Today’s the day that Elections Canada sends out the cheques to every political party that won enough votes in the last general election to qualify for for an ‘allowances’. The annual allowances — they amount to $1.75 per vote per year for each party and are paid quarterly — are paid by you and I and every other taxpayer. So when the Conservatives howled about how they didn’t think convention expenses should count as donations because then the taxpayer would be subsidizing political party events . . .
…the bottom line is the Liberal Party wants to be able to give taxpayer subsidies to Liberals to attend conventions and I guess that’s the big difference here. The Conservatives felt that you shouldn’t get tax receipts. Hardworking families shouldn’t have to work a little harder and dig a little bit deeper into their pockets.
– Then Treasury Board President John Baird in a scrum, Sept. 20, 2006
So, recognizing that issuing tax receipts only means that the federal government missed out on possible revenue earned from those who would have paid taxes on the $1,000 or whatever it was, we ask, how might Conservatives like Minister Baird square the idea of taking $10–million-a-year allowance every year from that very same taxpayer?
Parties qualify for this annual subsidy so long as they earned at least two per cent of all votes cast across the country in the last general election or they earned at least five per cent in the electoral districts in which they ran a candidate.
Here’s how much each party received for the fourth quarter of 2006:
- Conservative Party of Canada — $2,515,737
- Liberal Party of Canada — $2,096,926
- New Democratic Party of Canada — $1,212,255
- Bloc Quebecois — $727,092
- Green Party — $310,867
So, for the year, here’s how much taxpayers ‘donated’ to each political party:
- Conservative Party of Canada — $9,388,357
- Liberal Party of Canada — $8,572,965
- New Democratic Party of Canada — $4,611.140
- Bloc Quebecois — $2,950,984
- Green Party — $1,199,287
If the saying “He who pays the piper calls the tune” makes sense, AND if the new donation rules bar substantial other sources of revenue, I'd rather pay the parties out of tax money than have them receive the majority of their funding from lobby's and other interests.
This leads to at least the possibility that politicians will be more responsive to the electorate than to the capital hill cronies club.