From the National Post;
Doing away with per-vote subsidy could alter electoral landscape: analysts
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.Comments Twitter LinkedIn Email .Kathryn Blaze Carlson Apr 11, 2011 – 8:45 PM ET | Last Updated: Apr 11, 2011 8:32 PM ET
The Conservatives say their motive is unburdening the already burdened taxpayer. The opposition has mostly couched its argument in terms of equity. But behind the principled rhetoric surrounding the debate over $2-a-vote public subsidies for political parties are the parties’ competing self-interests, each with implications for the Canadian electoral landscape.
On the campaign trail, the taxpayer-funded allowance is again at the fore, with Conservative leader Stephen Harper pledging to slash the contentious measure should Canadians elect a Tory majority. The NDP have offered qualified support for the cancellation of taxpayer subsidies, though the party has also said that if the Tories dislike the allowance so much, they should simply refuse to accept it.
“Mr. Harper is doing his best to make this a passionate concern among voters,” said Ned Franks, an expert in parliamentary procedure and professor emeritus at Queen’s University. “But it’s pure party politics, and the principles come in a very, very distant second.”
Every ballot cast on May 2 amounts to a roughly $2 donation to a pool of taxpayer dollars that is later distributed to the parties based on how many votes they garner. This party allowance — which amounted to more than $28-million in 2008 — has long harried the leaders, even catalyzing the prorogation of Parliament in 2008.
Mr. Harper stated earlier this month that neither corporations nor unions nor governments should fund parties, and that per-vote subsidies degrade the parliamentary system because they help perpetuate constant electioneering.
“The war chests are always full for another campaign,” the Prime Minister said at a campaign stop. “You lose one, immediately come in the cheques and you’re ready for the next one, even if you didn’t raise a dime.”
Meanwhile, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said the Conservative plan runs afoul of fairness, because quashing the inflation-indexed subsidy would give the Tories — whose 2008 individual donations totalled twice that of the Grits and the NDP combined — a game-changing financial advantage.
In absolute terms, killing the public subsidies would hurt the vote-rich Tories the most (see graphic at bottom of post).
However, relative to total funds raised, the Conservatives have the least to lose: In 2010, subsidies accounted for 27.7% of the party’s overall revenue, compared with the NDP at 28%, the Liberals at 34.4% and the Bloc at 48%.
Perhaps predictably, then, the Conservatives argue that the subsidy unfairly funnels taxpayer dollars to parties that voters do not necessarily support — which sounds like a jab at the Bloc, the separatist party that raised just $713,085 in individual donations in 2008.
“You could call it biting the hand that feeds you,” Mr. Franks said of the millions allocated to the Bloc.
The Chretien government rolled out the quarterly allowance in 2004 in a bid to offset an outright ban on corporate and union donations. The Liberals also capped individual donations at $5,000, a limit the Conservatives have since reduced to $1,100.
The new financing system has benefited the Tories, who have excelled at grassroots fundraising ever since the 1974 Elections Act established generous tax credits for individual donations. The Liberals have been less effective at driving home the message that a $100 donation to the party only costs $25 once the 75% tax credit is applied.
And so with their war chest bulging, the Conservatives have perfected the art of launching attack ads between elections, when there are no spending caps. Mr. Ignatieff, whose leadership rating has long trailed that of the overall support for his party, bore the brunt of such an attack in the months preceding this election.
Although Liberal and Bloc support for the subsidy aligns neatly with their self-interests, their arguments also happen to align with the interests of democracy itself, experts in campaign financing say. This camp argues that the subsidy levels the playing field among parties with varying abilities to fundraise, offsets the ban on potentially corrupting corporate and union donations, and is but one of several measures aimed at propping up parties so they can have a national voice.
“While party allowances might not be an ideal mechanism to ensure fair and free elections, parties are a worthwhile cost of democracy,” said Peter Aucoin, a political science professor at Dalhousie University who served on the federal Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing in the late 1980s.
Harold Jansen, an associate professor of political science at the University of Lethbridge, said although there are pros and cons to the per-vote subsidy — one of several government-funding mechanisms, including expenses reimbursement, which cost more than $29 million in the last election — the allowance ensures a healthy breadth of political debate.
“If parties can’t get their message out and communicate with the electorate, then democracy gets weakened, and that could impoverish political debate,” said Prof. Jansen, co-author of Money, Politics & Democracy.
Prof. Jansen said that cancelling the subsidy would force parties to go directly to voters, and would perhaps strengthen the ties between parties and constituencies. On the other hand, he is dubious that there is a lot more money to be had.
“Some parties have trouble raising money given the nature of the kind of policies they support and the constituents they represent,” he said.
In an interview with The Hill Times last week, former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley said desperation for dollars could also lead to pressure to reverse the ban on corporate financing.
As the debate unfolds ahead of the May 2 election, the parties are operating on an artificially levelled playing field: Spending during a campaign is limited equally among the parties to $1 per registered voter, although only the Conservatives came close to reaching the limit in 2008.
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