Tom Flanagan does bring up some valid points, too,
Individuals, corporations, and unions were legally limited to giving a maximum of $9,300 to Ontario political parties in 2011, whereas contributions to third-party entities were unlimited. The elementary teachers alone spent an astonishing $2.6-million on ads, almost 300 times as much as they could have given to a party. And these numbers underestimate what the unions actually spent, because Ontario law requires reporting only during the writ and a short period before and after. The unions also spent heavily on advertising before the election was called, but since they didn’t have to report such expenditures to Elections Ontario, we will never know the true extent of their involvement.
Though, his conclusion is both painfully self-serving and seemingly ignorant. Essentially, he says that businesses should respond by forming their own groups to combat unions’ influence – because unions influence is so bad! Tom would have no problem with unlimited money, so long as it was coming from businesses – as those serve his political interests. You can’t have it both ways, Tom.
He’s far-right, with his involvements with Stephen Harper in the Conservative, and now his current involvement with the Reform-identical party Wild Rose Party in Alberta.
Another obvious point he (probably intentionally) misses is that business already have their own groups. They have had the National Citizens Coalition since 1967 (long before the Working Families Coalition) – the entity which Stephen Harper served President before on and regularly attacked left-of centre and centrist politicians in favour of the far-right parties at the time. The NCC continues to meddle in politics, promoting free-market nonsense. They even ran attack ads against Bob Rae in 2011, even though Bob Rae was merely the interim leader of the Liberal Party and never decided to run for permanent leadership. The NCC still ran attack ads against him, even though there was no real, direct, reason besides making the Liberals look potentially bad. The only other organization that ran attack ads at the same time against Bob was the Conservative Party of Canada. Their interest lined up, for some reason.
Tom says “only big business can raise the money to match big labour.” Wake up! They have already – and always had – surpassed “big labour” – and will continue to. Business coffers are humongous in contrast to unions. They always have been, and I see no reason to think this will change any time soon. (No wonder Pierre Poilievre wants to deplete unions’ funds further.)
Unless something is done, these third-party groups will continue to flourish. If something should be done, then it should be fair; unions should get the same restrictions as businesses. Real, effective, regulations clearly don’t exist as seen by the NCC and the Working Families Coalition. If businesses and unions can spend more and are less inhibited than political parties on political issues, then there is something indeed troubling.
Thanks to the Tyee, we have other examples of weakness and loopholes in Canada’s election laws,
- secret, unlimited donations to nomination race and party leadership candidates are allowed (as long as the donation is not used for their campaign)
- riding associations are allowed to establish a trust fund and take secret, unlimited donations to the fund (and to use the donations for anything other than campaigns)
- parties, candidates and associations are not required to track or disclose donations of volunteers’ services by corporations, unions or other organizations
- federal MPs are not required to disclose to the federal Ethics Commissioner any property or asset they have that is worth less than $10,000, and the commissioner has no explicit auditing powers to ensure MPs’ annual financial statements are accurate
- contrary to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (which Canada’s federal government has signed but not ratified) and the guidelines of the international Financial Action Task Force (FATF — headed by a Canadian and currently headquartered in Canada) suspicious deposits to the bank accounts of politicians, and government policy-makers and decision-makers, are not reported for possible investigation