[ridenrain]

Quote:

Tom Flanagan

From Monday's Globe and Mail
Friday, Aug. 14, 2009 05:23PM EDT


.The Conservative government nearly blew itself out of the water last November when it tried to cut off $27-million a year in federal allowances to political parties. Although polls showed the idea was popular with the public, the commentariat generally panned it as a low blow against competing parties, because they are more dependent on the subsidies than the Conservatives are. The opposition parties formed their famous coalition and threatened to vote non-confidence against the Conservatives, who quickly retracted the proposal. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, however, has vowed to bring it back as part of his campaign platform in the next election.

The allowances were introduced in 2004, as part of Jean Chrétien's bill that eliminated corporate and labour contributions to parties while capping individual donations at $5,000. The allowances were supposed to compensate parties for revenue lost from corporate and labour union contributions. The screw was tightened further in 2007, when the cap for individual donations was reduced to $1,000, adjusted annually for inflation.

Cut off from previous sources of revenue, parties have become heavily dependent on the allowances. If they are now to be cancelled, it should be done in steps, say over three years, to give parties time to adjust.

Also, as Julie Andrews said (playing Maria von Trapp), “When God closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.” If parties are to lose their allowances, they should get opportunities to raise more revenue for themselves. Here are three non-mutually-exclusive suggestions that could be implemented alone or in combination.

First, the amount of political party donations that can be claimed for a federal tax credit is $1,275, yet the annual amount that is legal for an individual to give is $2,200 ($1,100 to national parties and $1,100 to electoral district associations). Inflation has already eroded the value of the tax credit by about 13 per cent since it was instituted in 2004. Raising the claim limit and periodically adjusting it for inflation would increase the volume of individual giving to political parties.

Second, the donation limit of $1,100 to national parties is not very high. The comparable limit in the United States is $2,400 for individual contributions to presidential campaigns. Canadian democracy would not be threatened with corruption and influence-peddling if the $1,100 limit were raised substantially, even doubled, while the total of contributions would certainly increase.

Third, Canada could consider a taxpayer check-off system of the type found in the United States at the federal level and in 41 states. The basic idea is that taxpayers, when filing annual returns, can tick a box indicating a political contribution. The systems vary in the limits they set and in whether taxpayers give from their own returns or assign the destination for money from a government fund.

A Canadian national system would look different from its American counterparts because money would go to parties, not individual candidates, but the taxpayer check-off mechanism would be the same. The Conservatives included a taxpayer check-off in their 2004 election platform but subsequently dropped the idea. Nonetheless, it's worth another look, in conjunction with the other options mentioned above.

How much revenue would a taxpayer check-off system yield? About 25 million Canadians file income tax returns, and 25 per cent of these claim tax credits for charitable donations, averaging about $135 apiece (in 2005). If 5 per cent of taxpayers ticked a box directing $10 to their favourite political party, that would be $12 million, a little less than half the value of the current federal allowances.

One of the things wrong with the allowance system is that it encourages parties to coast on past performance, because the allowance is determined by the number of votes gathered in the most recent election. Whatever is done to replace the federal allowances, the goal should be to make it easier for parties to raise money for themselves.

What is needed are incentives for parties to keep in contact with their supporters – to ask for money, to be sure, but also to keep people informed. Making appeals more lucrative, or instituting a taxpayer check-off system, would reinforce incentives for parties to find out who their supporters are and to keep in touch with them.

There might be little or no saving to the federal treasury, because indirect incentives through the tax system would still be involved; but Canadian democracy would benefit if parties were encouraged to be more active at the grassroots level.

Tom Flanagan is professor of political science at the University of Calgary and a former Conservative campaign manager.

[sandorski]

No. The Allowances removes undue Influence from the hands of non-Voters(Corps and Orgs). They exist to prevent Corruption and to empower the Voter.

[bootlegga]

Maybe the should also remove the tax break people get from party donations and then we'd really see who is a true supporter of their party. That tax break is responsible for far more donations than the piddly $1.95 per vote subsidy is.

[ridenrain]

That tax deduction is open to debate but it still depends completely on party supporters donting money to start with.
We can all agree that it's best if parties that draw small ammounts of money from a broad spectrum of Canadians. The closest party to that is the Conservatives.

[bootlegga]

A broad spectrum of Canadians...hardly. How much do they get from urban residents? If it matches voting patterns, it's not much, and given that 80% of Canadians live in urban centres, I'd would argue that it's actually the opposite. Even if you count centres such as Calgary and Winnipeg, they are non-existent in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, which represents roughly one-third of Canadians.

[ridenrain]

Quote:

A majority (61%) does not believe that political parties should receive this taxpayer funded subsidy -- with this most likely to be the perspective in Alberta (75%) followed by Saskatchewan and Manitoba (68%), Ontario (64%), British Columbia (59%), Atlantic Canada (57%) and Quebec (52%).
This compares with just 36% who believe that this type of taxpayer funded subsidy should continue to exist

http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=4201


Sorry folks... Will of the people.

[DerbyX]

If we listened to the will of the polls like that we'd have taxes 1/3 of what they are now (if taxes at all), massive spending increase in well everything. We'd have a massive green commitment and probably ice cream for supper everyday.

http://www.thestar.com/article/682048

Quote:

The federal minister of state for Democratic Reform was quick to dissociate his government last week from those who would stop the Bloc Québécois from receiving the same public subsidies as the other federal parties. In an open letter published Friday, Steven Fletcher wrote: "While some have advocated ending the per-vote subsidy only for the Bloc Québécois, that is not the position of our Conservative government."

That stance will disappoint the many Canadians who feel the sovereignist Bloc has no place receiving money from the federal treasury, but it positions the minister on more solid ground than those who promote a two-tier system.

Within the obvious parameters of the rule of law, Canada's election regimen must be blind to ideology. To tweak it to discriminate between parties on the basis of what they promote or the constituency they seek to represent would amount to a perversion of the country's democratic system.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the secession of a province is constitutionally feasible. There is nothing unlawful about pursuing that objective in the House of Commons. The repeat electoral successes of the Bloc speak to the democratic legitimacy of its MPs.

The fact that two decades of Bloc presence in Parliament has done more for federalism than for sovereignty in Quebec is a bonus to the majority of Canadians who want to keep the country united, but it is ultimately a side issue.

The notion a vote for the Bloc wouldn't count the same way as a vote for one of it main opponents in the redistribution of per-capita public funding to federal parties is democratically unsustainable.

The debate is on an even more slippery slope when it is argued that the presumed average income of a party's supporters should be a factor for consideration.

On that basis, it has been suggested that federalist taxpayers across Canada, in particular those from wealthier provinces, are unduly forced to finance the Bloc. But, by the same logic, it could be argued Quebec sovereignists have long been subsidizing the democratic institutions of the country their federalist brethrens hold so dear.

In Quebec, low-income voters (as well as those who are less educated) have traditionally been more likely to support federalist than sovereignist parties. Moreover, for decades, no one at the federal level represented the views of the four in 10 Quebecers who seek a different arrangement between their province and the rest of Canada.

Fletcher and the Conservative government say they want no part in this debate. Instead, they propose that the per-vote subsidy be eliminated for all parties. That is a valid position, but those who support it mostly because it would remove the irritant of a publicly funded Bloc should worry about throwing the baby out with the bath water.

The per-vote subsidy makes each vote relevant, even in ridings where one's party of choice has no shot of winning. It helps emerging parties such as the Greens break into a system that is otherwise stacked against them.

The regimen also levels the playing field between parties whose policies may be more attractive to affluent Canadians and parties whose primary appeal is to voters who don't have the means to back their support with donations.

The entire point of the 2003 reform was to temper the influence of money on federal politics. By arguing that the public funding of any party be influenced by the income bracket of its supporters, its opponents score in their own net.

[bootlegga]

ridenrain wrote:

Quote:

A majority (61%) does not believe that political parties should receive this taxpayer funded subsidy -- with this most likely to be the perspective in Alberta (75%) followed by Saskatchewan and Manitoba (68%), Ontario (64%), British Columbia (59%), Atlantic Canada (57%) and Quebec (52%).
This compares with just 36% who believe that this type of taxpayer funded subsidy should continue to exist

http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=4201


Sorry folks... Will of the people.

Kind of like the whopping 1% who were against the cuts to the DND in the mid-90s? Guess the Liberals weren't all that bad then...

[ridenrain]

.. or all those who voted for Chretien when he promised to scrap the GST?

[OldChum]

The parties should raise there own money and getting it by the vote is moraly wrong in fact it shows how lazy they have become. Maybe we should be paid for putting up with their bs for 4 years or more .

[Bruce_the_vii]

It's a social problem that the political parties receive so little financial support from the public. Lots interest in politics, it's like a sport to some, but no money.