A recipe for corruption

Apparently Brian Lilley couldn't stop at just one misleading report on political funding in Canada. But let's answer his followup piece by noting that the problems with a system reliant on small individual donations should be obvious based on other stories currently making headlines.

For all the Cons' attempts to pretend that tinkering with the contribution limit somehow limits the ability of individuals to influence a governing party, the reality is that while individual limits do serve to change the type of action which is most likely to get a party's attention, they don't entirely eliminate the dangers of parties becoming indebted to individual providers of funds.

Yes, it's for the best that a wealthy individual can't cut a six-figure cheque in exchange for favours from the governing party. But that doesn't mean a well-connected bagman can't accomplish effectively the same task by putting together a fund-raiser which directs a similar amount of money to a party.

Moreover, to the extent other forms of fund-raising are limited by law, a skilled bundler will have a disproportionate amount of influence over a party. So the oft-repeated demand to make a tradeoff between cutting off public financing and raising individual contribution limits may only ensure that bagmen hold all the more influence on the political scene - both by increasing the amount one fund-raiser can direct toward a party's coffers based on the same number of wealthy friends, and by eliminating a party's other options to keep the lights on.

Which is exactly why public financing based on votes or other factors not linked to donor wealth makes for a system that's both cleaner and more fair.

Now, I'd certainly be open to ideas as to how to avoid having that serve as a source of disconnection and inertia (perhaps by linking funding not only to the votes from an election that took place up to four years in the past, but also to ongoing shows of support?). But the advantages of public funding in freeing parties from at least some of the influence of both donors and bundlers need to be kept in mind - particularly with the Cons offering a case in point as to the type of influence that will only be amplified if per-vote funding gets slashed.

(Edit: fixed typo.)