Two articles from the National Post.
Go for it Mr. Harper.
I must laugh (cry) when I read Jack Layton saying "It's not right' when he and his wife living in Toronto/Ottawa sucked a million dollars out of the Canadian taxpayer. Now his son is a Toronto city councilperson. It's like generations of welfare recipients.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/politics/Opposition+lashes+Harper+party+subsidies/4105853/story.html
Opposition lashes out at Harper vow to end party subsidies
Mark Kennedy, Postmedia News • Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s opponents say his plan to campaign on killing direct financing for political parties is irresponsible, arguing the current subsidies are good for democracy.
The Liberals and New Democrats made it clear Thursday they have no intention of agreeing to repeal the subsidies introduced in the past decade, saying they ensure the ideas of voters are represented by vibrant political parties that no longer have to rely on “big money” from the business community.
But on Thursday, Mr. Harper wasn’t backing down on his plan — first revealed in an exclusive interview this week with Postmedia News — to make the end of the subsidies a “clear plank” of the Conservatives’ election platform.
“A subsidy where parties make no effort whatsoever to raise money is not acceptable, I don’t think, to Canadian taxpayers,” Mr. Harper said during a news conference in Toronto.
Also Thursday, the opposition reacted to two other comments made by Mr. Harper in the Postmedia News interview: that the opposition parties will try to immediately form a coalition government if the next election produces another Tory minority; and that the current minority Parliament appears headed for a conflict over the government’s refusal to bend to opposition pressure to back down on corporate tax cuts.
Liberal House leader David McGuinty mocked Mr. Harper over his allegation that a coalition is in the works.
“Apparently, we’re also going to be causing a hailstorm, and we’re going to be causing flash floods,” said Mr. McGuinty. “This is nonsense talk from the prime minister, who is desperate to try to create a bogeyman. He’s now retrenched, backed himself into a corner, and he’s lurching and he’s lashing out.”
And while Mr. Harper continued to bang the drum in Toronto over the need for corporate tax cuts to create jobs, NDP leader Jack Layton said he thinks the more pressing concern should be for people such as the seniors he recently met who can’t pay their heating bills.
“The banks and oil companies may be out of the recession, with profits of those companies soaring, but the average Canadian is not out of the recession,” Mr. Layton said.
“If he wants to campaign on that, if that is what he is deciding to do, I guess he can go out and explain that. I think a lot of Canadians feel that they get gouged by some of these companies.”
Mr. Harper’s government is preparing a budget to be tabled in February or March and speculation is swirling over whether it will be defeated by the opposition parties, thereby sparking an election.
In the Postmedia News interview, Mr. Harper spoke candidly about how he hasn’t given up on repealing direct subsidies for parties.
In late 2008, shortly after the last election, the Conservative government introduced an economic update that proposed to end the system of direct funding for political parties.
The subsidy was put in place in 2003 after the Chretien government banned contributions to parties from businesses and unions, and also set a $5,000 contribution limit from individuals (later reduced by the Harper government to $1,100.) The rationale was that if the parties were limited in how they could raise funds, they should be at least able to rely on public financing.
Under the system, parties receive every year just over $2 for every vote they received in the previous election — which amounts to $27-million a year given to the parties.
Critics said the government’s plan was a mere ploy because the Tories, thanks to their strong fundraising system, are less reliant on the public subsidies. They said the Conservatives knew that, if the subsidies were ended, rivals such as the Liberals could be left bankrupt. The Tories shelved their idea to avoid being toppled.
Mr. Harper told Postmedia News he thinks there is a clear role for some public finance (for instance, people get tax receipts to encourage them to contribute to parties)
.
“But it has got to be tied to a party’s own efforts, or to the willingness of voters to actually contribute this money,” Mr. Harper said. “And that’s not the case here, so it remains our position that that particular subsidy should be repealed.”
Mr. McGuinty said the Liberals support the subsidies because they enable a system that removes “private sector” money from politics. He accused Harper of putting forward a “self-serving” proposal.
“It’s an attempt by Mr. Harper to try to position himself as ‘Mr. Fiscally Responsible.’ If he was so fiscally responsible, he wouldn’t have spent $50-million on 9,800 signs across the country advertising infrastructure projects.”
Mr. Layton was equally supporting of the subsidies.
“A key element of democratic reform was to make sure that political parties represent the ideas of Canadians and can have their ideas considered in the public discourse.”
Ending the subsidies would have dire consequences, Mr. Layton warned.
“You’re going to end up with those who are able to ante up the bucks getting heard. And that is not democratic. It’s not right.”
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/01/14/tasha-kheiriddin-no-more-bucks-for-ballots-harper-firm-on-ending-political-subsidies/#more-24804
Tasha Kheiriddin: No more bucks for ballots: Harper to stop political subsidies
January 14, 2011 – 9:15 am
Kudos to Prime Minister Stephen Harper for pulling a Rob Ford… and standing firm in his intent to stop the gravy train for Canada’s political parties. This week Mr. Harper reiterated the Conservatives’ pledge to campaign for the repeal of public political subsidies – prompting predictable outrage from opposition parties.
I say “predictable” because when one crunches the numbers, the Tories leave the other parties in the fundraising dust. Remove the public subsidies and Michael Ignatieff would be riding a bicycle, not a bus; Jack Layton, a unicycle. Meanwhile, Gilles Duceppe and Elizabeth May would be on foot.
In 2009, parties received $27-million in per-vote-subsidies. The Bloc Québécois received $2,757,912 for receiving 10 per cent of the national vote, the Conservatives received $10,410,324 for receiving 37.7 per cent of the vote, the Green Party received $1,873,820 for 6.8 per cent of the vote, the Liberals received $7,260,920 for 26.3 per cent of the vote and the NDP received $5,026,804 for 18.2 per cent of the vote.
This is compared to the money raised by direct donations to the parties. According to the quarterly returns by parties on Elections Canada’s website, in 2009, the Bloc fundraised $834,762.42; the Conservatives raised $17,770,477, the Greens raised $1,166,874.20; the Liberals raised $10,120,312 and the NDP raised $4,039,104.10.
The “bucks for ballots” scheme was implemented in 2004 by former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien, yet another poisoned chalice left to his successor, Paul Martin. The legislation decimated the Grits’ corporate fundraising by setting a $5000 limit on donations. The Tories subsequently lowered that limit to $1,100 and banned all business and union contributions after they took office in 2006.
The result is not more democracy, as the opposition claims, but less. Taxpayers are forced to subsidize parties for whom they would not vote. They also subsidize incumbency, as parties with the most votes are favoured over parties with the fewest. And the restrictions don’t stamp out business or union influence; corporations in particular end-run them by having their executives make individual donations.
Parties should rely on funds from their supporters, and no one else. While Mr. Harper deserves full credit for pledging to scrap the subsidy, there remains the issue of income tax rebates for political donations. Why do donors to federal political parties benefit from write-offs akin to contributors to charities? While some parties and their leaders may well appear to be charity cases on certain days, that doesn’t mean they should get the same benefits. That issue, however, has yet to find a champion on Parliament Hill.
