Pssst! Lissen up, Messrs Harper, Layton and Dion: How would you like to reduce the number of seats the Bloc wins in the next election by one third? From 50 to say 30 to 33? That would spring loose between 17 and 20 seats for the CP, NDP and LPC to pick up …
There is a way; a way that is fair, more democratic, and that levels the playing field.
The way is set out below, but first, a bit of background so that you understand the Cat’s proposal.
On the federal scene, four parties are fighting the lock that the Bloc has on the majority of voters in Quebec.
Harper has tried to prise voters loose from the Bloc, but so far has failed. The Greens have a policy regarding environmental matters which should offer a choice, but have failed to win much support in that province. Jack Layton tried his best, but so far is not breaking through in Quebec. The Liberals have fought but have had their seats in Quebec reduced to mainly the Anglophone areas.
And all this is happening when the Bloc is given an unfair level of assistance from Canadian taxpayers generally, and when the Bloc is shrinking as a political party.
How is this happening? Consider the article headed Bloc’s the big winner in election financing, by Barbara Yaffe, in Saturday’s Vancouver Sun:
“In a bit of political perversity, it turns out Canadians are bending over backwards to provide financial sustenance to the Bloc Quebecois. A new study by the Calgary-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy reveals, of all Canada's federal parties, the Bloc benefits most substantially from campaign finance reform introduced five years ago by the Chretien government. Declares the Frontier Centre news release: "Without federal financing, the separatist party likely would have been unable to mount a serious campaign in the 2008 election."”
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=771df322-e5cd-40b6-89bd-43591f2dc5da
Wow! These are strong contentions.
Let’s examine the details, because they are important. Jean Chretien is the man who allowed this state of affairs to come about, when he reformed the financing of political parties by banning corporate and union donations so as to reduce any undue influence by these groups. Chretien cut the maximum limit any individual could donate to a political party to $5,000, which Harper later reduced to $1,100.
“The 2003 reforms also set up a new system of direct taxpayer-funded allowances whereby parties receive quarterly payments based on the number of votes gleaned in the previous election. Each vote yields nearly $2.” (per Yaffe).
The result?
The Tories won big time, because they had two streams of income for elections. They had focused on persuading individuals to fund them, and by winning a goodly percentage of the total votes cast in all provinces of Canada, which gave them another source of revenue, from this federal funding.
The Liberals suffered because they got their share of federal funding, but had far fewer individuals who donated to them, so their income came from one strong stream (the federal funding), and one relatively tiny trickle (individuals).
The NDP had two strong streams of income to fight the 2008 election (individual donations and federal funding).
And the Bloc? It had virtually one ONE stream of income, the federal funding:
“The Alberta study shows that the Bloc has become more heavily reliant on these allowances than any other party, including the Greens. The ratio of the taxpayer allowance to money from Bloc fundraising is 5.6 to 1. Contrast that to a 1.3 to 1 ratio for Conservatives and a 1.5 to 1 ratio for the New Democrats, the two parties that are least dependent on the taxpayer subsidies. Incredibly, the Bloc in the first six months of this year had a scant 1,070 individuals offer donations. Even the tiny Green party had 7,915 donors during that same time period. With its meagre donor base, the Bloc raised a paltry $73,704 while scooping $1.5 million in public financing.”
What is more, the Bloc has been shrinking as a political party, at least as far as a donor base is concerned. It has won votes, true, but it has done so by having Canadian taxpayers across the country funding its separatist agenda, while donations from Quebeckers have shrunk to almost nothing:
“It is also noteworthy, says study author Mark Milke, that the Bloc's donor base has been seriously shrinking since 2004 when it had 8,775 donors. By 2007, that had fallen to half and it since has shrunk further. "Simply put, the Bloc's fortunes in the recent election were rescued by public financing," says Milke, a political science lecturer at the University of Calgary.”
Yaffe summarizes the position with this statement: “How ironic, that the party that would seek to break up Canada has become so reliant on the national teat.”
Yaffe goes further, and suggests that the current funding method holds even greater threats to Canada, if the Bloc’s modus operandi was copied by other parties in the future:
“Imagine if every province had a Bloc party. It would negate the usefulness of the federal Parliament entirely. Each province would have a parliamentary "gimme, gimme" team seeking only to best the next province.”
