Political Party Allowances

[WestViking]

One hundred fifty-seven million eight hundred seventy-one thousand eight dollars. ($157,871,008)

That is the sum that Canadian taxpayers have spent on allowances for federal political parties over the past six (6) years. We have spent:

$17,462,241 on supporting the Bloc Québécois;
$55,641,367 on supporting the Conservative Party of Canada;
$7,200,633 on supporting the Green Party of Canada;
$51,239,611 on supporting the Liberal Party of Canada; and
$26,327,156 on supporting the New Democratic Party.

$157,871,008 has earned us the contempt of the political party movers and shakers. They no longer care about what we think or what we believe our issues to be. Our MPs and Senators can afford to bicker endlessly and waste time on frivolous issues as they will get a tidy allowance from us every quarter (average over 6 years - rounded off):

$728,000 for the BQ;
$2,318,000 for the CPC;
$300,000 for the Greens;
$2,135,000 for the LPC; and
$1,097,000 for the NDP

With that kind of an allowance coming in four times a year, politicians have no need to listen to us. With some careful budgeting they can fight an election without our donations. They can buy television time, tell us a pack of lies and as long as they get some votes on election day, the allowances keep rolling in.

We have been shorn like sheep and our democratic right to financially support a political party removed from us. $157,871,008 was taken from general tax revenues and given to political parties we would never support as an ‘allowance’.

For nearly $158 million of our tax dollars (and counting) we have bought the contempt of our elected representatives and disorderly conduct in place of good governance.

[RedDog]

Not that a dime of it isn't repugnant but over $7M to a party without an elected seat in the house?

[Hodgson]

Harper's first order of business upon getting a majority will be cancelling this.

[styky]

Harper's first order of business upon getting a majority will be cancelling this.

Ya.......riiiiiight

[bulldog905]

Harper's first order of business upon getting a majority will be cancelling this.

Any government that will spend $1 billion plus on the G8/G20(when the States spent $30 million in their last go around) is not going to do this.

Harper is a 'gradualist', all right. He just believes in moving the goal posts left, a smidgen slower, than his rivals.

And 'conservatives' are supposed to believe this?

[Hodgson]

They can't do it until a majority is delivered.

If they get a majority they'll immediately cancel the allowance and the opposition will be decimated.

[JurisNaturalist]

Not that a dime of it isn't repugnant but over $7M to a party without an elected seat in the house?

Shocking isn't it. Not one elected member and they still get an allowance of 300 thousand per quarter. It's just so ridiculous.

I'll tell you what RedDog with your marketing expertise and my pleasing personality we could probably come up with a political party that would garner enough votes to keep us on easy street until our old age pensions kick in.

Seriously though, this is why we need referenda and fixd election dates. Such a ridiculous request from the political elite would never have received the approval of the the electorate.

To those of you that think that Harper's first move after getting a majority would be to rescind this allowance I say give your head a shake. The CPC has already played that card and can now use it as a tool of manipulation. I can just hear the excuses now "We tried that and the public outcry was clear - Canadians believe in the democratic funding of political parties...blah, blah, blah.....

Excellent post West Viking.

[styky]

This needs a bump and thanks for the number WV

[styky]

Election subsidy to BQ encourages laziness

Last Updated: August 7, 2010 2:00am
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/edito ... 44141.html

After winning his second election in 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper nearly committed political suicide when he attempted to financially cut off his opponents at the knees.

Following a little political brinksmanship on all sides, he stepped back from plans to get political parties off the dole.

It's time that decision gets revisited.

While the national parties brought in millions in donations in the three months leading up to summer -- $4.1 million for the Tories and $2.4 million for the Grits and the NDP combined -- the Bloc Quebecois scraped together just $80,000.

Yep, the separatists that got the support of nearly 40% of Quebec voters in the last federal election couldn't even manage to bring in $100,000 in the last quarter.

But they needn't worry, because we're supporting them to the tune of 90% of the money they brought in that period, nearly $700,000.

Canadian taxpayers are covering 90% of a separatist party's revenue, and the Liberals and NDP were prepared to bring down the government over ending that?

Who's fooling who here? This is nothing more than robbery under the guise of fairness.

If the Bloc is so popular among voters in Quebec, then it shouldn't be hard for them to raise more than $80,000 in three months.

Nearly 8 million people live there and that's the best they can do? Just over $300,000 a year is hardly what would qualify as a political powerhouse.

It's time to make them sing for their supper.

Parties should have to work for every dime they bring in, and while the political welfare was concocted to take influence out of the hands of moneyed individuals, we already have pretty tight fundraising laws in this country.

