You know, sometimes I really think Canadian politics suck.
We just wasted nearly 300 million dollars on a federal election that did nothing but put most of the same group of people into the same positions of power (i.e.: a minority government) they held before the election. Now said minority government is tabling something which is practically triple-dog-daring the remaining political parties to take a typically childish response that could ultimately end up in the government falling and put the country through another pointless election (which again would probably change nothing).
What is it that’s so terrible? Cutting subsidies to political parties. You see, in Canada, if a federal political party gets more than 2% of the popular vote (country-wide), they will automatically receive $1.95 of taxpayer money for each and every vote they get.
Personally, I am totally against giving any political party any taxpayer money for any reason. Beyond the fact that this severely penalizes independent candidates, why should these glorified clubs get any of my money if I don’t support them?
Well, the Conservative party only gets about one third of its funding from this subsidy while the Liberals get around two thirds of their funding from the subsidy. The other qualifying parties get between 50 and 60 percent of their funding from the subsidy. Obviously, the elimination of the subsidy hurts the current non-ruling parties more than the current ruling party, so the optics on this issue are a little poor.
The conspiracy theory going around says that the Conservatives are going to kill the subsidy, force the other parties into toppling the government, and then win a majority in the subsequent election because they can out-spend their opponents. While I wouldn’t put it past the Conservatives to come up with that plan, surely they can’t think the electorate is that stupid.
On the other side, we have the 3 opposition parties who, during a financial downturn, are ready to pull down the government over a matter of less than 30 million dollars (based on a turnout of 13.8 million voters in the previous election). This galls me especially given that there are roughly 23 million voters in this country who can donate up to $1100.00 to each political party. This makes for a total potential pool of over 25 billion dollars (assuming that people only donate to a single party). Per year! While I realize that most people can’t really afford to contribute $1100 per year, if we reduce that pool to 1 billion dollars (or roughly 5% of the eligible population at $1100 or $44 per eligible person per year), that is still a huge amount of money available. This doesn’t include a raft of exceptions that can be used to increase donations. Now, if we’re talking about the $30 million in subsidies, that is works out to less than $2 per eligible individual per year.
I’m sorry, if an average of $45 per year per donation doesn’t get you enough money to fund an effective campaign, then you are obviously proving you cannot do or say anything relevant enough to the average citizen to warrant that meager investment.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though. If the Conservatives are voted down, the Governor General can then approach the other parties to see if they are able to form a coalition government. The good news is that if a coalition can be formed, this will prevent us from having to go through another costly election that will likely not change the makeup of parliament in any meaningful way. The bad news is that the coalition will be between the Liberals, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP. I shudder to think about the kind of influence this will give the NDP or the Bloc. Unfortunately that light I spoke about, may be an oncoming freight train.
Update: 2008-11-28 (11:50) – CBC is reporting that the Conservatives are dropping the idea of cutting the subsidy.