Cash- starved parties are dumbing down our politics
Time for a closer look: Political fi nancial reforms have created a dysfunctional system
During the just- passed season of giving and filial love, you may have observed that no potential giftee was more prominent in your inbox, hand figuratively extended, than your favourite political party.
Their begging letters, once an occasional intrusion, are now ubiquitous. It’s as though they’re desperate, focused to the exclusion of all else on emptying your wallet. Surely a political party should have something beyond money — the greater good, say, or a just society — to warm the cockles of its heart?
Well, no. Not anymore. Our political parties are cashstarved and ravenous for cash, around the clock, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Thanks to reforms begun by then Prime Minister Jean Chretien in 2004 and broadened by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2006 and 2011, we enjoy a wonderfully egalitarian political fundraising model — that isn’t working. In fact the system itself is helping make our politics meaner, dumber and more myopic than ever before.
Before 1974, when the Election Expenses Act was passed, political funding in Canada was a free- for- all. The act introduced spending limits and requirements for disclosure. But until 2004, when the soon-to-retire Chretien had his Paulian conversion on the road to Damascus, individuals, corporations, unions and other organizations could all still donate. Many large corporations gave to both Liberals and Conservatives, hedging their bets. The New Democrats were propped up by the unions.
Chretien never intended for things to go in the direction they’ve gone. His reform, Bill C- 24, limited corporate and union donations to $ 1,000. Corporations without operations in Canada were banned from giving, as were Crown corporations.
Individuals were limited to contributing $ 1,000 to any riding or candidate, up to a total of $ 5,000. Any donation of more than $ 200 had to be disclosed. But C- 24 also introduced the $ 2- per- vote subsidy, for any political party that was able to garner two per cent or more of the popular vote.
In 2006, in the full blush of its early puritan zeal, the new Harper government slashed the total individual limit to $ 1,000, indexed to inflation, and banned corporate and union donations outright. In 2008 Harper famously moved to wipe out the pervote subsidy, precipitating the coalition-prorogation crisis, but was forced to recant. Following his majority win in 2011 he pressed ahead, resulting in the system we have now — no corporate or union donations, no per- vote subsidy, a $ 1,200 individual annual limit and endless, cadging emails begging for your money.
It’s a system that until now has worked heavily in the Conservatives’ favour, both because it suits their populist bent and because they long ago mastered its logistics. Until very recently the Tories routinely trounced both the other two major parties in fundraising. In the first nine months of 2013 the governing party raised nearly $ 13 million, compared with just under $ 7 million for the Grits and $ 4.5 million for the NDP.
All of which leads us to this past Christmas season, and the frenetic $ 2- million challenge between Liberal and Conservative fundraising teams. The top- line driver or “sell” for both was the calendar deadline for receiving the 75- per- cent political- donation rebate for the 2013 tax year. The subtext, for householders who are politically engaged, had to be the dawning horror that this is the new normal. Political parties will either stay in your face or they will go bankrupt.
But that may be the least of it. There are more fundamental consequences, as was first pointed out by Ken Whyte in last November’s issue of Maclean’s. The most obvious is that fractious, dumb, bitterly personal politics are no longer a matter of political preference; they’re embedded in the system. The Conservatives have established, most notably with the bonanza they made of the now- defunct federal long- gun registry, that an angry, frightened or resentful small donor is a generous small donor. The Liberals are having greater fundraising success now because they’re applying similar methods — micro- targeting, “action-based” messaging and deliberate stoking of the fear of Harper himself. The bilious partisanship on Twitter is merely an effervescence of this emerging Canadian political culture.
At the root of it all, some questions emerge: Why should a corporation or a union not contribute in a limited way to a political party, if the sums and sources are rigorously disclosed? And who decided that a $ 1,200 individual limit is reasonable? Political finance reform was intended to remove the bagman from the process. Instead it has bequeathed to us a system that is dishonest, dysfunctional and ultimately harmful to our politics. It’s time for a review.