Dix clear on what he opposes, less so on what he stands for

Power and influence: Will financing reform lead to new politics?

Are these two facts connected? One: The most generous donor to the B. C. Liberal campaign in 2009 was the New Car Dealers Association of B. C., which contributed $ 229,700. The association was also the largest contributor to the party in the lead- up to the 2005 election.

Two: The only significant tax change made when the HST was brought in after the 2009 election that survived the transition back to the PST was the increase in the tax rate on private vehicle sales from five per cent to 12 per cent, a change that benefited car dealers.

If you think there might be a connection between the two, you are part of the compelling argument to reform campaign financing by banning union and corporate donations, as promised by NDP leader Adrian Dix.

Regardless of whether large donations can buy influence with a government, the impression is hard to avoid.

In politics, as in many things in life, “follow the money” is still good advice if you want to understand what is going on.

In B. C., the dynamic at play for decades has been that corporations support the Liberals and unions support the NDP and that the parties return the favour.

Eliminating donations from both corporations and the unions will reduce the perception that the two parties are beholden to their biggest supporters.

But what happens to the democratic process after those two sources of funds are stripped out?

There are at least two routes that open up. One is to find new sources of revenue for political parties. The other leads to a stripped- down future, where money plays a smaller role in campaigns.

Dix won’t say what he wants. Instead, he announced that an NDP government would create an all- party committee to study the issue. That has the benefit of sounding reasonable, but it masks the fact that what New Democrats think now matters because any all- party committee inevitably will be stacked in favour of the party in power.

As we can see in other jurisdictions that have already banned union and corporate donations, the alternative really does matter. Different scenarios work to the benefit of one party or another, which may explain why Liberals have never been willing to consider banning corporate donations.

The first question is: What are you trying to accomplish?

If your goal is to curb undue influence, you also have to limit individual donations. When the then- Liberal government in Ottawa banned corporate and union donations, it put a $ 5,000 cap on donations from any individual.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives later cut that to $ 1,000.

That benefited the Conservatives, who were far ahead of the other parties in organizing their followers to make donations while the Liberals had traditionally counted on large individual donations.

The Liberals also brought in a system to publicly fund political parties, on top of the existing income tax breaks given for donations.

That system, which provided about $ 2 every year for every vote above a certain threshold, has also since been struck down by the Conservatives, who again had the least to lose because of their well- developed member database that they have learned to so productively milk.

They argued that Canadians shouldn’t have to fund parties they don’t support. If they really believed that, they would have removed the income tax deduction, which we all pay for, rather than the per- vote subsidy, which is the only federal funding individual voters had any control over.

Regardless, the question of taxpayer funding for political parties will be the hot- potato question for the committee and Dix doesn’t want to touch it now.

His reticence has given the Liberals, who don’t support cutting off their corporate donors, an opening to allege another secret agenda.

Some people will argue that the goal should to be to take most of the money out of the democratic process.

Would we be better off if the campaign budgets were cut in half or more?

Would we be better or less well informed if parties had less money for saturation advertising?

It seems likely that just limiting funding would benefit the smaller parties, the Greens and Conservatives, who have never had much money to spend.

We won’t know where this one ends up until after the election.

The Liberals will maintain the status quo, while the New Democrats promise change, but just what kind of change remains to be seen.