Wynne calls for restraint on byelection fundraising

New Democrats, Tories blast premier’s challenge

Premier Kathleen Wynne says her Liberals won’t use the Sept. 1 byelection campaign in Scarborough— Rouge River as yet another cash cow for fundraising and urged rival parties to follow suit.

But the challenge backfired Thursday as the Progressive Conservatives and NDP accused the governing Grits of changing their tune after exploiting loopholes in election finance legislation for years and holding lucrative “cash-for-access” fundraising events with cabinet ministers.

With lax fundraising laws about to be tightened to ban corporate and union donations and lower donation limits, Wynne promised to curb the type of frenzy that saw her party raise a whopping $1.76 million in last winter’s Whitby-Oshawa byelection.

That’s more than 12 times the spending limit of $142,214 in the fourweek contest won by Progressive Conservative Lorne Coe.

“In the Scarborough—Rouge River byelection, we have made the decision that our party is not going to use the rule that’s been in place for many years in terms of being able to double the donations,” Wynne told reporters. “We’re not going to do that and I hope the other parties do the same.”

She was referring to rules that allow donors to exceed the annual $9,975 contribution cap to a political party by matching that amount during byelections — even though they are ostensibly to fund campaigns in just one riding out of 107.

Last spring, Wynne promised to pass new restrictions this fall in the wake of an investigation by the Star’s Martin Regg Cohn that revealed cabinet ministers have secret fundraising targets of up to $500,000 a year.

“It’s hard to trust a premier who has manipulated every loophole to the benefit of her own party,” said New Democrat MPP Catherine Fife (Kitchener-Waterloo), a member of the committee examining the proposed fundraising reforms. “. . . She should be challenging her own staff and ministers to ban cash-for-access fundraisers.”

Those events are not outlawed in the proposed reforms.

“The Ontario PC Party will gladly play by the same rules when the Wynne government returns the $500,000 raised by former energy minister Bob Chiarelli . . . through their apparent cash-for-access scheme,” PC spokeswoman Tamara Macgregor said in a statement.

Wynne said the government fully expects amendments to its reforms and is “open to having that conversation” about cash-for-access fundraising events.