WITH ANDREW SCHEER ON THE WAY OUT AND POTENTIAL SUCCESSORS TESTING THE WATERS, FEDERAL CONSERVATIVES ARE DIVIDED ON ONE PECULIAR QUESTION: WAS IT APPROPRIATE FOR THE PARTY TO BE SUBSIDIZING THE SCHEER CHILDREN’S PRIVATE EDUCATION?

Tories would do well to end ‘common practice’

With Andrew Scheer on the way out and potential successors testing the waters, federal Conservatives have managed to divide on a very peculiar question: Was it appropriate for the party to be subsidizing the Scheer children’s private Catholic education?

The majority seem to be on the “no” side, as they ought to be. But there shouldn’t really be anyone on the “yes” side, and the “no” ought to be far more emphatic than it is — because the arrangement was even more egregious than most people seem to realize.

Dustin van Vugt, the widely liked executive director of the party, argued it was “normal practice for political parties” and that “all proper procedures were followed.” (This argument did not prevent the board of the party’s fundraising arm from trying to fire him.)

Some talk of Scheer’s situation as if it were a corporate reassignment: We dragged the poor guy all the way from Regina, least we could do is pay the difference in his kids’ tuition. MPS are afforded all manner of other relocation benefits at taxpayer expense, after all, and that seems reasonable enough compensation for men and women taking on precarious work in public service.

There is a reason that subsidized private education isn’t one of the publicly funded benefits, though. The reason is that it would start a riot. Yet that’s exactly what the Conservatives arranged, indirectly, for Scheer.

Outraged Conservatives, reportedly including Stephen Harper, seem most aggrieved on behalf of donors who were unknowingly paying the Scheers’ bills. Empirically that’s a hell of a lot more useful than many things political parties spend money on, but it’s likely not what they had in mind.

Donors at least gave willingly, though, and they got a huge chunk of their money back in the form of a tax credit: 75 per cent of the first $400 donated, 50 per cent of the next $350 and 33 per cent of the final $525.

The maximum legal donation, $1,275, begets a $600 credit. If Joe Conservative gave $1,275, and he’s understandably cheesed off about subsidizing the Scheers, surely Joe Taxpayer should be double-cheesed off about giving Joe Conservative 51 per cent of his misspent donation back.

This extreme level of subsidy for political parties is strangely uncontroversial in Canada. Perhaps that explains why Scheer and van Vugt thought they could get away with it.

Mind you, Scheer is very well-acquainted with the politics of private schooling. During the leadership campaign, he proposed a $4,000 tax deduction for parents of kids attending private schools. He ditched the idea in advance of the election campaign, blaming the Liberals’ “budget mess,” but it was clear it would have been a serious political liability: the self-styled man of the people offering a public benefit to parents of private-school kids, at least many of whom are relatively well-to-do.

The only thing worse would be if, having ditched the idea, he had retained an even more lucrative benefit for himself. Whoops.

The Conservatives have a pretty good record on campaign financing. It’s true that eliminating the per-vote subsidy in 2011 was to their strategic advantage, but it was also the right thing to do: Canadians vote for candidates, not parties; in 28 of our 43 elections, candidates’ party affiliations didn’t even appear on the ballots.

Even if Canadians did vote for parties, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they want to give them any money. And if they do want to give them money, there is more than ample incentive for anyone with taxable income to do so.

Trouble is, that tax credit is just as difficult to defend as the per-vote subsidy.

We know that most voters do, in fact, vote party preference. Meanwhile, a very significant bloc of taxpayers doesn’t vote at all, has no interest in politics, or views each party with roughly equal disdain.

And look what the parties do with the money: Braindead advertising, moronic tweets, hauling the leader back and forth across the country for weeks on end giving the same lame stump speech, sending the leader’s kids to private school.

There are many ideas out there that would make political donations fairer and more voluntary, from the blunt (get rid of the tax credit altogether, or at least bring it in line with other registered charities) to the complex (Seattle’s “democracy vouchers,” allowing voters to disperse a finite pot of money to the candidates of their choice) to the simple (let people tick a box on their tax returns, or indeed on the ballot).

And if the result was less money in politics overall, that certainly needn’t be a bad thing: austerity can be the mother of much-appreciated invention.

If Scheer’s arrangement was “common practice,” as van Vugt claims, then common practice is almost certainly about to change. Hopefully one or more of the candidates to succeed Scheer will take that spirit and run with it.