She also rebuts any possible defence of this broken reform by Bloc supporters with this weighty argument:
“The defence Bloc supporters will offer in the face of the Frontier Centre's report will be that the Bloc is a Quebec party, backed by that province's taxpayers who are also federal taxpayers. That is, they, too, indirectly support the Bloc's existence. And Quebecers help to finance all federal parties. But that won't assuage the broader group of taxpayers who have absolutely no incentive to appreciate the Bloc's work in Ottawa.”
Let’s summarize: the only separatist party in Canada received donations from roughly one thousand Canadians, totalling a pathetic $73,000, but still was funded to the tune of $1.5 million in federal funds. So Bloc supporters were content not to put their money where their mouth was by making their own donations to the Bloc, but to rely on federal government funding…
And the Green Party, which does not have a single seat in Canada’s parliament, while the Bloc has 49, had almost ten times more individual donors than the Bloc.
Something smells in Denmark, sayeth the Cat.
And we can blame Jean Chretien for this half-baked, unfair and undemocratic system.
So, how can the Tories, Dippers and Liberals fix this broken system?
It seems to me that we need a system of public funding of federal political parties which rewards parties for their efforts to attract total votes in an election, to attract donors in each province, and to attract donors across all of Canada.
First, let’s agree with a few principles that should apply to any federal funding scheme:
1. That federal funding of federal political parties is a good thing and should continue (we do not want to go the route of the USA system, where politicians are bought by special interests).
2. That any party should continue to get some funding based on the total number of votes it gets in each federal election (so that parties with more votes, which have appealed to more Canadians, should receive more federal funds).
3. That we do not go back to the old system of allowing corporations and unions to fund political parties, but only allow individuals to do so.
4. That we keep the current $1,100 limit per person on donations by individuals (increasing by inflation).
5. That the federal funding should also encourage political parties to reach out to Canadians, and encourage Canadians to participate in political affairs by donating to parties of their choice. This should increase the percentage of Canadians who actually vote in our federal elections, and so strengthen our democracy.
6. That the federal funding should also level the playing field, by recognizing that political parties which strive to sign up members from all across the country, should be encouraged to do so, so as to reduce sectionalism in the country.
7. That, at the same time, any party which has a firm footing in any province should also be encouraged to increase its membership and donations within that province.
So much for the governing principles.
Now, let’s examine a revised method of federal funding which the Tories, Dippers and Liberals should be able to agree upon, and which those three parties, having the majority of seats in parliament, should be able to capture in an amending bill.
The new scheme works this way:
1. The federal funding is to be divided into three separate pools, instead of just one pool as at present.
2. The total amount of money in the 3 pools is to be increased for the next federal election by one half, from the $2 per total vote casts by voters in a general election, to $3. Based on the 13.8 million voters who actually voted in the 2008 election (59.1%), this would give us a total pool amount of some $41.4 million (let’s say $42 million).
3. The 3 pools are to consist of the Total Vote Pool, the Total Canada Donor Pool, and the Total Provincial Donor Pool. Each of these pools will have one-third of the total federal funding, or $14 million each, using the 2008 election result.
4. Political parties will be paid from their share of each of the 3 pools, as calculated below.
5. As a political party, you get $1 for every vote cast for your party in the general election, from the Total Vote Pool. This is down from the $2 the parties each got in 2008.
6. You will also get your proportionate share of the Total Provincial Donor Pool (your share being your total number of individual donors as a percentage of all the individual donors to all political parties in that province, times the allocation of this pools $14 million to each province). So, if the total number of individual donors in, say, Alberta, is 20% of the total number of individual donors in all of Canada, and you had half of those donors in Alberta making donations to you, then you get half of 20% of $14 million, or $1.4 million.
7. You also get your proportionate share of the Total Canada Donor Pool (your share being your total number of individual donors in all of Canada as a percentage of all the individual donors to all political parties in the whole of Canada, times the allocation of this pools $14 million). So, if you get 20% of the total number of donors in Canada, then you get 20% of this pool’s $14 million, or $2.8 million.
This proposed revised federal funding will encourage political parties to widen their membership and obtain donations from more people, so involving more people in our political process, and hopefully increasing the percentage of Canadians who vote in each election.
It will also encourage parties to widen their number of donors in every province, rather than concentrating on some and neglecting others, and thereby help reduce the political alienation felt by some regions of the country.
Finally, it will reward those parties which consistently encourage membership and donations in all parts of Canada.
The increase in total federal funding should reduce the impact on any party of moving from the current undemocratic and inefficient system, with its one pool, to the new system, with its three pools.
How about it, Mr Harper? Mr Layton? Mr Dion?
