"Wait, wait: You're saying Cabinet ministers could take money from the industries they regulated, indeed from the very companies they might have subsidized out of public funds? And that, as far as party leadership campaigns were concerned, ministers of the Crown could rake in all this private cash without even having to declare it? This is a joke, right?" It really does beggar belief. At worst, the way we finance political campaigns amounts to institutionalized bribery; at best, it places elected officials in an obvious, indeed painful, conflict of interest. There are no limits on how much candidates or parties may collect, or whom they may collect it from. There are limits on spending, but that only makes the relative importance of a few large donors more acute. And while the parties are supposed to disclose whom they received their funds from -- long after the fact, in fine print nobody reads -- the same does not apply to riding associations, or to MPs in non-election years, or to leadership races.

The worst part of it is that nobody cares. No major federal party has yet declared itself unambiguously in favour of campaign finance reform: The most that any of them will say is that they'll agree to it if the other parties do. Not one of the candidates in the various leadership races now underway -- among the Ontario Conservatives, the Canadian Alliance and (unofficially) the federal Liberals -- is willing even to disclose who his contributors are, much less forswear their munificence. Even the press doesn't seem to give a damn.

Why this is so is a mystery. Why, for example, should anyone be allowed to make large payments of money to a public official in secret? What possible legitimate reason can there be for this? For that matter, why would any self-respecting politician accept such payments -- secret or otherwise? Never mind whether the money has any actual influence on him, he must know that by accepting it he raises the suspicion of such influence in the public's mind. That alone is injurious to the public trust on which democratic government depends. It is the very definition of a conflict of interest.

Does it matter? Look at the Enron mess. The New York Times reports that of the 248 members of Congress assigned to one or another of the multiple committees poking about in the company's entrails, no fewer than 212 were on Enron's contribution list. What, then, is the public to think, however this plays out? If they go easy on Enron, everyone will say it's because they're on the take. Worse, they may be tempted to pile on, just to show they haven't been bought. Either way, the public interest is compromised.

Of course, if a politician were to accept a sum of money from a private source, then use it to buy himself a gold watch, then he really would be in trouble. Why the difference?

Because, we say, the watch is for his personal benefit, whereas political contributions are merely to help him get elected: or as corporate PR flacks like to say, to "support the democratic process." But the distinction is specious. I want (let's say) to run for Parliament. I also want to buy a gold watch. I can pay for the gold watch myself, and get you to fund my campaign. Or I can pay for my own campaign, and let you buy me the the watch. The first is accepted practice, the second is not, but they both amount to the same thing: I get the gold watch, thanks to you.

It's also specious in another way: Whatever is to my political benefit is clearly also to my personal benefit. I get elected, maybe a Cabinet post, and even if a Parliamentary career doesn't pay all that well, on my return to private life I can parlay it into a fistful of corporate directorships and a corner office at a prestigious law firm.

Frame the issue this way, and we might get somewhere. To date, what little debate there has been has focused mainly on the question of fairness -- some have more money to contribute than others -- allowing attention to be distracted by such non-reforms as spending limits or, worse, curbs on advocacy groups: allegedly to "get the money out of politics," but really to ensure that all the money in politics is controlled by politicians.

But put the matter in terms of ethics, and there's nowhere to hide. The standard becomes, not what the law allows, but what is right; not what other parties and candidates are doing, but what a person of conscience would do.

There's a paradox in this: We will not have real campaign finance laws until, in a sense, they are no longer needed. There are laws against bribing judges. But what makes the system work is that most judges wouldn't take the money if it were offered.