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|Monday Dec. 10, 2001 | BACK | NEXT POLITICS,
MONEY AND CORRUPTION
by Angelo Persichilli Inside
Politics There's
an old saying that goes, if you point a finger at the moon, the fool looks at
the finger. Think for a minute of the moon as Canada's Chief Electoral Officer
Jean-Pierre Kingsley, the finger as Public Works Minister Alfonso Gagliano,
and the fool as the national media. Last
month, while Mr. Kingsley released a report asking, amongst other things, to
implement "controls upon large political contributions," Minister
Gagliano was denouncing the activities of leadership candidates for stashing
away so much money it's left the party's coffers bare. Of
course, Mr. Gagliano was not referring to the changes suggested by Mr.
Kingsley. Mr. Kingsley's report was released a week later. But indeed Mr.
Gagliano was only trying to address an embarrassing reality: the fact that the
party in government is boasting about balancing the books of the country and
can't balance its own. According
to some insiders the warning, contrary to what many believe, was not aimed at
Paul Martin, but at Brian Tobin. Yes, himself: the former Rat Packer, former
friend of John Nunziata, former supporter of John Turner, former EI Pyrrhus
Conquistador de l’Atlantico, former Newfoundland
premier-I’ll-love-you-so-much-I’ll-never-leave-you-until-I’ll-fix-the-Voisey-Bay-deal,
and now standing by to be the king himself. His arrival has created frenzy
amongst the potential candidates and fundraisers have mushroomed. Candidates'
coffers are swallowing while the party is almost $8-million in the red. You
might say the monastery is poor, but the friars are rich. Of
course, I am very sorry for the problems of Stephen LeDrew, president of the
Liberal Party, and for the presidents of other political organizations are
facing, but that's not of concern to most Canadians, including Mr. Kingsley.
What we really want is a system that allows the people to know who and how
much money is being thrown at the political system. It is particularly
important to know how much money the big corporations throw at the political
system. Contrary
to what many people believe, the financing of the political parties is not
done through private money: when you give $100 to a political organization and
get $75 back from the Finance Department, it means that the big corporations
are buying favours from the political system and paying them with our money. But
this, as bad it can be, is the least of the problems. "At the present
time, big corporations can literally buy a leadership, in the case of the
Liberal Party they can 'buy’ the next Prime Minister of Canada," one
political organizer told The Hill Times. Is this really happening? That's the
problem. Who knows? The present system is like the CAA's "tick" map:
it gives the best route to get from A to B, but has no control over you
possibly going through red lights or speeding. There are no cops on the road. Let's
look at two big loopholes: how the parties collect the money, how they spend
the money. Elections Canada's official financial report for the year 2000, the
year of federal elections, the major political parties (Liberal, Alliance,
Bloc, NDP and Conservatives) raised a total $56,568,408, with a total expense
of $53,755,436. What do we know about that money? And, are we sure that the
total receipted is the only money funnelled into the parties coffers? It might
be, but there is no way to prove it. How
many "volunteers" working on a campaign are on a paid leave of
absence from companies? Who stops, say, a bank from hiring a consultant for
$50,000 who is basically working for a political party? Who stops another
corporation to "hire" another consultant for another $50,000 while
the consultant works for free for another political party and, being generous,
donates $10,000 to the party? Take, for instance, a $100,000 donation which
the corporation deducts from its corporate tax as an expense for a political
donation. Then there's the over-the-table money, the receipts issued for tax
purposes. Again,
how are those moneys used and who takes the moneys? I am not saying that
political parties are using the money improperly, but there's no way to check.
In the year 2000 the Liberal Party receipted over $20-million in donations.
However, if you ask the central party — the official organization that
issued the receipts allowing the tax reimbursements — how it spent the
money, the office will tell you that the money was not "necessarily"
spent by the party because most of it was "returned" to the MPs who
raised it. So,
if you want the truth, you have to go after each MP asking for details on how
they spent it. And that's exactly what we see: media chasing MPs checking how
they abuse the system sending private correspondence with public postage.
Meanwhile, what happens to the rest of the money? And exactly is the mechanism
to make sure that everything is collected and spent over the table, not under
the table? The problem is not easy to solve because it involves many changes
and big interests. However,
it's not as difficult or complicated as many would like us to believe. First,
we should make it official that the political system is financed by public
money. If the political partisan machinery needs $60-million (that's what they
spend now), let the government contribute with 75 per cent of it: the rest can
be raised through private contributions without tax refunds. This would free
up the political parties from possible blackmail from big corporations.
Besides, this would not be new money the government would spend, but the same
amount of money that's now taken from the pocket of the taxpayer and given to
the big corporations to buy favours from the future government. |