Integrity in provincial politics
Isuppose the most appropriate response to Kathleen Wynne’s package of campaign finance reforms is: better late than never. Or rather, late, reluctant, incomplete, without consulting the public or the opposition parties and after she and her Liberal party had wrung every last dollar out of the system as it was. But yes, better all those things than never.
The premier, remember, had been caught taking large sums of money at private dinners, unadvertised and unrecorded, from corporations with sufficient interest in government policy and sufficient hope of influencing it as to be willing to pay thousands of dollars for privileged access to her ear. She had at first defended this practice as “part of the democratic process,” then promised to put a stop to it, then vowed to bring in wider reforms to campaign finance in the fall, finally advancing that leisurely deadline to this week.
But let’s focus on the positive. Under the system the premier unveiled this week, corporate and union donations would be banned outright. Election campaigns would no longer be an afterthought to the real campaign, the one carried out in restaurants and office suites by party bagmen. More so than in the past, campaigns would be funded by the people they are actually supposed to be about, the voters.
Second, individual donations, previously capped at just under $10,000 annually, would now be limited to $1,550. But here the exceptions and the caveats begin. The same donor could donate $1,550 to a political party, plus a total of $3,100 to its local candidates, plus another $3,100 to its constituency associations, for a total of more than $7,500 — not counting elections and byelections and leadership campaigns, when further donations would be allowed.
None of this, of course, would apply to unions and other interest groups that wished to advertise on their own behalf. These have until now been unlimited, which is how a coterie of unions was able to spend nearly $6 million for the sole purpose of defeating the Tories in the past campaign. Now, so called third-party advertising would be restricted to $100,000 per group after the writ has dropped, plus another $600,000 during the six months before.
But as there is no limit on the number of groups who can participate, expect to see these mushroom, much like the political action commit- tees that now dominate the U.S. political landscape. Effectively these allow the parties to carry on under another name, even if, as in the States, overt co-ordination is prohibited. So while it’s interesting to know the parties would still face the same spending limits of $7.4 million apiece, it is less and less relevant.
As if these multiple geysers of money were not enough, the Wynne reforms would grant the parties a further $2.26 out of public funds for every vote they received in the past election. As it happens this would be to the advantage of the Liberals, as the plurality party (they could fund more than half their campaign off it), but never mind: subsidizing parties out of public funds — or rather, adding to the existing subsidy regime of tax credits and ex- pense reimbursements — is not the logical complement to banning corporate and union donations. It’s the opposite of it.
The point is supposed to be that people should contribute their own money, of their own free will, not other people’s money extracted from them by the state. The premise, moreover, that the parties have some objective need to spend as much as they now do on election campaigns, is wholly false. Most of what is spent is wasted, each party’s spending simply cancelling out the others’; most of what remains is actively harmful. With advances in communications, we could have better, cleaner elections for a fraction of their current cost.
Still, lax as these reforms may be, they are the pur- est spring water next to the stewing cesspool that is British Columbia’s campaign finances. Like Wynne, Premier Christy Clark has been discovered lately taking thousands of dollars from well-heeled donors at private fundraisers. Unlike Wynne, some portion of those funds goes more or less directly into her pocket: the B.C. Liberal party pays her a yearly stipend on top of her public salary as premier.
And yet Clark’s only reaction has been to shrug, at all of it: the dinners, the corporate and union donations, her own cut, on the grounds that it has all been disclosed. After all, say her supporters, can you prove there was some quid pro quo? This has things exactly backward. This is not a criminal trial. It is not up to the public to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that their leaders are corrupt. It is up to the premier, as the holder of a public trust, to conduct herself in such a way as to prevent any such suspicion arising. People should not have to wonder about these things, as if integrity in office were just another issue to be weighed against tax cuts and health care. It should be a given.
The notion that premiers and other office holders should be able to raise funds in unlimited amounts from the industries they regulate, so long as they are not actually proved to have given them favourable treatment in exchange, is frankly bananas. If even Premier Wynne can be shamed into acknowledging this, Premier Clark needs to give her head a shake.
SUBSIDIZING PARTIES OUT OF PUBLIC FUNDS ... IS NOT THE LOGICAL COMPLEMENT TO BANNING CORPORATE AND UNION DONATIONS. IT’S THE OPPOSITE OF IT.
— COLUMNIST ANDREW COYNE