Great article but who is Colin Horgan? I love that The Line provides guest opinion pieces. However, as a reader, I think its important to have some understanding of the writers expertise and biases. I realize that I could Google Colin Horgan, but it would be easier if The Line did this for every article not written by someone named Matt or Jen. Cheers.
I guess my question is if we bring back PVS, will the takeaway for the parties be "Great we don't have to do that anymore" or "Great we've got a base of money and we need to hit social media as well to outspend the other guy"
I think bringing back PVS would also need to be tied into limits on donations. Parties would be subject to severe limitations on the amount they could receive on a yearly basis from any one individual - say $100. and the current tax credit for political donations would need to be removed. And the parties would have to pay for a deep dive 3rd party audit to ensure against cheating. The results of the audit would have to be published. I'm hoping that the expense of paying for such a detailed audit would be a disencentive to cheat. The parties would also have to hire additional staff to track these donations - at both the national level and the riding association level. In short, allow limited donations, but make doing so really onerous in order to discourage the practice. :-)
I guess the parties themselves could probably be managed / supervised reasonably well. Its the outside interest groups both domestic and (primarily in this case) US that I dont see how it would be regulated in any effective way. There are all sorts of very legitimate and not so legitimate interest and lobby groups that could be used to circumvent the party's spending limitations. There are supposed to be limits on that now, but its abused already and I suspect would continue to be even more in the future.
Look at all the BS being sent Michael Chong's way right now. I can see more and more Canadian activists on both party's fringes looking at the CCP's political playbook as a template to follow.
I am not convinced the opportunity cost of this avenue is the way to go in 2023. Information/noise/misinformation flows way too freely across borders. The PVS seems to have baked into it a notion of a informational walled garden, which we no longer live in.
I'm guessing that the other side of this is banning all donations for individuals. With the long standing bans on corporate and union donations, that leaves no money that isn't a per vote subsidy.
I guess that does meet the overarching goal of most Canadians, avoiding confrontation at all costs. The problem is, what is lost with this "polite" system.
Not sure how enforcement would happen. How do you tell the difference between a sincere group of people coming together to advocate voting for a particular party vs an astroturfed one ? What about US based lobby groups spamming social media ?
Sadly there is a bit of H.L Mencken in me on this..... "The disengaged middle have passively voted for what they wanted. Now it's time for them to get it good and hard"
I wonder how it would play out. Municipal elections are already like that (zero percent deduction). I know in my city, the mayor which I supported and threw some money behind ending up being 0.5% of total contributions for just $300. Its not like I am going to buy some policy favors from her, but I was surprised that if I got in with one other person I could hit 1% ?!?!? It might make parties even more beholden to the REALLY motivated (ie extreme) elements of the party ?
I agree with your concerns and share them. All overt political advocacy groups are "supposed" to be registered. How do you enforce foreign actors? In my opinion you don't even try. This is an academic exercise and there is no point.
This opinion reads like "we can't trust the rubes anymore, we need to bring control of the parties messaging back into the elite consensus." What better way to do that then have the state fund the parties.
The per-vote method also has an additional advantage of creating a huge barrier to entry to new parties, which works for the political elite just fine.
"Social media and MSM comment boards already provide plenty of platforms for today's 'shouting sign painters.'"
And if you find social media to be offensive, don't look at it. It is precisely that approach that led me to boycott broadcast news some years ago and I am quite happy with that decision. I get my news from newspapers (what a concept, that!) and research that I do online. Of course, one must be selective about what to believe but that is very much true of the social media discourse, I am led to believe (took my own advice and boycotted SM from the beginning, having been terrifically unimpressed by the initial SM "information" that I saw.
If there were a market for "centrist, solution-orientated" political parties, it would already be attracting plenty of small donations. With the recent passing of Hugh Segel this is an especially salient point. Centrism is subjective, which is the problem. It's a political weasel word, especially in Canadian politics, just like Progressive Conservative.
That all said, I think our current funding model for parties is the best out of a dogs breakfast of options. Let the marketplace of ideas and politics sort it all out, we don't need "leadership" from our social betters, who suck anyways.
Given that the per-vote subsidy benefits establishment parties at the expense of non-qualifying parties, it might not be the best solution to discouraging private fundraising.
A better idea would be to abolish all the generous tax credits that are attached to political donations.
I realize the author believes that a PVS will change fundraising but I saw no facts to back this up. I hate the idea of my tax dollars going to all political parties. If I want to support any or all parties I will do so and I don't want to pay it out of my taxes nor do I think it should qualify for a deduction. Perhaps if parties would quit pandering to the basest of us and had principles they wouldn't need the money from the nutbars. Pissing away tax dollars is not the solution to any of our problems.
The author is correct to be critical of the trend in our country’s political discourse. A return to per vote financial subsidies of political parties is no answer. We have them in BC and our provincial politics suffer from the same partisan excesses.
I’m from BC and I don’t think this province does suffer from the same level of thoughtless partisanship as is displayed in federal political discourse.
Interesting that PVS is being discussed when the liberals are doing poorly in the polls. If the date of PVS implementation date is correct did they bring it in to try to secure the next election? It certainly didn’t decrease the liberal rhetoric in the election that followed when they used the abortion issue against the conservatives as they have started to do now. If people want to donate to a party they will. All parties use social media to their advantage and implementing PVS will not change this. Conservatives are able to raise money better than other parties because conservatives want less government in their lives not more.
PVS is not being discussed because the Liberals are doing poorly. It is being discussed because so many people can see that the level of political discourse is somewhere down in the gutter and probably because of the motivation the author outlined.
Ian, the political discourse is in the gutter simply because too many Canadians have found their true level. Far, far too many people refuse to think about the (untrue) promises offered or the implications of such promises. In other words, we have far too many idiots voting. Having said that, I don't know what we can do to ensure that people do think and do consider implications. Sad, but there it is.
The incentive isn't about money. The new currency of the day is eyeballs (our attention), and the outrage, clickbait, gaslighting exercise does get eyeballs and reactions (which Matt did slap me around for in another article!). How to get attention back on discourse is a vexing problem, but throwing public money at it (whether journalism fund of PVS) definitely not the answer.
But eyeballs, outrage, click bait, gaslighting, etc. all end up delivering money to political parties. Provide the money in an alternate way while restricting donations will force the politicians to appeal to voters through rational discourse about policies that impact them rather than outrage……..
I hear the point, but am very skeptical. I think Coyne (who I loath to think about these days but he did have this point) once offered having parties be more professional, with paid memberships. So you'll have people in the party to reign in the sycophants, who have a reputation to maintain and so are gatekeepers within their own party to stymie the worst excesses of riling up, gaslighting, etc. That would weaken the leader, but of course a big part of today's problem is strong party leaders.
My question is where did this money come from? The public purse? if that was the case then absolutely not. Taxpayer money should in no way go to funding political parties...
Although I generally supported the Harper government, I disagreed with the repeal of the per-vote subsidy. Political parties are necessary for democracy, and so should be supported by all taxpayers (just as elections are). The per-vote subsidy, since it exactly mirrors the per-party vote in the election, is the most democratic way of subsidizing parties, and avoids the unseemly and endless beggar-bowling that takes place currently. Bring it back. Not all Chretien/Liberal ideas were bad.
Nope. If I want to support the CPC or the NDP that should be my decision [I will NEVER support the Liberal Party of Canada], not that of the government - which is me writ large, by the way.
The per vote subsidy makes it highly unlikely that new parties could develop and I, for one, believe that new parties and new political movements have a very great import to the idea of bringing forth new ideas.
They may very well - but im still for it anyway. Might actually encourage turnout because people will know they can still vote for and support a party with 0 chance of winning the riding.
It would discourage me from voting. Knowing that every time I vote, some political party will get $1.75 per year (now presumably $2.50 or $3.00 because of inflation). I think I'd rather not vote.
Yes exactly. The riding I live in flips between two parties, neither of which I'm interested in voting for. I vote for one of the other parties & if PVS was in place I wouldn't feel so much as if I had wasted my vote.
