The tangled web of campaign finance law reform
The untold story of money politics in Ontario must be told and retold.
Politicians did nothing illegal when they raised massive amounts of cash. They were playing by the rules when they took the money and ran — for provincial office.
It was legal in judicial terms, just politically injudicious.
Long after Ottawa made it against the law to take money from unions and corporations, Ontario law persisted in permitting the practice — with all-party agreement, it must be stressed. And so politicians from all major parties helped themselves to cash from donors with self-serving business and labour agendas.
Call it the quiet Queen’s Park quid pro quo: you come to my fundraising dinner, I’ll take your calls.
Next week, Ontario’s Liberal government will spell out its latest reforms to provincial campaign finance laws. As a package, it is long overdue and amounts to the most ambitious change in decades — but increasingly controversial because of an opposition rebellion.
In the half-year since my weeklong series detailing secret targets for cabinet ministers, a new mythology has taken hold: the Liberals alone are guilty of milking money from donors.
Yes, the party in power has an obvious advantage. But the prospect of power is also a powerful draw, especially with an election around the corner and the Progressive Conservatives now holding a massive lead in the polls.
Donors know how to hedge their bets by lubricating all sides — not least the New Democratic Party, which could very well hold the balance of power if the next election produces a minority legislature. That’s a lot of power.
And that’s why NDP Leader Andrea Horwath can sell tickets so easily to her “Vision Dinner” next month: $19,950 (let’s round it up to $20,000, shall we?) buys you a halftable with a seat near Horwath, entry to a private reception where you can schmooze over booze and canapés with the leader and a corporate or union “logo display.”
Or you can buy a $500 ticket to benefit PC finance critic Vic Fedeli at his fundraiser next month at the exclusive Albany Club, a private Tory retreat in downtown Toronto, where his party leader Patrick Brown is the guest of honour. It’s all above board for now — a ban on corporate and union donations, promised by Kathleen Wynne after the Star series last March, won’t take effect until next year — but instructive all the same.
Fedeli and other opposition MPPs are clamouring for a ban on “pay to play” access to cabinet ministers, which the Star has been exposing since 2013. But they still want the right to raise money almost at will.
Thanks to media pressure — and no thanks to opposition demands (for they were long silent) — the government belatedly promised major campaign finance reforms. The latest is a ban on direct fundraising appearances by all politicians from all parties at all times — which has provoked outrage by opposition MPPs.
The NDP and PCs claim this is payback for their demands that cabinet ministers stop profiting from their positions. Appealing to nostalgia, they warn a total ban on personal fundraisers would hamstring them back home when meeting ordinary folks.
But their talk of innocuous “spaghetti dinners” and “corn roasts” is a red herring.
The posh Albany Club is in downtown Toronto, not back home in Fedeli’s North Bay riding. Horwath’s high stakes steak dinner in the sumptuous ballroom of the Fairmont Royal York Hotel isn’t a spaghetti get-together in Steeltown, her Hamilton base.
Why should they get a free pass? Why do all those MPPs who cozied up to the big brewers at downtown Toronto fundraisers hosted courtesy of Labatt and Molson Coors, persist with the fiction that the opposition isn’t also targeted for influence?
In fact, nothing in the latest proposals would prevent MPPs from hosting corn roasts for constituents. They just couldn’t skim off any money — beyond food and venue costs — for their own coffers. No party could. Instead, the government is proposing expanded public subsidies, on a per-vote basis, at the riding level to make up for lost fund- raising revenue.
It is an interesting proposal. It may not be perfect — perhaps a more practical compromise would win all-party support — but it is better than the opposition’s idea.
The Tories and New Democrats prefer to tie the hands of only Liberal MPPs (almost all of whom are cabinet ministers or parliamentary assistants facing potential conflicts) while giving themselves free rein on fundraising. The opposition’s preference: outlaw the targeting of stakeholders for “solicitation,” but not the political prostitution that might result.
Best avoid such temptation. Why not a middle way, which sets a lower ceiling for those fundraisers — say, $50 or $75, exclusive of costs?
For too long, all three major parties were part of a conspiracy of silence on Ontario’s fundraising excesses. They owe it to Ontarians to lay the groundwork for a level playing field, because in our democracy power alternates between parties.
Spare us the huffing and puffing about corn and focus on the bigger picture. The latest reform proposals still have loopholes more tangled than a plate of spaghetti.
More on that soon. Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn