Every day we are relentlessly warned about 'fake news' and 'misinformation' by public officials and the media, but we constantly overlook the true threat to open and free democracy: Government..The private financing of Canadian political operations is a vital component to the health of our democracy. The more our political organizations and parties are able to fundraise, the more they are incentivised to engage with their supporters and disseminate information essential to an informed citizenry..Like every society since the dawn of time, Canadians understand the basic idea of how to maximize resources. By giving those resources to the person or group most capable of putting them to use, we optimize their usefulness. Fundraising, in particular, is the perfect example of this concept..Not everyone has time to volunteer, recruit, and promote campaigns. Your average voter doesn't always have the social capital to stand publicly alongside political campaigns. For most Canadians, making a voluntary contribution to a cause is an expression, however subtle, of one's deepest convictions. In fact, it's arguably the most democratic form of expression because anyone can do it..Donations, not social media posts, make up the vast majority of Canadian political expression..Yet governments across Canada are obsessed with limiting the expression of often very modest speakers by strangling their charitability through restrictive campaign contribution limits, some as low as $1,200 per year..Politicians are quick to lecture you that this is for your own protection. “We’re doing this for your own safety,” they’ll explain with a touch of righteousness to their rehearsed dismissal. You see, very bad things happen when citizens give too much to their campaign of choice. They’ll tell you they’re “protecting democracy” or “shielding the integrity of our electoral system." Or, my favourite excuse, “We’re maintaining a level playing field”..I’m here to tell you these are all lies..In fact, they’re worse than lies. Politicians limit campaign contributions to protect their own interests, not democracy..Exhaustive academic research shows that there is no correlation between the financing of political campaigns and political corruption. These studies compare legislative outcomes to the policy interests of major donors. Yet, the myth of the giant, greedy, evil, conniving private donor persists..You’ve seen it before: A shadowy, rotund, tuxedoed figure hovering above a politician that he’s controlling intently, monocle in eye, with strings dangling from gloved fingers and a whopping, democracy-obliterating $10,000 in his hand. (Yes, these shadowy figures do exist, let’s not be naïve. But when they want to control a politician, believe me, they don’t use money.).However, when you plunge your hand through the holographic caricature and pull aside the dark curtains you’ll find an 'integrity-protecting’ lawmaker busy at work. You’ll soon discover the truth is far, far worse than the hologram. Campaign finance laws are passed to protect the people who make them: Politicians..Invariably, adjustments to campaign contribution and expenditure laws protect incumbents at the expense of challengers. Politicians in government set fundraising laws to help keep them power and their opponents far from it..This is a cross-partisan phenomenon which explains its ratcheting effect over time. Limits always go lower and they’re only ever raised when they annually adjust for inflation..There is a secondary, more nefarious element to this trend. As limits are set to benefit incumbents, challengers are forced to find new ways to raise (and spend) money. And when they win? The cycle repeats; they punish opponents with new, more punitive limits while their own advanced political machinery continues to function, rightly or wrongly, within the perverted regulatory framework they modified and learned to game..The end result is a shift of resources away from democratically accountable organizations like parties, and the monopolization of political communications by advanced third parties, predominantly public sector labour unions and the multinational NGOs of Big Environmental who have the resources and networks to navigate the CRA — and how could we forget, the establishment media..Unions are especially adept at working our corrupt, anti-speech campaign finance framework. The best examples of vehicles of partisan messaging and regulation evasion, unions take advantage of their networks of subsidiaries (locals) to multiply their spending limits across jurisdictions. They get away with this while spending fortunes on centralized campaigns that are coordinated with political parties (and they do it with money they pried involuntarily from the hands of workers.).When union-backed parties win elections, they then proceed to crack down indiscriminately on everyday donors through heavier, stricter anti-speech contribution limits and regulations, knowing that they can force donations through union paychecks, and have that money go exactly where and when they want it..Proponents of campaign-finance regulation seek to restrict the speech of every single Canadian, so long as their entrenched allies can maintain their monopolistic vice grip on public political communication..This relegates a growing share of partisan messaging to unions and NGOs, while publicly accountable political parties struggle to raise money for basic operations from their financially gagged supporters. Left-leaning governments in Canada have an alarming track record of going even further by regulating and auditing unfavourable third-party groups who are simply playing by the very rules they helped engineer..The whole racket is a brilliantly implemented, incredibly corrupt, and rarely discussed impediment to what ought to be a free, open, vibrant, and inclusive democracy. It was all handcrafted by politicians, unions, and special interest groups..If corruption was really the purpose of limiting campaign contributions to political parties, then why do partisan left-wing organizations account for more than 83% of all registered third-party advertisers in BC? What about the caps themselves? Taking a common and utterly arbitrary, but very real, contribution limit of $1,500 per year to candidates and political parties — does even doubling the limit to $3,000 somehow give a donor undue influence over a candidate? Would it allow that donor to march through a room of staffers, consultants, and decision-makers in Party HQ?.The answer is obviously no..Doubling the contribution limit you say? “Democracy is over. It’s done for. In fact, we’re on a clear path to popular dictatorship. It’s the end of Canada as we know it,” your local representative would lament on Twitter, as they scribble down the days left until their pension activation date on the back of an Ottawa restaurant receipt..What about, say, a well-organized, structurally sophisticated cabal of taxpayer-funded, autocratically managed ‘labour’ unions that literally have taxation powers over their members in perpetuity until they quit, retire, or die and who control the lion's share of political spending in any given political cycle?.No problem. It’s a free country!.It’s clear that campaign contribution limits aren’t about preventing corruption: They’re about power. They’re about silencing concerned citizens, disengaging and dismantling public markets, and maintaining a third-party political ecosystem that favours incumbents and entrenched government interests..Tightening campaign finance regulations are shifting speech away from democratically accountable political parties and into the hands of well established, heavily resourced, and in some cases foreign-funded entities. And this is all being facilitated under the false pretence that democracy is being protected by contribution and spending limits — as so lectured to you by that system’s chief beneficiaries..In a free and open society that believes in choice, more speech always trumps less. We’ve failed to apply this rule to our campaign finance laws at our own expense. At a time when Canadian elections have reached record low participation rates, we need to claw back the limits of campaign finance regulations and tear the duct tape from the mouths of Canadians who want to have the issues they care about heard loud and clear. It’s time for government to take their boot off individual political donors. Let ordinary Canadians put their money where their hearts are, express their choice freely, and allow Canadian causes and political parties to compete with the campaign finance cartels of Big Labour and Big Environmental..Benjamin Lawton is the principal of Lawton & Co. Campaign Finance, a Vancouver-based consultancy specialising in fundraising, stakeholder relations and donor engagement.
Every day we are relentlessly warned about 'fake news' and 'misinformation' by public officials and the media, but we constantly overlook the true threat to open and free democracy: Government..The private financing of Canadian political operations is a vital component to the health of our democracy. The more our political organizations and parties are able to fundraise, the more they are incentivised to engage with their supporters and disseminate information essential to an informed citizenry..Like every society since the dawn of time, Canadians understand the basic idea of how to maximize resources. By giving those resources to the person or group most capable of putting them to use, we optimize their usefulness. Fundraising, in particular, is the perfect example of this concept..Not everyone has time to volunteer, recruit, and promote campaigns. Your average voter doesn't always have the social capital to stand publicly alongside political campaigns. For most Canadians, making a voluntary contribution to a cause is an expression, however subtle, of one's deepest convictions. In fact, it's arguably the most democratic form of expression because anyone can do it..Donations, not social media posts, make up the vast majority of Canadian political expression..Yet governments across Canada are obsessed with limiting the expression of often very modest speakers by strangling their charitability through restrictive campaign contribution limits, some as low as $1,200 per year..Politicians are quick to lecture you that this is for your own protection. “We’re doing this for your own safety,” they’ll explain with a touch of righteousness to their rehearsed dismissal. You see, very bad things happen when citizens give too much to their campaign of choice. They’ll tell you they’re “protecting democracy” or “shielding the integrity of our electoral system." Or, my favourite excuse, “We’re maintaining a level playing field”..I’m here to tell you these are all lies..In fact, they’re worse than lies. Politicians limit campaign contributions to protect their own interests, not democracy..Exhaustive academic research shows that there is no correlation between the financing of political campaigns and political corruption. These studies compare legislative outcomes to the policy interests of major donors. Yet, the myth of the giant, greedy, evil, conniving private donor persists..You’ve seen it before: A shadowy, rotund, tuxedoed figure hovering above a politician that he’s controlling intently, monocle in eye, with strings dangling from gloved fingers and a whopping, democracy-obliterating $10,000 in his hand. (Yes, these shadowy figures do exist, let’s not be naïve. But when they want to control a politician, believe me, they don’t use money.).However, when you plunge your hand through the holographic caricature and pull aside the dark curtains you’ll find an 'integrity-protecting’ lawmaker busy at work. You’ll soon discover the truth is far, far worse than the hologram. Campaign finance laws are passed to protect the people who make them: Politicians..Invariably, adjustments to campaign contribution and expenditure laws protect incumbents at the expense of challengers. Politicians in government set fundraising laws to help keep them power and their opponents far from it..This is a cross-partisan phenomenon which explains its ratcheting effect over time. Limits always go lower and they’re only ever raised when they annually adjust for inflation..There is a secondary, more nefarious element to this trend. As limits are set to benefit incumbents, challengers are forced to find new ways to raise (and spend) money. And when they win? The cycle repeats; they punish opponents with new, more punitive limits while their own advanced political machinery continues to function, rightly or wrongly, within the perverted regulatory framework they modified and learned to game..The end result is a shift of resources away from democratically accountable organizations like parties, and the monopolization of political communications by advanced third parties, predominantly public sector labour unions and the multinational NGOs of Big Environmental who have the resources and networks to navigate the CRA — and how could we forget, the establishment media..Unions are especially adept at working our corrupt, anti-speech campaign finance framework. The best examples of vehicles of partisan messaging and regulation evasion, unions take advantage of their networks of subsidiaries (locals) to multiply their spending limits across jurisdictions. They get away with this while spending fortunes on centralized campaigns that are coordinated with political parties (and they do it with money they pried involuntarily from the hands of workers.).When union-backed parties win elections, they then proceed to crack down indiscriminately on everyday donors through heavier, stricter anti-speech contribution limits and regulations, knowing that they can force donations through union paychecks, and have that money go exactly where and when they want it..Proponents of campaign-finance regulation seek to restrict the speech of every single Canadian, so long as their entrenched allies can maintain their monopolistic vice grip on public political communication..This relegates a growing share of partisan messaging to unions and NGOs, while publicly accountable political parties struggle to raise money for basic operations from their financially gagged supporters. Left-leaning governments in Canada have an alarming track record of going even further by regulating and auditing unfavourable third-party groups who are simply playing by the very rules they helped engineer..The whole racket is a brilliantly implemented, incredibly corrupt, and rarely discussed impediment to what ought to be a free, open, vibrant, and inclusive democracy. It was all handcrafted by politicians, unions, and special interest groups..If corruption was really the purpose of limiting campaign contributions to political parties, then why do partisan left-wing organizations account for more than 83% of all registered third-party advertisers in BC? What about the caps themselves? Taking a common and utterly arbitrary, but very real, contribution limit of $1,500 per year to candidates and political parties — does even doubling the limit to $3,000 somehow give a donor undue influence over a candidate? Would it allow that donor to march through a room of staffers, consultants, and decision-makers in Party HQ?.The answer is obviously no..Doubling the contribution limit you say? “Democracy is over. It’s done for. In fact, we’re on a clear path to popular dictatorship. It’s the end of Canada as we know it,” your local representative would lament on Twitter, as they scribble down the days left until their pension activation date on the back of an Ottawa restaurant receipt..What about, say, a well-organized, structurally sophisticated cabal of taxpayer-funded, autocratically managed ‘labour’ unions that literally have taxation powers over their members in perpetuity until they quit, retire, or die and who control the lion's share of political spending in any given political cycle?.No problem. It’s a free country!.It’s clear that campaign contribution limits aren’t about preventing corruption: They’re about power. They’re about silencing concerned citizens, disengaging and dismantling public markets, and maintaining a third-party political ecosystem that favours incumbents and entrenched government interests..Tightening campaign finance regulations are shifting speech away from democratically accountable political parties and into the hands of well established, heavily resourced, and in some cases foreign-funded entities. And this is all being facilitated under the false pretence that democracy is being protected by contribution and spending limits — as so lectured to you by that system’s chief beneficiaries..In a free and open society that believes in choice, more speech always trumps less. We’ve failed to apply this rule to our campaign finance laws at our own expense. At a time when Canadian elections have reached record low participation rates, we need to claw back the limits of campaign finance regulations and tear the duct tape from the mouths of Canadians who want to have the issues they care about heard loud and clear. It’s time for government to take their boot off individual political donors. Let ordinary Canadians put their money where their hearts are, express their choice freely, and allow Canadian causes and political parties to compete with the campaign finance cartels of Big Labour and Big Environmental..Benjamin Lawton is the principal of Lawton & Co. Campaign Finance, a Vancouver-based consultancy specialising in fundraising, stakeholder relations and donor engagement.
