The fledgling NDP government has made mostly good moves since taking power in the summer, with one notable exception.
It has followed through on a number of key campaign promises, including increasing social assistance rates, eliminating bridge tolls and making tuition free for former children in government care. The NDP government has also greatly expanded resources to fight the opioid crisis and is starting to flesh out its commitment to deal with housing and the homeless (like $66 million to build 600 module housing units in Vancouver alone).
But framed against those laudable accomplishments stands one glaring broken promise, and it will be interesting to see how much damage this one causes the NDP. At the very least, it has potentially provided the B.C. Liberals, who have been groping around trying to find an issue to hit the government with, a nice big battering ram.
I’m referring to the decision to use tax dollars to fund political parties.
This move is in direct contradiction to what Premier John Horgan specifically – on the record, on numerous occasions – promised both before the election campaign and during it as well. Not only did Horgan deny the NDP would do such a thing, but he accused the B.C. Liberals and former premier Christy Clark – who kept claiming the NDP would do exactly this – of planting lies about the whole thing. It wasn’t just a denial from the man who would become premier, it was a ferocious pushback against the very idea of using tax dollars to fund political parties.
But there it is, all laid out in Section 20 of the otherwise worthy new Election Amendment Act. This part of the bill sets down a formula outlining taxpayer payments to the NDP, the B.C. Liberals and the B.C. Greens over the next five years.
The formula starts off with each party receiving, in two instalments (on Jan. 1 and again on July 1), a government cheque that amounts to $2.50 for every vote received in last May’s election. For the NDP and the B.C. Liberals – who were virtually tied in votes – this translates to about a tax subsidy of about $2 million each next year, while the B.C. Greens will collect about $830,000.
The per-vote-subsidy number drops a bit each year – going down 25 cents a year until 2021, when it will be $1.75 – but it means over the next five years the NDP and the B.C. Liberals with both receive about $8.1 million and the B.C. Greens will get somewhere around $3 million.
Horgan claims the formula is a “bridging” mechanism designed to allow political parties to make the “transition” away from large corporate and union donors, towards having their finances based on smaller individual contributions (now to be capped at $1,200 a year).
I suspect what this expensive taxpayer-supported “bridge” really does is allow parties like the NDP and the B.C. Liberals (who are not yet clear whether they will accept this public funding) to pay down significant amounts of accumulated debt.
He also insists the funding formula “disappears” after the year 2022, but the legislation doesn’t say that. In fact, it states that a “special committee” will recommend whether or not to keep the formula in existence and if so, at what subsidy levels.
There is nothing in the bill whatsoever that suggests the formula will automatically disappear, and, frankly, once politicians get used to a stream of revenue they tend to keep it around.
The issue here is not whether the public funding of political parties is a valid idea (many jurisdictions provide various amounts of such funding to parties). It may strike some as a good idea, but I suspect a majority of voters don’t like it (which may explain why Horgan was so adamant before election day that he would never adopt such a practice).
No, the issue here is being honest with the voters on sensitive issues before securing their support. That did not happen in this case.
The new legislation is, with one exception, a welcome and needed overhaul of how politics is funded in this province. Corporate and union money is gone, but that one exception – a direct broken campaign promise – is a doozy.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global B.C.