I don't think bringing back PVS is going to fix anything, nor do I think it would've prevented the drive to boost small dollar donations. You'd have to outright *ban* small dollar donations to stop parties from chasing them. Even strict limits on campaign spending wouldn't stop parties from chasing that money to fund party operations and advertising between campaigns.
If you really wanted to de-emphasize the chase for small dollar donations, you'd actually relax or eliminate the cap on donation size and corporate donors. Small dollar donations are actually a pretty inefficient means of raising money - a much larger fraction of the donation goes to paying for the fundraising and processing costs. The concern with large donors is that their policy preferences might be different than the average voter, but they're also not working from a frenzy of rage like the people who form the small dollar donor base. Which non-representative group do you want dictating party policy? The concerns about influence of the rich or corporations could be addressed by making the donation process radically transparent so we can see exactly who's donating, how much, and when.
The PVS was basically trying to replace the Liberals' revenue when large donations were curtailed after the sponsorship scandal. It's a great deal for moribund parties with a less than motivated donor base, but it props up failing parties and also disconnects them from the voters because their funding is no longer directly related to their performance. One thing that always stood out to me is the number of people who'll support the NDP, but were utterly unwilling to kick in $5 of their own money for a political donation.
Is there any actual evidence that parties would fundraise less aggressively if they received an unearned government subsidy? Or is that just something we're supposed to take on faith? Doug Ford introduced "per vote" subsidies in Ontario (supposedly temporarily, but they've been extended instead of wound down). Did these cause a significant reduction in sharp fundraising appeals?
This reminds me of the assertion that ranked choice voting results in friendlier and more polite elections. Okay, maybe people wish that, but in real life there are absolutely vicious elections in lots of places with ranked choice voting, like Australia.
I'm against unearned government subsidies for parties (and indeed, also against fundraising tax credits) as a matter of general principle. But nevertheless, people claiming a benefit from them need to prove the case instead of assuming it.
Excellent article. But as the author himself suggests ("Big whoop, no surprise"), we didn't really need a study to tell us this. It turns out that putting a brake on people's predilection for exactly the sort of hypocrisy and wilful denial this particular study highlights is the real role played by such studies. Think back to the 1970s: it wasn't until the Surgeon General's report definitively linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer was published that it became possible for politicians to begin legislating to protect citizens from second hand smoke. Long before this incontrovertible evidence came equipped with its official seal of approval, though, people knew perfectly well what was making them sick. Those whose nicotine addiction incentivized them to be in denial about the matter simply persisted in their denial. People aren't stupid: they can put 2 and 2 together; yet their capacity to refuse to acknowledge the result is 4, whenever 4 doesn't happen to fit a favoured narrative, is equally impressive, and they will indulge this capacity until the last loophole for doing so is closed. It's this self-serving tendency, in which unbridled will is surreptitiously substituted for reason's clear verdicts (while of course declining to announce itself honestly for what it is), that makes partisanship so difficult to combat and easy to exploit.
I could probably get my head around bringing back the per vote subsidy if politicians and political parties agreed to discontinue the ridiculous “outrage” posts as a way to drive donations. But I suspect they’d just use the PVS to add to their revenues; not as a replacement for the social media driven revenue.
The party of course that benefitted the most relative to others was the Bloc, given that it only has to spend in Quebec. Not necessarily a reason to go back to the PVS but a consideration.
But their votes also only come from Quebec while other parties have votes from across the country including Quebec. There is no advantage for the Bloc.
Great article but who is Colin Horgan? I love that The Line provides guest opinion pieces. However, as a reader, I think its important to have some understanding of the writers expertise and biases. I realize that I could Google Colin Horgan, but it would be easier if The Line did this for every article not written by someone named Matt or Jen. Cheers.
Yeah, sorry. My bad. Colin's experience is mostly in media and communications, but he did work briefly as a Liberal speechwriter. JG
Hopefully this plea for an introduction--a courtesy the guest author is entitled to expect, as much as a convenience for the reader--will be heeded.
I guess my question is if we bring back PVS, will the takeaway for the parties be "Great we don't have to do that anymore" or "Great we've got a base of money and we need to hit social media as well to outspend the other guy"
I think bringing back PVS would also need to be tied into limits on donations. Parties would be subject to severe limitations on the amount they could receive on a yearly basis from any one individual - say $100. and the current tax credit for political donations would need to be removed. And the parties would have to pay for a deep dive 3rd party audit to ensure against cheating. The results of the audit would have to be published. I'm hoping that the expense of paying for such a detailed audit would be a disencentive to cheat. The parties would also have to hire additional staff to track these donations - at both the national level and the riding association level. In short, allow limited donations, but make doing so really onerous in order to discourage the practice. :-)
I guess the parties themselves could probably be managed / supervised reasonably well. Its the outside interest groups both domestic and (primarily in this case) US that I dont see how it would be regulated in any effective way. There are all sorts of very legitimate and not so legitimate interest and lobby groups that could be used to circumvent the party's spending limitations. There are supposed to be limits on that now, but its abused already and I suspect would continue to be even more in the future.
Look at all the BS being sent Michael Chong's way right now. I can see more and more Canadian activists on both party's fringes looking at the CCP's political playbook as a template to follow.
I am not convinced the opportunity cost of this avenue is the way to go in 2023. Information/noise/misinformation flows way too freely across borders. The PVS seems to have baked into it a notion of a informational walled garden, which we no longer live in.
I'm guessing that the other side of this is banning all donations for individuals. With the long standing bans on corporate and union donations, that leaves no money that isn't a per vote subsidy.
I guess that does meet the overarching goal of most Canadians, avoiding confrontation at all costs. The problem is, what is lost with this "polite" system.
Not sure how enforcement would happen. How do you tell the difference between a sincere group of people coming together to advocate voting for a particular party vs an astroturfed one ? What about US based lobby groups spamming social media ?
Sadly there is a bit of H.L Mencken in me on this..... "The disengaged middle have passively voted for what they wanted. Now it's time for them to get it good and hard"
Take away the 75% tax deduction for political contributions and watch them melt away.
I wonder how it would play out. Municipal elections are already like that (zero percent deduction). I know in my city, the mayor which I supported and threw some money behind ending up being 0.5% of total contributions for just $300. Its not like I am going to buy some policy favors from her, but I was surprised that if I got in with one other person I could hit 1% ?!?!? It might make parties even more beholden to the REALLY motivated (ie extreme) elements of the party ?
I agree with your concerns and share them. All overt political advocacy groups are "supposed" to be registered. How do you enforce foreign actors? In my opinion you don't even try. This is an academic exercise and there is no point.
The point of the PVS is to do away with all donations so rage farming has no benefit.
I think the latter is more likely.
Yes. "Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little." --Epicurus
This opinion reads like "we can't trust the rubes anymore, we need to bring control of the parties messaging back into the elite consensus." What better way to do that then have the state fund the parties.
The per-vote method also has an additional advantage of creating a huge barrier to entry to new parties, which works for the political elite just fine.
Okay, noted.
Nothing's perfect but at least the per-vote subsidy encourages support for centrist, solution-oriented political parties.
Social media and MSM comment boards already provide plenty of platforms for today's "shouting sign painters" .
"Social media and MSM comment boards already provide plenty of platforms for today's 'shouting sign painters.'"
And if you find social media to be offensive, don't look at it. It is precisely that approach that led me to boycott broadcast news some years ago and I am quite happy with that decision. I get my news from newspapers (what a concept, that!) and research that I do online. Of course, one must be selective about what to believe but that is very much true of the social media discourse, I am led to believe (took my own advice and boycotted SM from the beginning, having been terrifically unimpressed by the initial SM "information" that I saw.
If there were a market for "centrist, solution-orientated" political parties, it would already be attracting plenty of small donations. With the recent passing of Hugh Segel this is an especially salient point. Centrism is subjective, which is the problem. It's a political weasel word, especially in Canadian politics, just like Progressive Conservative.
