“There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.”
~ Mark Hanna (1837 – 1904), businessman, U.S. Senator
“An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.”
~ Simon Cameron, businessman, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War
Like it or not, politicians and parties need money to fund campaigns. In jurisdictions without restrictions against it, politicians and parties are typically funded through large donations from a small number of people or organizations, such as businesses or unions. Only about 1% of voting age adults donate to political parties or candidates. A fraction of those donors, along with corporations, unions and other organizations, donate the majority of the money.
This leads to at least the impression that politicians are bought. This is especially true when organizations, such as businesses and unions, are the ones giving. Governments are responsible for legislation and policy that can have a huge impact on the profitability and relative bargaining power of businesses and unions. As Dermod Travis of Integrity BC points out in his April 23, 2014 commentary about provincial politics in B.C., large political donations raise troubling questions about whether policy is being made in the public interest or private interests:
“West Fraser Mills gave $99,495 to the Liberals and $500 to the NDP. West Fraser was one of the two forestry companies recently caught cutting healthy timber meant for future harvests when they were supposed to be harvesting dead and dying pine. The company could have faced a hefty fine, but after assuring the minister in the strongest of all possible terms that it would never ever happen again, scout’s honour, they walked away with a slap on the wrist, as did the other company involved – Jimmy Pattison’s Canfor.
Calgary-based Burnco Rock Products donated $34,000 to the Liberals, bringing their eight year running total to $219,700.
Presumably with a sharp eye on the polls – and after years of giving exclusively to the Liberals – they finally found some moola for the NDP. But talk about cutting it close. With just a week to spare before voting day, Burnco cut two cheques to the NDP totalling $12,500.
Burnco has big plans for a large scale gravel mine at McNab Creek at the northern end of Howe Sound. …
The New Car Dealers Association of B.C. gave $18,000 to the Liberals, bringing their nine year benevolence to $1,061,527. Coincidentally, the only major tax change that survived the transition from the HST to the PST was the 12 per cent sales tax on vehicles sold privately, as in not from a dealer’s lot.”
Now, we can’t say for sure that the BC Liberals let the timber companies off the hook because of their large donations, but it is certainly reasonable to suspect there is a connection, which is enough to damage respect for democracy and lead to cynicism among voters and citizens. That said, I think it is easier in the next case, that of Burnco Rock Products, to suggest that there is a clear intent to curry favour with the prospective decision-makers via donations. The fact that Burnco had never donated to the NDP until it appeared they might win the election and thereby become responsible for the approval of the gravel pit, is pretty clear evidence that, at least from Burnco’s perspective, they are attempting to buy favourable decisions or access to ministers. For it is clear they are not donating simply because they support the policies of one or the other party. By giving to both, particularly by giving to who they think will win power, it is clear that they are trying to purchase the favour of decision-makers, or government. Finally, in the case of the New Car Dealers Association, it is hard not to be suspicious, again. They are one of the larger donors [double check this] to the BC Liberals. By changing the policy on used cars purchased privately, as the Liberals did, they made it 5% more expensive to buy cars from the New Car Dealers’ competitors. Coincidence? Possibly, but it is hard not to be cynical about politics and politicians when decisions so favourable to a big donor, like this, are made.
More tellingly, in fact, is an article in the Vancouver Sun dated March 21, 2014 titled “As NDP rises in polls, corporate money starts to trickle in.” Lori Culbert, Chad Skelton and Gordon Hoekstra look back at the donation records of corporations to the Liberals and NDP over the past several years, finding that many corporations that never gave to the NDP started making bigger donations to the NDP than to the Liberals as they rose in the polls. A spokesman for Encana, an energy company, explained the rationale for his company: “In any election there is uncertainty and we recognize the importance of keeping the lines of communication open with both the Liberal government and the NDP.” That is to say, money buys you a communication line to those in power.
These examples, however, reflect only one part of the problem with money in politics. These examples highlight how donors try to influence particular decisions that affect them, such as approvals for gravel pits and fish farms or changes to labour laws and public sector wages, not to mention winning public contracts. But there is also the concern that it is easier to win an election if one party can raise more money than the others. That is, if winning an election is, in part, dependent on large advertising budgets (which make up the largest expenditures for parties in elections), the party who can raise the most money is at an advantage in getting their message out. So even if it wasn’t a problem that companies were buying influence, it is still a problem that parties may be more likely to win an election if they have wealthy friends and backers as compared to lower or middle class supporters.
Parties’ ideologies impact the types of donors that they can attract. In B.C., the Liberal Party tends to attract the most corporate donations, which also tend to be very large. The NDP, on the other hand, tends to attract strong support from public and private sector unions, the larger of which give generously. But how about the Green Party? One could argue that the Green Party doesn’t attract many donations because it simply isn’t supported by the people. But that may not be the whole problem. If your party’s ideology is unfavorable to extractive industries, which tend to be some of the wealthiest companies, you automatically limit your potential donor base. If another party has most of the unions locked up, you may not be able to rely on donations there, either, which means you could have a tough time raising enough money to get your message out, leading to a vicious cycle in which your party doesn’t have enough monetary resources to build support to the point where it can attract larger donors, such as companies and unions, that would propel your party to greater success.
We can actually test this hypothesis by looking at where each party gets its money. In the last four or so months leading up to the 2013 B.C. election, for example, the Liberals raised over $5,000,000 from corporations (which accounted for 68% of their major money sources), compared to a little over $2,000,000 for the NDP and less than $10,000 for the Greens. The NDP got $2.5 million from unions, with the Liberals taking a mere $6000 and the Greens getting nothing. Individual donations were $2.4 million for the Liberals, $4.4 million for the NDP and $131,000 for the Greens. This means that the Liberals got only 32% of their donations from individuals, the NDP 49% and the Greens 95%. And while the Greens got 8% of the popular vote and nearly 3.5% of the total small donors, they had less than 1% of the money of the other parties as a result of their poor showing with corporate and union donations. How do you compete without union or corporate money?
While it is perfectly reasonable to expect political parties to exist that help to preserve and protect the interests of business and unions, given the importance of these actors in a modern society, it begs the question whether a party that doesn’t specifically court the interests of the one or the other (or both), can exist. What if, for example, you want a party that is going to uphold the public interest even when it means going against union or business interests? Can such a party exist if the majority of funding sources available to parties are unions and corporations? Possibly, but it would likely be much easier if most or all of the money in politics came from small donations from individuals.
Here, again, though, we have a problem. At the federal level in Canada, union and corporate donations are banned, and individuals are not permitted to give more than $1525 per year (2016 limit) to a party, though they can give this value to both the party and a candidate or riding association, making the true limit $3050. This has created perverse incentives for federal political parties to fundraise in an extremely partisan manner to galvanize a larger number of smaller donors, even creating legislation or policy specifically to appeal to individual donors or set them up for doing so. For example, by passing omnibus bills, the Conservative Party was able to set the other parties up for voting against several measures at once, even if they didn’t oppose them all. But this allowed them to claim, in fundraising appeals as well as election campaigns, that their opponents had voted against things that they may not actually have been against, such as pension income splitting for seniors, which the NDP actually supported. The Conservative mailers, of course, don’t point out this context, and most people do not pay enough attention to politics to know it on their own.
The Conservatives also used particular issues, such as Liberal plans to legalize marijuana, to galvanize supporters to make donations. While there may be legitimate political reasons for a party to help differentiate itself from its rivals on such issues, regardless of their needs to fundraise, it is not hard to imagine that the parties wouldn’t make as big of a deal out of it if it weren’t for their monetary needs. The need to galvanize your donors, then, could be seen as leading to increasing polarization of politics, particularly on issues where it wouldn’t normally be warranted. That is, politicians may be making mountains out of mole hills unnecessarily, leading to difficulties reconciling public opinion in the future when policy needs to be changed. Gun control may be another good example. While it is perfectly legitimate to have a difference of opinion, it is quite possible that as a result of the extent and ferocity of the fundraising mailers, it will be harder to make sensible policy on gun control in the future.
In case any readers, at this point, are thinking, “hey, it sounds like the big problem here is the BC Liberal party and the federal Conservatives; if we just vote for the NDP or Greens or federal Liberals they will be more honest,” let me re-iterate that, while certain parties may be naturally suited to attracting money from corporations based on their ideologies, the more important factor is who holds power. It is easy to find examples about the BC Liberals and federal Conservatives with respect to money in politics because they have each been in power for over 10 years recently, and it is power, or access to it, that companies and organizations generally want to buy. The example of corporate money shifting to the NDP as they got closer to winning power exemplifies this. But we can also look a little further back in time, to when the federal Liberals were in power. The Sponsorship scandal brought down the federal Liberals after 13 years in power when they were caught, among other things, awarding advertising firms linked to the Liberal party jobs for which the firms did little or no work, but donated part of the money back to the Liberal Party, meanwhile maintaining Liberal party organizers or fundraisers on their payrolls. In other words, they were using public money to fund their party operations. Power corrupts, at least when you are dependent on corporations for maintaining power.
Partly in response to the Sponsorship scandal, or rather, anticipating the damage to the Liberals’ brand that might result from it, then Liberal party leader Jean Chretien introduced campaign finance reforms to limit corporate money in politics and replace it with legitimate public financing. The new rules would severely limit corporate and union donations, limit the amount individuals could give, and replace it, in effect, with a per vote subsidy from the public purse based on the party’s last electoral performance (the Conservative party went further and banned corporate and union donations in 2006, after winning power). Parties would still need to appeal to individual citizens for donations, but a good portion of their funding would be given to them automatically, decreasing the need for them to aggressively fundraise.
When this system was in use (the per-vote subsidy was subsequently eliminated by the federal Conservatives by 2015), the subsidy constituted a significant portion of many parties’ funding. The Green party, for instance, raised $1.5 million on its own in 2009, but received $1.9 million from the per vote subsidy, meaning 56% of its funding came from the subsidy. The vote subsidy gave the NDP nearly 50% of its funds, the Liberals 37% and the Conservatives just shy of a third of their money in 2009. But given that the parties spend a significant portion of the funds they raise paying for the expenses incurred in raising the funds, amounting to as much as 40% in the case of the federal Conservatives, the money they raise privately is not worth as much as the money they get from the per vote subsidy. For every $10 million that the Conservatives get from fundraising, for example, they may keep only $6 million. While for every $10 million they get from the per vote subsidy, they keep all $10 million. This means that, in actuality, more of the net money that the parties take in is coming from the per vote subsidy than the percentages listed above indicate. Factoring in the 40% cost of fundraising into the Conservative numbers means that the per vote subsidy constituted 43% of the money the Conservatives received in 2009, rather than 33% as indicated above with the unadjusted numbers.
So where does this leave us? Banning or limiting union and corporate donations appears to be a sound policy of getting rid of the worst aspects of politicians and parties being bought. It also helps eliminate the problem of the governing party being able to raise more money to fight elections than their opponents by virtue of the fact that they are the decision-makers that corporations wish to access with their contributions while they hold power. But in the absence of additional public funds to replace these lost income sources, parties have to scramble very hard to raise money from small donors, leading to problems from overly-aggressive and partisan fundraising. Creating a per vote subsidy from the public purse was one way to help mitigate these problems; but this has been eliminated at the federal level and is not widespread among the provinces and territories. While it is possible that jurisdictions may implement some form of subsidy in the future, it is unlikely to happen any time soon or in all jurisdictions. And while some jurisdictions have passed laws banning or limiting corporate and union donations and large individual donations, not all have or seem inclined to (for it is usually in the interests of the governing party to maintain the funding laws that got them elected). Not to worry, there is another way.
The real lesson from the per vote subsidy experiment is not that it helps mitigate the influence of money in politics or helps level the playing field between parties, though these are important lessons. The real lesson from the per vote subsidy is how cheap it is to buy politicians. In order to get money out of politics, then, we should simply buy the politicians on our own. Put another way, protecting democracy by getting big money out of politics is cheap. Let’s pay for it. Let’s create a voluntary per vote subsidy fund, or its equivalent, to give to each of the parties, call it the Citizens War Chest, if you will. In fact, with politicians being so cheap, we may even be able to do better than just giving politicians a portion of their money from the subsidy; we may well be able to buy them entirely. The more people who would be willing to voluntarily contribute to a fund to disburse to the parties, the cheaper it would be for each to do so. But even if not that many people give, it is still quite reasonable to buy politicians.
For example, in 2009, the last year the full subsidy was given to the federal parties, the subsidy amounted to $2.04 per vote. For the price of a cheap cup of coffee per year, then, citizens supplied approximately half of all money to each party. If only 10% of people who voted were willing to donate, it would only cost them $20.40 per year, which is less than $2 per month. Even if only 5% donated, it would still only cost about $3.40 per month per person. This is assuming that only a percentage of those who vote will donate. But it wouldn’t be surprising to imagine that some of those who are disillusioned with politics, and may not be willing to vote, may be willing to help get money out of politics. In fact, with money out of politics, more people may be willing to vote.
In any case, if we divide the amount of subsidy needed for all parties ($27 million) by the total number of citizens eligible to vote (nearly 24 million in 2008), the contribution per person would be only $1.15. This works out to only $11.50 if 1 in 10 eligible voters contribute, and $23 if only 1 in 20 eligible voters give. Heck, you could get away with only 2.5% of the eligible voters donating if people were willing to give $46 per year, or $3.83 per month. Perhaps the next time you’re buying a coffee or tea at your favourite outlet, you might want to ask: “would you like democracy with that?” And you only need to ask it, or answer positively, rather, once per month. A few percent of Canadians, working together, can buy our politicians, denying corporations and other organizations that seek special favour the opportunity of doing so.
To see what the numbers would look like to buy provincial politicians, let’s look at British Columbia, where parties spend an average amount, per capita, relative to other provinces and territories, but where corporate and union money plays an outsized role (which undoubtedly contributes to the polarized nature of B.C.’s political culture). In the four year period from 2009 to 2012 (according to data from file:///Users/makariafarm/Downloads/1199-3543-1-PB%20(1).pdf), the three parties that win seats raised a combined $67.6 million (2012 dollars), which included an election year when more money is typically raised than normal. There were an estimated 3,238,737 eligible voters in the 2009 election. This means, conservatively, that the parties raised $5.22 per eligible voter per year, on average. In order to supply half of all the money the parties raised through a voluntary subsidy fund, it would cost $2.61 per eligible voter per year. This would mean $26.10 if only 10% of people participated, or $52.20 if only 5% of eligible voters gave. While it is slightly more expensive to buy B.C. politicians, they still only cost a measly $4.35 per month if you put them on a payment plan. You can barely find a decent greeting card for that.
Now, perhaps this is an unfair way of looking at it. For we are only talking here about funding half of the parties’ spending needs. In order to buy them properly, wouldn’t we need to buy them completely? In an ideal world, this would probably be best. But even in the less than ideal scenario in which the Citizens War Chest can only pay half the parties’ normal bills, all may not be lost. Parties spend a considerable amount of their money simply to raise their funds. As previously mentioned, for example, the federal Conservatives spend anywhere from 30% to 40% of every dollar to earn it. This means that if they raise $100, they will have spent $30 to $40 to get that donation, leaving them with a net of $60 to $70 to spend. So in order to replace the revenues of a party with voluntary funds, you don’t need to replace them entirely. You only have to replace the net funds that they have after you subtract their fundraising expenses. The main national federal parties spent about $10 million per year, combined, to raise their funds during each of 2012, 2013 and 2014 leading up to the 2015 election. That’s $30 million that the voluntary fund would not need to cover right there.