Besides, this kind of subsidy just encourages laziness, at least in the Bloc's case.

And let's not forget, we're talking about a party whose raison d'etre is to tear the country apart getting taxpayer money, not just for sitting in the House of Commons, but for its day-to-day operations.

That alone should be reason enough to scrap the subsidy.

The prime minister can go ahead and close the buffet.

[styky]

Jeffrey Simpson
Party financing: Yes, end the public subsidy, but raise the individual limit

Canadians’ tax dollars are being used legally but quite flagrantly to finance a party that wants to break up the country

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Published on Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2010
The law of unintended consequences can be seen by a quick reference to Elections Canada’s website.

There, details of party financing are revealed. The story of those details shows how the Liberals have been hurt by their own legislation, and how the Bloc Québécois has walked away the big winner from public financing of parties.

Jean Chrétien’s Liberals, in trying to “clean up” party financing, outlawed corporate and union contributions, set a limit of $5,000 for individual contributions and offered public help to each party. The Harper Conservatives, as part of their overwrought so-called Accountability Act, reduced individual contributions from $5,000 to $1,100.

“ Quietly, the big winner from this system has been the Bloc.”

The Liberals had always done well in corporate Canada, so the elimination of corporate donations hurt them badly. They also had donors lining up to give $5,000, so the elimination of that provision also hurt them. The Conservatives, like the Reformers, had a small army of modest contributors that they cultivated, and still do. The party raises a lot of money this way – much more than the Liberals – but spends a lot cultivating its base.

Quietly, the big winner from this system has been the Bloc. It doesn’t try very hard to raise money, because federal largesse to parties means the Bloc can tell its core secessionist supporters to donate instead to the Parti Québécois.

The numbers tell the story. The Bloc raised only $850,000 last year but took in $2.7-million in public money, for a ratio of one private dollar to 3.5 public dollars. The Conservatives’ ratio is 1.7 to 1, the Liberals about 1 to 1 and the NDP about 1 to 1. The national parties, therefore, are working as best as they can at fundraising, earning at least as much, if not more, from their own efforts than from public funds.

The Bloc, as you can see from the numbers, is mostly riding on taxpayers’ dollars – most of them from outside Quebec – to promote itself and, by extension, the breakup of Canada.

Here, then, is the greatest effect of the law of unintended consequences: Canadians’ tax dollars are being used legally but quite flagrantly to finance a party that wants to end the country as we have known it for 143 years. Understanding this, no one should ever question the generosity of Canadians, although that generosity can certainly be described as nuts.

The Conservatives have included in successive campaign platforms a promise to end public subsidies. It was the attempt to implement this policy that contributed to the parliamentary crisis whereby the three opposition parties got together and proposed to take over power, an attempt that fizzled.

The Conservatives have said – and there’s no reason to doubt their resolve – that they will try again if re-elected. If they really wanted to put the cat among the pigeons, and were seeking an election, they could stick the measure in the next budget, daring the opposition parties to vote against the budget.

We can be certain that, by whatever means, the Conservatives will try for this change because, at the moment, it obviously benefits them. It would hurt the Liberals somewhat but damage the Bloc even more, given that party’s dependence on the federal subsidy mostly provided by Canadians outside Quebec.

The conceptual trouble with the Conservatives’ intention is not the theory but the execution. Anyone who thinks that a contribution of $1,000 to $5,000 will turn policy toward the giver isn’t living in the real world of government, in which national parties raise millions of dollars even with the $1,000 limit. Despite all the hyperventilation in the media about money buying influence, a few thousand dollars to a party buys the giver nada.

If we want parties to be healthy, they need money to do their work. And if we don’t want public dollars to help them, then individuals should be encouraged to give what they can to fill in the public subsidy – which will mean raising the individual limit above $1,000.

That’s the fair tradeoff: End the public subsidy, all right, but raise the individual contribution limit.

<a href=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/party-financing-yes-end-the-public-subsidy-but-raise-the-individual-limit/article1668452/>source</a>

[styky]

Taxpayers pay for political games
By Brian Lilley, Parliamentary Bureau

Last Updated: October 16, 2010 4:06pm

OTTAWA — Nearly two years ago, Canada faced a Constitutional crisis over taxpayer subsides to political parties and the government’s decision to eliminate them.

The Harper government backtracked at the time in the face of a threatened coalition takeover of government, but their promise to do away with per vote subsidies remains.

An analysis of party financing shows that the $1.95 per vote, per year subsidy that each party earns is not the only way taxpayers subsidize political parties.

