Political fundraising is a menace

Here’s the dirty little secret about political fundraising: nobody likes it. Donors don’t, at least where large contributions are still allowed and therefore expected. Bank presidents used to complain — privately — about the annual visit from federal party bagmen: “All the other banks have given. You wouldn’t want to be the odd man out, would you?”

Politicians don’t much care for it, either: all that phoning and meeting and generally i mportuning, when they could be degrading themselves in more useful ways. But let’s face it, there’s a reason it’s expected of them. They’re the draw — not so much because of who they are as what they are, people who can make things happen. You think people are dropping $ 1,500 to have dinner with Bill Morneau because of his personality?

Just now this duty must be especially unpleasant, with the press up in arms about so-called “pay-to-play” fundraisers: usually private, usually featuring a prominent cabinet minister, usually attended by people with a particular interest in the minister’s opinion of them and their issues, usually promoted as an opportunity to bend the minister’s ear — and usually charging a stiff price for it.

The issue first arose in British Columbia and Ontario, where political contributions until now have been all but unregulated. Lately it has spread to federal politics, with news that Liberal cabinet ministers have been the guests of honour at ritzy private fundraisers. The numbers, to be sure, are smaller at the federal level, where corporate donations are banned and individual contributions capped at $1,500.

But the principle remains the same. Whether money changes minds as easily as it changes hands or not, it’s a chance to press their case that isn’t open to those without that sort of dough. If it isn’t influence- peddling, it looks enough like it to leave people wondering.

Such has been the uproar over to pay-to-play that people have started putting forward some quite radical solutions. The Wynne government in Ontario, until months ago an enthusiastic advocate of the practice, now proposes to ban not just ministers, but all members of the legislature from attending fundraisers.

Some would go even further: banning private money altogether, and funding parties entirely from the public purse; or banning television advertising, as they do in Britain. My own proposals will therefore seem moderate by comparison.

I can’t see how you could ban advertising, under the Charter: even assuming it had any effect on the parties’ insatiable demand for funds it could hardly be enough to justify such a massive in- cursion on free speech. Outlawing private donations might be nearer the mark, were the alternative — public funding — not so much worse.

Sure, it’s annoying to have the parties constantly hitting us up for money, but that’s the price of freedom. Far worse that they should just be able to take it from us, even where their policies and beliefs were repugnant to us. ( As indeed they do now. The federal pervote subsidy may no longer be with us, but parties still benefit from astonishingly generous tax credits on donations, while candidates have much of their expenses reimbursed f rom public funds.) You want to see entitlement? Imagine a political class on the public dole, in perpetuity.

Where t he re f ormers have it right is that politics doesn’t need to be nearly as expensive as it is now. I’ve argued before for junking limits on individual donations in favour of a global annual personal contribution limit: how the contributor chose to divvy this up between parties, candidates and t hird- party groups would be up to him. That would be enough to achieve a rough equality between citizens in their capacity to influence the debate, which is the only type of equality we should be concerned with.

But to make that equality real, the overall limit would have to be relatively small: not $ 10,000, or $ 5,000, but maybe $ 500. And the more one thinks about it, the more it becomes evident that it should be. There’s simply no good reason to spend anything like current amounts, in an age when the cost of communicating with large numbers of people is converging on zero.

The main reason parties spend so much is because the other guys do. At best, they mostly cancel each other out. At worst, they spew a kind of pollution: attack ads, push polls and the like. Not only could we get by with a whole lot less of that, we’d probably be better informed in the bargain.

The other thing the reformers have right: there’s no good r eason parties have to raise funds in the way they do now, by selling tickets to dinners and such. While I wouldn’t want to make taxpayers pick up the tab, that doesn’t mean the income tax system couldn’t be used as the vehicle for collecting voluntary private donations. That onetime annual contribution, f orwarded anonymously to the parties, would be the only source of funds permitted: no tax credits, no reimbursements, and no $ 1,500- a- plate dinners, with or without ministers present.

Absolutely nothing of value would be lost under such a regime. Parties could still get together socially. They just couldn’t use the occasions to fill their coffers with (tax-credited) cash. People could still buttonhole ministers to tell them their problems. They just couldn’t use their superior financial means to buy their way to the front of the line. Politi cal contributions would then be much as Bill Clinton famously wished abortion should be: safe, legal and rare.