That all said, I think our current funding model for parties is the best out of a dogs breakfast of options. Let the marketplace of ideas and politics sort it all out, we don't need "leadership" from our social betters, who suck anyways.
Given that the per-vote subsidy benefits establishment parties at the expense of non-qualifying parties, it might not be the best solution to discouraging private fundraising.
A better idea would be to abolish all the generous tax credits that are attached to political donations.
Yes, the tax credits should be abolished in any case.
Yes, abolish the tax credits for political donations.
I realize the author believes that a PVS will change fundraising but I saw no facts to back this up. I hate the idea of my tax dollars going to all political parties. If I want to support any or all parties I will do so and I don't want to pay it out of my taxes nor do I think it should qualify for a deduction. Perhaps if parties would quit pandering to the basest of us and had principles they wouldn't need the money from the nutbars. Pissing away tax dollars is not the solution to any of our problems.
Yeah. The entire article appears to be one person's opinion with literally zero facts backing it up.
The author is correct to be critical of the trend in our country’s political discourse. A return to per vote financial subsidies of political parties is no answer. We have them in BC and our provincial politics suffer from the same partisan excesses.
I’m from BC and I don’t think this province does suffer from the same level of thoughtless partisanship as is displayed in federal political discourse.
Interesting that PVS is being discussed when the liberals are doing poorly in the polls. If the date of PVS implementation date is correct did they bring it in to try to secure the next election? It certainly didn’t decrease the liberal rhetoric in the election that followed when they used the abortion issue against the conservatives as they have started to do now. If people want to donate to a party they will. All parties use social media to their advantage and implementing PVS will not change this. Conservatives are able to raise money better than other parties because conservatives want less government in their lives not more.
PVS is not being discussed because the Liberals are doing poorly. It is being discussed because so many people can see that the level of political discourse is somewhere down in the gutter and probably because of the motivation the author outlined.
Ian, the political discourse is in the gutter simply because too many Canadians have found their true level. Far, far too many people refuse to think about the (untrue) promises offered or the implications of such promises. In other words, we have far too many idiots voting. Having said that, I don't know what we can do to ensure that people do think and do consider implications. Sad, but there it is.
And because the Tories are fundraising waay more than the Libs.
The incentive isn't about money. The new currency of the day is eyeballs (our attention), and the outrage, clickbait, gaslighting exercise does get eyeballs and reactions (which Matt did slap me around for in another article!). How to get attention back on discourse is a vexing problem, but throwing public money at it (whether journalism fund of PVS) definitely not the answer.
But eyeballs, outrage, click bait, gaslighting, etc. all end up delivering money to political parties. Provide the money in an alternate way while restricting donations will force the politicians to appeal to voters through rational discourse about policies that impact them rather than outrage……..
I hear the point, but am very skeptical. I think Coyne (who I loath to think about these days but he did have this point) once offered having parties be more professional, with paid memberships. So you'll have people in the party to reign in the sycophants, who have a reputation to maintain and so are gatekeepers within their own party to stymie the worst excesses of riling up, gaslighting, etc. That would weaken the leader, but of course a big part of today's problem is strong party leaders.
My question is where did this money come from? The public purse? if that was the case then absolutely not. Taxpayer money should in no way go to funding political parties...
The fact that you had to ask that question suggests you should not be answering it.
Although I generally supported the Harper government, I disagreed with the repeal of the per-vote subsidy. Political parties are necessary for democracy, and so should be supported by all taxpayers (just as elections are). The per-vote subsidy, since it exactly mirrors the per-party vote in the election, is the most democratic way of subsidizing parties, and avoids the unseemly and endless beggar-bowling that takes place currently. Bring it back. Not all Chretien/Liberal ideas were bad.
Nope. If I want to support the CPC or the NDP that should be my decision [I will NEVER support the Liberal Party of Canada], not that of the government - which is me writ large, by the way.
The per vote subsidy makes it highly unlikely that new parties could develop and I, for one, believe that new parties and new political movements have a very great import to the idea of bringing forth new ideas.
