Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne at a press conference at Queen's Park in Toronto on Monday, April 11.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Are politicians capable of learning by example? Judging by the Ontario government's draft reform of the province's political donation rules, the answer is no. After examining the proposed fixes released this week, it is apparent that the government of Kathleen Wynne is deaf to the lessons learned by other provinces that have attempted to get the money out of politics.
The government could have looked to Quebec or Manitoba and seen the flaws inherent in its proposals. Instead, the Liberals assume that they can bring in changes that have proved themselves not to be up to the cause in other provinces and make them work in theirs. What is the definition of insanity, again?
The only positive thing to say about the reforms is that, if implemented, they will be better than what exists now. But since what exists now is a system in which corporate executives and union officials are invited to small, private gatherings where their $10,000 donation buys whispered access to the ear of the Premier, or that of the cabinet minister who regulates their sector, it would have been difficult to make it worse. When a dramatic improvement only makes you average, you ought not to boast too loudly.
The guts of the Liberal reform is the banning of corporate and union donations. This is the basic minimum that all provinces should meet, but which too many fail to. Ontario will be the sixth province to do it, after Quebec, Manitoba, Alberta and Nova Scotia, and assuming PEI goes ahead this fall with recently announced plans to join in the movement. Ottawa, too, has banned corporate and union donations to federal parties for a decade.
The démodé holdouts, for the record, are British Columbia, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Newfoundland.
Ontario also proposes to reduce the maximum donation by an individual to a party from $9,975 to $1,550. This is a step in the right direction, but it ignores the facts on the ground about the risks of setting too high a maximum and including loopholes that can exponentially increase it.
The problem is twofold. One, under the Liberal proposal, individuals would be able to give up to an additional $3,100 to riding associations and nomination contestants every year, and another $3,100 to candidates during election periods. (In every case, the maximum donation to one candidate, riding association or nomination contestant is $1,550.)
That means that a wealthy individual could donate $7,750 to one party during an election year, and $4,650 during a non-election year. Over the course of a four-year government mandate, one person could give a total of $21,700 to a single party. This creates a motivation for parties to seek out wealthier donors at the expense of the average voter, who can't conceive of giving away that much cash.
The second part of the problem is that wealthy donors can enlist family members to donate matching amounts. Suddenly one voter and his or her entourage are worth $43,400, or $55,100, or more, to a party, depending on how many are called upon to act as "donors."
This is precisely the problem Quebec ran into when the Parti Québécois banned corporate and union donations in the late 1970s, and set the maximum individual donation limit at $3,000. It quickly became obvious that the corporations and unions that could no longer buy favour through direct donations were getting individuals to act as their proxies. Some business owners were openly using their spouses and children, and even their employees, to donate three and four times the maximum to their preferred party. It was impossible to determine whether or not the money actually came from the individual named as the donor.
Quebec responded by lowering the limit first to $1,000 and then to $100. By doing so, it has completely eliminated the possibility of wealthy donors having vastly more influence than average ones. And isn't that the goal of any scheme to limit political donations?
Ontario should learn from Quebec and lower the individual limit to something well under $1,000. And it should do as Manitoba has done and set a hard individual total of $3,000 per year, whether it goes to parties, constituency associations or a nomination contestant. The Wynne government's argument that its proposed limits are acceptable because they are in line with federal limits is invalid, since the federal limits are, in fact, only half as high as what Ontario is proposing when all the Wynne loopholes are taken into consideration.
The Liberal proposals risk taking us back to the same boondoggles that so embarrassed the Wynne government in the first place. Will wealthy individual donors be invited to bundle their annual donations in exchange for the same private access that corporation and union donations can currently purchase?
There is a convincing argument to make that the individual limits must be lower in order to eliminate the kinds of inequities and abuse that, when exposed in the media, forced the Wynne government to promise to clean up the system.
Other proposals are problematic, too. The plan to give parties generous public subsidies to compensate them for the easy money they will no longer be able to rake in from corporations and unions is ridiculous and unnecessary, as we contended in an editorial on Thursday. It should be dropped immediately.
And the proposed advertising spending limits for political parties and their third-party supporters before and during election campaigns, as well as the enforcement of them, should also be reviewed. Thankfully, the government has promised to hold broad consultations on its reform. That may turn out to be the best thing about it.