Other than that, it's a pretty good bill

Friday, January 31, 2003

The Prime Minister's campaign finance reform bill, it is true, places strict limits on contributions from private sources. This would be cause for celebration, were it not also true that the bill makes such contributions all but unnecessary. If this bill goes through, political parties and Members of Parliament will be able to fund their campaigns almost wholly out of public funds. The incentive to go out and raise money from willing donors will be diminished accordingly, and with it one of the last points of contact between the political class and the taxpayers who put them there.

It will be the most daring raid on the federal treasury since the June before last, when MPs helped themselves to a 20% pay raise, then skipped town for the summer. Only now they will be voting, not merely to enrich themselves at public expense, but to entrench themselves at public expense, indefinitely: a permanent salariat, an immovable feast.

In time, the idea that political parties should once have been forced to appeal to members of the public to contribute to their campaigns voluntarily will come to be regarded as a relic from a less enlightened age, like leaving orphans in the care of private charity. So accustomed will MPs of all parties become to living off the avails of the taxpayer that it will seem to them unthinkable that campaigns could be funded in any other way. ("Do you have any idea what a good political consultant costs these days?") And having granted themselves chequing privileges on the public's account, they will hardly be in a position to deny the same to others, even if it occurred to them to try.

Do I exaggerate? The government acknowledges that, under this legislation, political parties and candidates would be 90% on the public take, up from 60% today. But in fact the proportion is likely to be closer to 100%, and though the increased access to the public till is pitched as "compensation" for the loss of corporate and union donations, in most cases they will now be better off than they were before. Consider. The bill would double the amount that can be claimed against the full 75% tax credit for political contributions (versus the 16% credit for contributions to other, less deserving causes, such as curing cancer), from $200 to $400. Of the $400 a party receives, in other words, the contributor would only pay $100. The taxpayer would pay the remaining $300.

But that's not all. It's election time. The party takes that $400, and spends it on its campaign -- the usual things, you know, push polls, attack ads, beer and pizza, whatever. Under the legislation, it would be reimbursed for fully 50% of that amount, up from 22.5% under current law. That's another $200 out of public funds. Of the original $400, in sum, the taxpayer would be on the hook for ... $500. Of course, on larger donations, the credit is proportionately smaller. The maximum allowable credit, $650, kicks in at donations of $1,275 or more. So for every $1,275 donation a party receives, the taxpayer contributes $650, plus another $637.50 to reimburse the party for going to the trouble of spending it. The way I see it, it's still making money on the deal.

But that's nickel and dime stuff, the sort of petty conniving we expect of the parties. The bill's real innovation, the point where the larceny gets grand, is its proposal that the parties should be given an "allowance." It's right there in the bill: an allowance, to be paid out in quarterly installments, the amount determined by how well they did in the last election. Here's how it would work. First, the parties would spend your money buying your vote. Then they'd cash in those votes in return for still more of your money. The rate of exchange: $1.50 per vote, per year. The Liberals, just to choose a party at random, on the strength of the 5 million-plus votes they obtained in the 2000 election, would be guaranteed nearly $8-million a year in public funding, without having to lift a finger. That's about as much as they now raise from corporate donors. Indeed, it's very nearly as much as they raise from all sources, once you subtract the cost of fundraising.

It's really quite breathtaking. First, they pass a law against so-called "third-party" advertising, forbidding you to spend your own money in support of a cause you believe in. Now they propose to force you to spend your money in support of a cause you may not believe in at all -- namely, themselves.

And the worst part of it is: It's a pretty good bill, otherwise. If the bill passes in its current form, we get stuck with paying for sleazy, depressing political campaigns, probably forever. If it doesn't pass, we miss what will in all likelihood be the last chance in my lifetime to get the corporate and union money out of federal politics. Damn. Damn.