Ontario unveils long-awaited campaign finance reforms

A dramatic departure from past decades of what amounted to limitless contribution limits by companies and unions.

Thestar.com
May 6, 2016
By Martin Regg Cohn

Barely a month after the province’s scandalously outdated fundraising rules dominated the headlines, Ontario may finally be poised to clean up its act.

An early draft of proposed reforms, unveiled Thursday, shows early promise - and suggests the governing Liberals are belatedly getting the message.

While there is still some way to go, the sweeping measures would represent a dramatic departure from past decades of what amounted to limitless contribution limits by companies and unions in Ontario. The main thrust, announced in late March by Premier Kathleen Wynne after Liberal fundraising practices were detailed in the Star - notably secret targets for cabinet ministers - would be a complete ban on corporate and union money starting next year.

But there are fresh details revealed this week - including a new pre-election limit on advertising - suggesting Queen’s Park is ready to bring campaign financing rules into the modern age more than a decade after Ottawa took similar action. Among the key changes:

• The current limit of $9,975 for individual donors would be slashed to the current federal level of $1,550 annually for a political party. That may still sound high, but it is a good starting point - down to a mere 15 per cent of the current level.
• Party leadership contestants - at which future premiers are chosen - would belatedly be covered by similar contribution limits. Until now, donors could give as much as they wanted, including a record $100,000 contribution from one person in the 2015 PC leadership race.
• Ontario would limit advertising and spending by outside groups (so-called third-parties) that have been able to outspend registered political parties - something the PCs have long sought. A coalition of unions spent millions of dollars against the Tories in the last two elections, an unfair distortion of the democratic process (however much the PCs brought it upon themselves). A new limit of $100,000 would apply.
• A new advertising limit of $1 million would apply in the six-month period prior to an election campaign, narrowing the loophole by which well-funded parties can flood the airwaves before any restrictions kick in.
• Per-vote allowances would cushion the impact of suddenly losing corporate and union donations, based on the original federal model. The initial amount of $2.26 per vote would yield millions of dollars for each of the three major parties, depending on their performance, but decline over time.

Most advocates of campaign finance reform call for at least some public financing of political parties. The bigger question is whether such funding should be merely transitional, or become a permanent feature of the political landscape. The federal Tories were ideologically opposed to so-called per-vote subsidies, using them as a wedge issue against the federal Liberals and New Democrats.

In a meeting Thursday between the Liberals and the official Opposition PCs, the outlines of the draft bill were discussed in some detail. Sources say it was a productive meeting, and that the Liberals asked for Tory input into their draft bill - which has not yet gone to cabinet - well before it is presented in the legislature.

A subsequent meeting between the government and the Green Party, which has been outspoken in seeking progressive reforms, also made headway. Green Leader Mike Schreiner said he welcomed the invitation to advance his party’s comprehensive proposals, and now believed the government is serious about both the consultation process and enacting substantive changes.

Conspicuously absent from the consultations Thursday was the NDP, which has decided to sit out the process in a fit of pique. The New Democrats refused the government’s invitation to consult on the draft bill in advance, and issued a scathing denunciation of the meetings as a “publicity stunt.”

The NDP’s isolation Thursday suggests that the short-lived common front of opposition parties has unravelled, now that the Liberals have devised a legislative process that would guarantee two separate rounds of public hearings - first this summer, after the bill is presented, followed by a second set of public hearings in the fall after revisions are made. Schreiner said the reform train “has left the station,” leaving the NDP behind.

For all the mutual finger-pointing, what really matters is which parties are willing to point the way forward for the legislature to clean up its collective act.

Now, there is good reason for cautious optimism that things are about to change.