of his secret promise emerged did he publicly backtrack, lest people make a connection between Greenbelt and greenbacks. That’s why transparency trumps trust.
Democracy is based on laws and level playing fields. Not trust in tilted gameboards behind closed doors.
By defending subsidies for the well off, and demonizing “pervote” allocations for everyone else, Ford is playing favourites — and playing footsie with our democracy.
Ford’s old campaign sloganeering against “subsidies” was based on a flawed assumption wrapped in a glaring contradiction. Upon taking power, he set back campaign finance without thinking ahead.
Today, the premier gets that in a pandemic, it’s not politics as usual. Why then should it be business as usual — as before — for big donors, at the expense of the rest of us?