COYNE: REINING IN POLITICAL PARTY GIFTS
Campaign finance reform: Pretty much no rules on donations to political parties in Ontario, B.C.
In the moral vacuum that is Ontario politics, the lobbyists are the nearest thing to a conscience. Premier Kathleen Wynne and her ministers would appear to be running a government on the side, the bulk of their efforts being devoted to milking the province’s corporate sector for donations. Ministers are reportedly assigned quotas: the minister of finance is responsible for raising hundreds of thousands of dollars from the banking and insurance industries he regulates; the minister of health is expected to raise the same from the pharmaceutical and home care industries; the minister of energy from the power companies; and so on.
Some of this goes on at huge public events, such as Wednesday night’s $3-million Heritage Dinner. But cash is also raised at intimate private receptions, where clients — the mot juste, I believe — willing to fork over $6,000 or more can speak to ministers one-on-one.
That access to ministers might be, or perceived to be, for sale; that decisions on policy might be influenced by such exchanges, or perceived as such, does not seem to greatly trouble the premier. Each new revelation is greeted with the same talking points: this is “part of the democratic process,” it’s all within the rules, and besides, everybody does it. It fell to some nameless lobbyists to suggest, as it was reported, that they would welcome a tightening of the campaign finance rules, “to stop the Liberals from constantly shaking them down for donations.”
The premier, for her part, has suddenly promised just such an overhaul, as if the problem were a lack of regulations, and not her government’s vast disregard for basic norms of ethical conduct. Still, she is right in one respect. None of this is against the rules, because in Ontario — and in B.C., and in several other provinces — there pretty much are no rules. Such limits as exist on corporate and union donations to political parties are easily circumvented, while so-called third-party spending, such as the multimillion-dollar advertising wars Ontario unions have waged against the Tories in recent election campaigns, face no limit whatever.
What principles might underpin a new campaign finance regime? Let me suggest a few:
Only individuals should be allowed to contribute. In an election, only voters vote, and every voter gets only one vote. Why, then, should non-voters be granted extra capacity to influence the debate, not given to others? So: no corporations, and no unions, as is the case federally.
Treat third-party and party spending the same. While voters vote as individuals, in a campaign they may also choose to combine their voices with others. Parties are one way to do this, but they are not the only way: advocacy groups often take up issues the parties ignore.
At times Canadian law has controlled third-party spending much more tightly than the parties’, to the point of outlawing it. Ontario is at the other extreme. In fact there is no reason to discriminate one way or the other. It should be up to the voter to decide which way of participating he or she prefers.
Limit donations, not spending. It is not fairness between parties we should be after, but fairness between voters. To subject a party with 100,000 members to the same spending limit as a party with 1,000 discriminates against members of the larger party, who are individually more restricted in their ability to contribute to the debate. Besides, limiting spending at the party level, absent other reforms, only encourages a mushrooming of alternative organizations.
Limit total donations, not each one. Again, limits on individual donations, on their own, lead to a multiplication of “political action committees” and the like. Limit, rather, each donor’s total annual contributions, and the incentive for such gaming is eliminated: the more he contributes to one cause, the less he has left for the rest.
How much he contributes to each would, again, be up to him. But the total could not exceed his annual limit. Parties and advocacy groups, for their part, would be free to spend as much as they could raise by such means. But they could spend no more than that, so far as such spending was used to support or oppose a party or candidate in an election.
That’s the basic model. You could also require that such donations be made through the income tax system, and/ or anonymously. Or you could top up contribution allowances, for those with little disposable income, out of public funds — and pay for it by abolishing the current tax credit for political contributions, together with the reimbursement for candidate expenses.
The total amount of money going into the system would thus be regulated by the willingness of individuals to finance it. That limit could be as large or as small as one liked: there is no objective amount the parties need to spend. The only reason each now claims to be obliged to spend as much as it does is because the others do likewise. Parity could certainly be maintained at much lower levels of spending, and probably should: most of what the parties spend on now — attack ads, robocalls, push polls and the like — hurts democracy.
We have to have some limits on political contributions: otherwise we are effectively endorsing bribery. The system I am suggesting strikes me as the best balance of fairness and freedom of speech. No doubt people would still find ways to evade even these rules. The difference is, they would have to.
Limit donations, not spending. It is not fairness between parties we should be after, but fairness between voters.