I'd love to see it come back. Removing it was a bad move.
They may very well - but im still for it anyway. Might actually encourage turnout because people will know they can still vote for and support a party with 0 chance of winning the riding.
It would discourage me from voting. Knowing that every time I vote, some political party will get $1.75 per year (now presumably $2.50 or $3.00 because of inflation). I think I'd rather not vote.
Yes exactly. The riding I live in flips between two parties, neither of which I'm interested in voting for. I vote for one of the other parties & if PVS was in place I wouldn't feel so much as if I had wasted my vote.
I don't think bringing back PVS is going to fix anything, nor do I think it would've prevented the drive to boost small dollar donations. You'd have to outright *ban* small dollar donations to stop parties from chasing them. Even strict limits on campaign spending wouldn't stop parties from chasing that money to fund party operations and advertising between campaigns.
If you really wanted to de-emphasize the chase for small dollar donations, you'd actually relax or eliminate the cap on donation size and corporate donors. Small dollar donations are actually a pretty inefficient means of raising money - a much larger fraction of the donation goes to paying for the fundraising and processing costs. The concern with large donors is that their policy preferences might be different than the average voter, but they're also not working from a frenzy of rage like the people who form the small dollar donor base. Which non-representative group do you want dictating party policy? The concerns about influence of the rich or corporations could be addressed by making the donation process radically transparent so we can see exactly who's donating, how much, and when.
The PVS was basically trying to replace the Liberals' revenue when large donations were curtailed after the sponsorship scandal. It's a great deal for moribund parties with a less than motivated donor base, but it props up failing parties and also disconnects them from the voters because their funding is no longer directly related to their performance. One thing that always stood out to me is the number of people who'll support the NDP, but were utterly unwilling to kick in $5 of their own money for a political donation.
Is there any actual evidence that parties would fundraise less aggressively if they received an unearned government subsidy? Or is that just something we're supposed to take on faith? Doug Ford introduced "per vote" subsidies in Ontario (supposedly temporarily, but they've been extended instead of wound down). Did these cause a significant reduction in sharp fundraising appeals?
This reminds me of the assertion that ranked choice voting results in friendlier and more polite elections. Okay, maybe people wish that, but in real life there are absolutely vicious elections in lots of places with ranked choice voting, like Australia.
I'm against unearned government subsidies for parties (and indeed, also against fundraising tax credits) as a matter of general principle. But nevertheless, people claiming a benefit from them need to prove the case instead of assuming it.
Excellent article. But as the author himself suggests ("Big whoop, no surprise"), we didn't really need a study to tell us this. It turns out that putting a brake on people's predilection for exactly the sort of hypocrisy and wilful denial this particular study highlights is the real role played by such studies. Think back to the 1970s: it wasn't until the Surgeon General's report definitively linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer was published that it became possible for politicians to begin legislating to protect citizens from second hand smoke. Long before this incontrovertible evidence came equipped with its official seal of approval, though, people knew perfectly well what was making them sick. Those whose nicotine addiction incentivized them to be in denial about the matter simply persisted in their denial. People aren't stupid: they can put 2 and 2 together; yet their capacity to refuse to acknowledge the result is 4, whenever 4 doesn't happen to fit a favoured narrative, is equally impressive, and they will indulge this capacity until the last loophole for doing so is closed. It's this self-serving tendency, in which unbridled will is surreptitiously substituted for reason's clear verdicts (while of course declining to announce itself honestly for what it is), that makes partisanship so difficult to combat and easy to exploit.
I could probably get my head around bringing back the per vote subsidy if politicians and political parties agreed to discontinue the ridiculous “outrage” posts as a way to drive donations. But I suspect they’d just use the PVS to add to their revenues; not as a replacement for the social media driven revenue.
The party of course that benefitted the most relative to others was the Bloc, given that it only has to spend in Quebec. Not necessarily a reason to go back to the PVS but a consideration.
But their votes also only come from Quebec while other parties have votes from across the country including Quebec. There is no advantage for the Bloc.