Martin Regg Cohn: Money is distorting Ontario’s democracy. Here’s how Doug Ford can fix that

Pandemics are bad for politics.

Fundraising dinners are suspended and ordinary donors are upended. That leaves the major parties desperate for fat-cat developers to make up the difference.

Money politics is the ugly underside of democracy — outstretched hands and greasing of palms. But .

Yes, the crisis is straining campaign financing. But it is also constraining campaign spending.

Quite apart from the sudden shortfalls in fundraising, it’s the sharp limitations of physical distancing that have redrawn the map for politicians, who can no longer roam far and wide to reach voters, let alone hit up donors. Which is why the pandemic is, paradoxically, a prescription to cleanse our politics of accumulated toxins.

We tried once before. Back in 2016, after a the wild west of Ontario fundraising, the previous Liberal government abuses — so that politicians from all parties could cater to voter interests, not .

But Doug Ford’s Tories unilaterally after they took power two years later, revoking public financing of political parties (modest “per-vote” subsidies based on most recent election results). Now, COVID-19 has changed the equation.

Fundraising is falling on deaf ears because ordinary Ontarians are out of pocket. Which leaves deep-pocketed developers whispering in the ears of desperate politicians.

With the benefit of hindsight, the premier has every reason to restore the “per-vote” allocations that he unilaterally phased out (scheduled to end next year). And with a little foresight, Ford could go even further in leading a cleanup of dirty money.

The perfect storm of a pandemic is the ideal time for the premier to curb excessive campaign spending, better reflecting the virtual world of COVID-19. Why allow parties to spend (and therefore raise) as much as $10 million for a provincial election campaign that amounts to overkill?

Amid COVID-19, we are entering a new world of political outreach and campaign marketing that is more digital than ever before. The premier could make the best of a pandemic by forcing all politicians to collectively clean up their act — with sharp new limits on how much they spend to grease their lumbering campaign machines.

The major parties already spend too much money to raise money. All those sumptuous fundraising dinners are obscenely inefficient ways to attract donors — with big sums (and fine wine) poured down the drain to keep the cash flowing, while politicians waste time prostituting themselves.

As for those costly and clunky whistle-stop campaigns, they are whistling past the political graveyard. Just ask Ford, who ditched the traditional “leader’s tour” in the 2018 election, forsaking the customary chartered aircraft and customized bus, while eschewing the companion “media bus” laid on (for a hefty fee) for travelling reporters. The leader’s tour tends to be a “loss leader” for parties keen to get “earned media” (coverage), but most cash-starved outlets dropped anyway (the Star was often one of the few organizations to tag along).

Prohibitively expensive television advertising is fading as rival parties opt for more targeted social media channels and other digital vectors. Today’s technology allows campaigns to harvest hundreds of thousands of cellphone numbers for a song, identifying potential voters with a simple text message.

Large election rallies are today populated mostly by weary campaign volunteers trying to create the illusion of support (those Donald Trump rallies are an anomaly and anachronism). Spared the expense of renting large halls, chartering transportation, and spending on big media buys, provincial campaigns are overdue for downsizing — while rightsizing “per-vote subsidies” to shore up the gap.

The 2016 campaign finance reforms belatedly and wisely banned corporate and union donations, but compensated the parties for the funding gap with a “per-vote” public subsidy of $2.71 per ballot cast. Based on the results of the 2018 election, the victorious Tories were in line to receive $6.3 million annually while the NDP would get $5.2 million, the Liberals about $3 million, and the Greens around $700,000 — until Ford overruled his own party by phasing them out.

Oh, and let’s stop calling them subsidies — an outdated misnomer — and refer to them more accurately as voter “allocations.” In fact, we already heavily subsidize contributions from the most affluent Ontarians thanks to generous tax credits (starting at 75 per cent of the donation), so why not level the playing field by letting every taxpayer’s vote count with a “per-vote subsidy” rather than a “rich voter subsidy?”

The premier should restore those public funding allocations (even if it means dialing down the old “subsidies” that enrich the most affluent donors), while also reducing campaign spending limits. A true populist would ensure that all political parties wasted less money at campaign time — and wasted less time on raising money at other times.

Just as COVID-19 is upturning the economics of business, it is changing the business of politics. Ontario needs to finish what it started in 2016, responding to the recent strain on private fundraising with a new constraint on party spending — and a matching increase in public funding.

The virus of dirty money can distort democracy in the best of times. Now, in the worst of times, the deadly COVID-19 virus can disrupt our democracy for the better.

Martin Regg Cohn is a Toronto-based columnist covering Ontario politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: