In the News May 16
Ontario Election 2022
Party Financing Regime an Indictment of Party System of Government
Since 2017, the cartel of parties in the Ontario legislature have qualified to receive state funding referred to as “allowances.” The handouts were put in place when corporate and trade union contributions were banned. The allowances were presented as a form of transitional funding to wean the parties off sources of “big money” – such as, in the parlance of the anti-social offensive, the trade unions.
Rather than examining the problem and devising a modern method of funding elections which would ensure all electors are enabled to participate in setting agendas for elections, selecting candidates, informing each other about their concerns and problems, with all electors standing as equals regardless of their economic status or connections to wealth, the cartel parties enacted a series of self-serving election finance amendments to expand state funding for themselves and preserve their domination over the process.
The allowances were to be paid quarterly and scheduled to stop by the end of 2021. They are only paid to parties that obtain two per cent of the provincial votes in the most recent election, or five per cent in the ridings where they fielded candidates. This arbitrary threshold for state funding is said to reflect “the will of the people” based on the self-serving notion that electors only want to hear from the parties they have voted for in the past.
Parties are paid allowances according to the number of votes their candidates brought in.
From 2017 through to the end of 2021, the following allowances were paid: Greens – $3.2 million; NDP – $20.8 million; Liberals – $16.9 million; Conservatives – $25.5 million. This is a grand total of $66.4 million. This does not include quarterly allowances paid to the constituency associations of the same parties, nor reimbursements for election expenses, all of which are forms of funding privileged parties instead of funding the electoral process itself.
In 2021, with the 2022 election on the horizon and the subsidy set to end, the cartel parties extended the expiration date for the allowances to the end of 2024, increased the per-vote payout from 43 cents to 63 cents, and enacted a lump sum advance payment for April 2022 through to March 2023. (our emphasis).
The cartel had their cheques cut for the first quarter of 2022: Greens — $168,000; Liberals — $714,000; NDP — $1.2 million and Conservatives — $1.5 million.
The special lump sum payment will be made when the second quarterly payment — covering the period of April, May and June — is normally paid. At that time, the following payments will be: Greens — $673,000; Liberals — $2.9 million; NDP — $4.9 million; Conservatives — $5.9 million.
The law has been written so that payments are based on the 2018 election, meaning that regardless of the June 2 outcome, even if a party were to be decimated at the polls it would still get its lump sum payment. It means that banks can give them loans without any qualms as to what the outcome of the election will be — the government has provided a legally guaranteed collateral.
The allowances paid to the cartel parties have routinely amounted to more than what the parties could raise in contributions. The Ontario Chief Electoral Officer informed in his 2017-18 report entitled Implementing Change: “Overall, quarterly allowances paid out in 2017 amounted to 34 per cent more than what the parties were able to raise in contributions for that year.”
Some examples. In 2017, when the Liberal Party was the government, it raised $1.6 million in contributions, compared with $5 million from the state. In 2020, the Liberals raised contributions of $2.3 million compared to $2.5 million in state funds.
In 2017, the NDP raised $2.1 million in contributions and received $3.1 million in public subsidies. In 2019, when it formed the official opposition, the NDP received a total of $4.6 million from the state, compared to $2.6 million in contributions.
The Conservatives went from contributions of $2.4 million and an allowance of $4.1 million in 2017, to contributions of $2.7 million with an allowance of $5.1 million in 2020.
The cartel party system is passed off as the pinnacle of liberal democratic institutions which guarantee electoral fairness and give people “choice” over who rules them. The way the cartel parties use the Legislature to pass financing regimes which provide their electoral coffers with funds and get government to provide the banks with guarantees of repayment for loans is a damning indictment of the system. It is so egregious as to make most Ontarians recoil in disgust. All of it is decided in a manner beyond their control.
Ontario Political Forum, posted May 16, 2022.
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