In addition, there are conditions you could put on accepting the voluntary funds in order to put downward pressure on spending in general. The most severe way to do this might be to say that if you accept funds from the Citizens War Chest, you are not allowed to raise outside money. You can have free money, but you have to work with that only. I doubt many political parties would accept such a restriction, but less onerous restrictions might work. For example, parties might be willing to accept some limit on how much extra funds they can raise, such as 50% more than the amount of money they are given and only from individuals who donate less than $1000 each (which will eliminate the $10,000 per ticket fundraisers with special access to the premier or cabinet ministers that are all too common). This would mean a party that is given $10 million per year would only be allowed to raise an additional $5 million per year. In that case, two-thirds of the party’s funds would be coming from the voluntary fund, which is still significant. No less, if it takes the party $2 million to raise that extra $5 million, then they will actually only have $13 million, which means the voluntary fund will make up an even greater proportion of their net funding. Alternatively, you could follow the Province of Manitoba’s lead and limit the amount of money that can be spent by each party on advertisements and mailers during and between elections. This dampens the need for money as most parties spend a considerable portion of their budgets on advertising, particularly during election campaigns. Give parties money and take away their need for money and you may just have a winning formula for getting money out of politics. By giving parties most or all of the money they need, they may well be willing to make concessions around how they raise funds, if still needed, and how they spend them. It is certainly worth a try.
Of course, third parties can still spend. And if they’re no longer giving to parties, they may simply shift their budgets to their own advertising campaigns. Unions, environmental organizations, oil companies and the New Car Dealers Association can still run ads before and during the election campaign that will help them buy access to decision-makers. By generously funding ads that help a party get elected, these groups can buy political favour almost as if they were making direct donations. However, it is less likely that these groups will be willing to spend as much on direct advertising as they were on direct contributions. It also takes more work and their messages may not be as well aligned as the party’s ads would have been with the same money. But most importantly, perhaps, if the parties already have lots of money for advertising from the Citizens War Chest, they might not be as dependent on third-party advertising support as they otherwise would be. If they have lots of money to spend on their own direct advertising, does it mean as much if the New Car Dealers Association or Teamsters run an extra ad or two? Probably not, which will weaken the relationship between the parties and third-party donors.
Even if the relationship is weakened, however, the fact that third parties may shift their spending to advertising and other efforts will likely mean that the total amount of money spent on elections will rise if money from a voluntary fund is given to parties. Typically, we see large amounts of money in politics as a big problem. But if the money is not being raised by the parties, but is being given to them, perhaps this isn’t as big of a deal anymore. For it is really not that there is too much money in politics that is the problem. The problem is that the more money there is in politics, the more parties are dependent on fundraising and thereby, vulnerable to capture by those with money to spend. But, with the voluntary fund, they will have less need to fundraise (or none). Nevertheless, it could be seen, simply, as a waste of resources to have more money going towards elections and parties and, what many people see as, needless spending on advertisements. But I think it is a small price to pay to spend a few extra dollars on politics if it helps eliminate the influence of money in politics. And, in fact, if, as I have argued, it is cheap to buy politicians, amounting to a few dollars a year per voter, then it may actually just seem like a lot of money is being spent on politics; whereas, as a percentage of GDP or other spending in the economy, very little is really being spent contesting elections.
Besides increasing the total amount of spending on politics, however, there are a few other potential concerns that need consideration. One could argue, and many do, that a party’s ability to raise money is a good indication of whether it has legitimate support in the political marketplace. If we start giving money to parties that might not otherwise be able to raise it on their own, we may actually be subverting democracy by giving more power to parties and their ideologies than they would legitimately be able to get in society. Voting is cheap, such people might say; if there aren’t donors who are willing to put their money on the line, then the party really doesn’t have support. There may be some truth to this perspective, but weighed against the competing argument that small or new parties have a hard time attracting money because people know they don’t have much chance at winning or exercising power any time soon, I think this would be an overblown concern. That said, there is a certain value in weeding out parties that aren’t and never will amount to anything and, perhaps, aren’t even trying to win the election. If parties are only running in order to have a larger platform for their message than they would normally have in society, and funds from the Citizens War Chest leads to greater strength or a proliferation of such parties, this could be somewhat problematic, particularly if it leads to a situation in which enough of the vote is taken away from the main parties that it makes it difficult to win a majority. This could put one of these smaller parties in a position of power-broker that is incommensurate with its true support in society. Not everyone, of course, would see this as a problem, but for those who do, it is something to keep in mind when creating a per vote subsidy mechanism.
This concern can also be applied to a few different scenarios, such as independent candidates and regionally-based parties, such as the Bloc Quebecois. How much money should independents be given to contest an election? If it is their first time running, should they be given any money, or left to initially fundraise on their own, only getting a subsidy in the subsequent election based on their results in their first one? Would there be a proliferation of independent candidates if people knew there was a free pot of money for them? How might you restrict the amount you give to independents if this happened – choose one or two to give to, or distribute it equally amongst all? Not a huge problem to solve, but something to keep in mind once you start messing with how parties and candidates are financially backed.
And what should be done about a party that contests a national election but doesn’t seek national support, particularly if the reason it doesn’t seek national support is because it wants to separate from the country? Should it be getting a full ride from the Citizens War Chest? However, if the Bloc doesn’t get funding because of political considerations, what kind of precedent does that set for the administrators of the War Chest to deny other parties funds based on political reasoning? It might be important to craft the funding mechanism very carefully so that these sorts of issues sort themselves out without the political interference of actual people.
Other concerns might include: what if only one or two parties accept the funding? Won’t that leave the field wide open for the self-funded party who will be able to scoop up all the union or corporate donations that might normally be split amongst the parties? If the only way that corporations or unions can get access to politicians is through this one party that accepts being bought, won’t they be bending over backwards to make donations? It’s something worth considering.
There are a few other concerns, such as these, that will have to be carefully considered before creating such a fund. Although it is worth pointing out that there are models for how this can be done, such as at the federal level and in Manitoba, so it is not that these problems cannot be addressed, I raise them to simply point out that they do need to be considered by those who may support this idea and seek to construct a funding mechanism themselves.
Perhaps the biggest problem area is the question of who should have this power in society of deciding the rules and funding amounts for the various political actors? In order to get the support of all the political parties and the citizens, who are the donors, it will be important to ensure that the Citizens War Chest is administered in as fair and nonpartisan of a manner as humanly possible. Typically, governments rely on their independent bodies or commissions to handle issues like this, such as Elections Canada. But given that this is a citizen-led initiative, we will need to create our own. This is a perfect role for a citizens assembly, as a citizens assembly is particularly good at deciding issues of fairness.
The citizens assembly, funded by from the Citizens War Chest, could be supported by a permanent administrative body to handle the execution of its decisions. There would be a lot of initial work for the assembly to come up with all the rules for how the fund would work, what the criteria are for determining how much money each party gets (such as whether the per vote subsidy is based only on the last election or an average of the previous three elections), when a party gets its funds and what conditions it may put on receiving the money. Afterwards, however, the role of the assembly would simply be to monitor how the fund is working, ensure the administrators are doing a good job and making adjustments as needed to any problems or concerns that arise. The assembly might also address other issues of money in politics, such as funding for party leadership campaigns and other ways money enters the political realm. The assembly could meet quarterly for its business and consist of people serving offset two-year terms, so that there is always half the group that has at least one year of experience.
Each province and territory could have its own assembly, with one assembly at the national level to handle federal elections. The rules in each jurisdiction may differ, depending on the unique political circumstances in each province or territory. This will also provide a way to see how different rules and approaches with the fund affect electoral outcomes and the effectiveness of removing the influence of money from politics. The assemblies in each province may need to work with the parties and their leadership to determine what kinds of rules on fundraising they would be willing to agree to in order to increase the likelihood of their participation in the fund, though I think that they allure of a significant portion of free money that they don’t have to fundraise will be pretty tempting on its own.
Having an assembly in each province or territory is also useful because each jurisdiction has its own rules on how money can currently be given to political parties. In B.C., for instance, there are no caps on how much a person or organization can give. So the assembly could create a fund for all the donations to go into and then make a lump sum donation to each party based on its funding formula. However, in some other provinces, and at the federal level, only individuals are permitted to give, which will seriously complicate how such a fund could work. You’d almost need to have a system in which people agree to be assigned to fund a particular party based on how much money each is supposed to receive or have people give to every party based on that same formula. This, obviously, is undesirable and, perhaps, will be a deal-breaker for these jurisdictions. However, the beauty is that the worst jurisdictions, those with the least campaign funding rules, are the ones where it will be easiest to set up a fund. The very lack of any rules in many provinces is what will allow it to work there.
For those jurisdictions with good rules already, there is less need for such a fund anyway. That said, many jurisdictions have generous tax breaks for direct contributions to political parties. If a fund is created that is then used to donate to the parties, this tax break will not be activated. So there may be a large enough incentive to figure out a way to make the fund work by having people donate directly to the parties.
Turning, now, from considerations of the logistics and feasibility of this proposal, back to its merits, I would like to mention a few additional benefits to wind down the discussion.
By creating a mechanism to fund parties, we not only buy politicians, we buy politicians time. A not insignificant portion of a politician’s time can be taken up in fundraising efforts, particularly as elections loom. This is particularly true for the the politicians who have the least time to afford. The more decisions you are responsible for as a politician, the more donors want to or are willing to connect with you and give money. If money buys power, then those with the most power are the most sought out people to buy. This adds unnecessary time demands on the politicians, such as health and finance ministers who are least able to afford the time. So buying politicians is great in this sense too – we get the benefit of their freed up time. They have more time to spend doing the job we elected them to do, making decisions and solving problems in their ministries instead of meeting with those who would seek to influence those very decisions. This is freeing not only in time, but for the politicians themselves too. The burden of meeting with people who are cashing in their campaign donations cannot be one of the best parts of the job.
The fund would be freeing in another sense as well. It would free people up to run who might not otherwise do so because of a fear of running into debt financing their own campaigns. The knowledge that you’ll have the money to run a good campaign could be particularly beneficial to the parties that struggle to have enough money at the riding levels, or in races where the parties don’t want to focus their spending. The more interest we can get from people to run for office, the better pool of potential candidates there will be to draw from.
One odd benefit a voluntary campaign fund has is that it opens up an avenue for people to participate meaningfully in politics without being partisan. Increasingly, the younger generation is interested in politics, but not in the partisanship of traditional parties. There are many others of course, of all generations, who simply don’t feel strongly enough about a particular party to make a cash donation. The Citizens War Chest is creating an opportunity for people to help improve democracy for a few dollars per year without having to choose sides. They can be political without being partisan. Getting the money out of politics could be particularly appealing to younger citizens, who tend towards idealism in politics. What better way to engage them than to give them an opportunity to purchase a more ideal democracy. “You don’t want to vote because the politicians are all crooks? Great! Sign-up here to take the influence of money out of politics. You can make a difference by buying the politicians so the corporations aren’t able to.” They’ll not only be getting the opportunity to make politicians more honest, they’ll also be getting the opportunity to reduce the power of corporations and other special interests – all for the price of a soy latte per month.
And last, but not least, this is an excellent way for the people, themselves, to come together without the aid of big government, to make a positive change for democracy. Too often in society we think that the only way to solve big problems is by using big government. If citizens can get money out of politics against the wishes of the parties, or at least those parties who are in power and won’t change campaign finance laws, what a victory for the people! What else, then, might we be able to do if we look to solve problems by working together, instead of by working through government, after we own the politicians?
ADDITIONS FOR FUTURE DRAFTS:
- Ideally, find more examples from other places, such as Ontario and perhaps even the U.S. or other countries, to replace the B.C. centric examples so far.