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Liberals claim Conservatives push legislation to appease fundraising donors
The political fundraising debate at Queen’s Park took a nasty turn as the governing Liberals suggested the Progressive Conservatives push legislation and use question period to appease donors.

thestar.com
April 7, 2016
By Robert Benzie

The political fundraising debate at Queen’s Park is taking a nasty turn with the governing Liberals suggesting the Progressive Conservatives push legislation and use question period to appease donors.

“My question to the leader of the opposition is, how much do you have to donate to get a private member’s bill? How much do you have to donate to get a question asked in question period?” Deputy Premier Deb Matthews charged Thursday.

Conservative Leader Patrick Brown, who wants a public inquiry into political fundraising, lashed out at the Liberals for “trying to muddy the waters” after the Star disclosed cabinet ministers have secret targets of up to $500,000 a year they are expected to collect for the party.

Those revelations forced the government to finally act on reforms to political fundraising.

“The Liberals are desperate right now. They’re stung by the media reports that show that frankly they turned government business into a money-making machine for the Liberal party,” said Brown.

“They’re trying to divert attention; this is a government that got caught,” he said, denying there is any quid pro quo between the Tories and the stakeholders whose issues are championed at Queen’s Park.

“The government’s approach when asked about a public inquiry is to smear, to attack.”

Matthews noted Brown has been advocating for doctors in the salary dispute with the government at the same time as the Ontario Medical Association was a Tory convention sponsor.

The minister also pointed out the PC leader promoted legislation to scrap what he derided as “the death tax.”

“It was pretty strange to me that the very first private member’s bill that Patrick Brown introduced as a brand-new MPP here was about a tax break that only the wealthiest of Ontarians could take advantage of; he wanted to eliminate the estate tax,” she said.

“The only people who would be advocating for that are the tax-planners, and, if you look at the list of his donations, he’s got substantial donations from those tax planners.”

Her broadside comes as Premier Kathleen Wynne is to meet with Brown and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath on Monday afternoon to discuss next month’s legislation tightening Ontario’s lax political fundraising rules.

Wynne reminded her rivals Thursday that she is spearheading reforms.

“Our government plans to introduce legislation on political donations this spring, including transitioning away from union and corporate donations,” the premier said.

Queen’s Park Briefing analyzed contributions to the three major parties between 2002 and 2014 and found the Liberals get 50.6 per cent of their donations from corporations, 43 per cent from individuals, and 6.3 per cent from unions.

By comparison, 45.8 per cent of Conservative fundraising came from corporate donors, 53.7 per cent from individuals, and 0.4 per cent from unions.

The New Democrats’ tally was 79 per cent from individual donors, 4.9 per cent from corporations, and 16 per cent from unions.

If Ontario adopts the per-vote subsidy the federal parties used to employ as they moved away from corporate and union donations, here’s how much the provincial parties would get based on the last election: