Liberals drop a fundraising bombshell

Surprise announcement promises ban on direct solicitation by all politicians in all parties

Thestar.com
Aug. 30, 2016
By Martin Regg Cohn

The rubber chicken circuit may never be the same again in Ontario.

The provincial government is cleaning up its fundraising act. And then some.

Embarrassed by revelations of massive fundraising schemes, the Liberals appear to be going further than any government in Canada by promising a comprehensive ban on politicians taking money directly from donors over dinner. All politicians.

From any party. At any event.

In the wake of a Toronto Star expose last March detailing how top Liberal ministers faced annual targets of up to $500,000, Premier Kathleen Wynne had barred anyone in cabinet from scheduling any future fundraisers with direct stakeholders. And promised an end to donations from corporations and unions.

The opposition wanted her to go further, by enacting into law her informal ban on ministerial fundraisers with stakeholders. Wynne had insisted on more consultations.

Now, after months of delay, the Liberals are proposing a comprehensive prohibition - one-upping the opposition by extending the ban to all parties. Not just the governing party.

The latest proposals will outlaw, once and for all, direct solicitation by politicians prostituting themselves with stakeholders seeking intimate relations. MPPs, for whom fundraising dinners are the sleazy part of their job description, will be getting more nights off to be at home with their families.

The Liberals dropped their bombshell during fiercely contested committee hearings Monday. And the move caught opposition MPPs off guard after a day of stonewalling.

The surprise decision came with surprisingly few details, beyond a promise to increase public subsidies to local ridings to make up for lost fundraising revenue - which is a sensible price to pay for cleaning up our democratic process. We won’t see any legal wording until next month, when the government submits a revised version of its proposed reforms after province-wide hearings this summer.

Imperfect as the process appears, the substance looks promising if, ultimately, it brings greater clarity to the opacity of fundraising in Ontario. The province had fallen far behind the federal Parliament in regulating fundraising, which no longer takes place in smoke-filled backrooms but still remains in the shadows.

We already knew that the most egregious practices would be outlawed in the initial legislation, bringing an end to the unseemly corporate and union donations that were phased out federally a decade ago, and reducing the individual limits dramatically. It’s worth noting that during all those years, when Ontario remained the Wild West, all three major parties seemingly took a collective vow of silence, never raising a ruckus about raising money.

But after a Star series detailing informal cabinet cash quotas, blunt email appeals demanding money from stakeholders for “face time” with top ministers, and revelations that the PC and NDP leaders were also charging top dollar (presumably in exchange for future access), all three parties finally found their voices. Infused with new-found moral rectitude, with alacrity they accused each other of hypocrisy.

No matter. Politicians often do the right things for the wrong reasons, or for self-serving motives.

In truth, the latest proposed reforms are replete with ironies wrapped in inconsistencies and buried in contradictions - perhaps none more confounding than that Attorney General Yasir Naqvi is leading the way for the Liberals.

A former party president, Naqvi gave me a bizarrely impassioned defence of the old, decrepit fundraising system in an interview last March as I was researching the series that ran in the Star later that month. He argued that fundraising events allowed politicians of modest means to raise money to compete with wealthier rivals.

“The current system has very strong checks and balances in place in terms of transparency, in terms of accountability,” he insisted then (my italics).

When I pressed him on the obscenely high fundraising targets for top ministers that had taken place while he oversaw the party (and its fundraising arm), Naqvi professed blissful ignorance:

“My job as party president was not to look into who was raising what.”

Knowing what I knew - and outlined to him - about what the Star was about to publish, I marvelled at Naqvi’s determination to defend the indefensible. And his willingness to go out on a limb, back then, about such a rotten system that was destined to one day unravel.

And indeed, the day after publication, it did: Wynne publicly announced she would end corporate and union donations, rendering Naqvi’s public defence awfully ill-timed.

Fast forward to this month, and the attorney general has once again closed his eyes to the future when opening his mouth. Speaking to reporters about opposition demands to circumscribe cabinet ministers from taking money from stakeholders at fundraising dinners, he dismissed the idea just a week ago:

“What happens if at my barbecue or my $50 spaghetti dinner, 10 lawyers show up to that? Right? So now we screen them out at the door?”

Crazy idea last week? Now, Naqvi has made it his own.

The rhetoric, like the money, can be hard to follow in Ontario. That’s politics, for better or for worse - though it may be the best possible outcome in this case.