Nearly $8 million dollars each year is spent on “research bureaus” to which each party represented in Parliament is entitled. Yet despite their name, people familiar with the operations of these offices admit most of the time, their activities are not the type of research activities Canadians would expect.

“They read through books and speeches on the opposition, pull quotes from newspaper stories, build websites to attack each other and spin the media,” said one source who has worked in one research bureau.

One of the main activities of the Conservative research bureau over the past few years was creating 10 percenters, the mailings that MPs would send to opposition ridings attacking Liberal Leader Michael Ignatiefff. Those mailings, which all parties took advantage of, were paid for by the taxpayer.

All parties recently agreed to stop using 10 percenters in ridings they don’t hold, but they can still take advantage of what is called “franked mail” to use taxpayers money to attack each other. Franked mail is even more expensive than 10 percenters, which were costing taxpayers $10 million per year according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Politicians have even set up the tax system to help political parties more than other charities such as hospitals. While a $100 donation to a hospital will help the donor knock $15 off of their tax bill, a $100 political donation will take $75 off their tax bill.

If you give the party of your choice $100 and they spend that money during an election, then the party, at least any of the major parties, will get $50 back from Elections Canada as part of an elections expenses rebate program.

Parties can also claim a GST credit, which would add another $5 to their coffers courtesy of Revenue Canada.

In the end, a $100 donation can cost the federal treasury $130.

Among all the subsidies though, the per vote funding is the biggest source of taxpayer funding. For at least one party, the per vote subsidy is what allows them to pay the bills.

Last year, the Bloc raised just $621,126 from donors but collected $2,742,215 from Elections Canada in subsidies. They weren’t alone in benefiting more from subsidies than from donations. Of the five big political parties – Conservatives, Liberals, Bloc, NDP and Greens – only the Conservatives and Liberals raised more money than they received in subsidies.

The issue of the per vote subsidy is set to come up again with the Conservatives promising to make their pledge to remove it an election issue and the opposition parties calling the subsidy critical for democracy.

An Ipsos-Reid poll taken two years ago during the Constitutional crisis showed that 61% of Canadians, including a majority in every province, wanted the subsidy scrapped.
http://www.lfpress.com/news/canada/2010 ... 16381.html

[styky]

bump

[styky]

Subsidies to political parties 'crazy': critic

By BRIAN LILLEY, Parliamentary Bureau

Last Updated: October 18, 2010 7:09pm


OTTAWA - Critics of Canada’s political financing system are calling the tilting of the playing field towards political parties crazy.

An analysis of taxpayer subsidies to political parties by QMI Agency found that tens of millions of dollars are handed over to political parties each year on top of the $27 million they get through their per-vote subsidy.

“One of the crazy aspects of it is they give themselves a larger tax deduction than charities get,” said Kevin Gaudet of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Gaudet said charities such as hospitals would be considered more important than political parties by most Canadians even if the tax law favours politics over health.

The low-tax crusader is also part of an ongoing campaign to get rid of the $1.95 per vote per year subsidy that each political party gets.

“Political parties should exist solely on their ability to get donations from their supporters,” said Gaudet.

Two years ago the threat of opposition parties losing their per-vote subsidy lead to a revolt and the threat of a coalition. The Harper government backed down over accusations they were simply out to get their political rivals.

Based on an analysis of several years of fundraising numbers, removing the per-vote subsidy would have a crippling effect on the Bloc Quebecois.

A poll taken in late 2008 showed 61% of Canadians agreed with removing the subsidies.

Not everyone agrees though.

NDP Leader Jack Layton has called the Harper government’s threat of removing the per-vote subsidy an “attack on democracy.” Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has said the opposition parties won’t let the Harper government take away the subsidies.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made clear that he will raise this issue with voters at the next election.

Tom Flanagan, a former advisor to Harper – although the two no longer speak -- wrote a paper for the University of Calgary earlier this year arguing that if the subsidies are taken away, then donation limits should be lifted.

Currently, no individual can donate more than $1,100. Flanagan calls for that limit to be raised to $5,000.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2 ... 37661.html

[styky]

NDP Leader Jack Layton has called the Harper government’s threat of removing the per-vote subsidy an “attack on democracy.” Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has said the opposition parties won’t let the Harper government take away the subsidies.

One look at their donor amounts and you know why they are wide eyed and frothing at the thought of this. Without it they are screwed.

[styky]

I guess my above post would make more sense if I gave the link for Elections Canada Party financing.

http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=fin&lang=e