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Premier Kathleen Wynne used a similar pretext when questioned about her party’s recent $6,000-per-plate fundraiser, which offered “one-on-one” access to herself and Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli. “We have to be able to raise money in order to run campaigns, in order to get our message out into communities,” she said. Her spokeswoman added that, “Donations and fundraisers are a part of the democratic process that all parties engage in.”

It’s true that the NDP and the Progressive Conservatives run their own versions of pay-for-access events. The New Democrats, for example, recently hosted a dinner in Toronto featuring Alberta Premier Rachel Notley at $10,000 per ticket. The Ontario PCs have offered meet-and-greets with leader Patrick Brown at Queen’s Park for donors who contribute $5,000. And all three parties have been on the receiving end of donations from the foreign owners of The Beer Store, which continues to enjoy a lucrative quasi-monopoly in Ontario. Indeed, it’s no mystery why the opposition parties have been lethargic in pressing the government to change the rules.

The fact other parties engage in the same dubious practices does not make it acceptable or ethical. And only the the Liberals, with their majority government, are in a position to repay donors with favourable decisions on how much teachers are paid, or who will recycle Ontario’s tires, or how much of Hydro One the Liberals will sell off. And it’s the Liberals who have explored ever-more questionable frontiers in bartering for their favour. This week alone two new examples came to light: on Tuesday we learned that Hydro One executives paid $7,500 per plate for face time with the province’s Energy and Finance ministers; at the same time the Toronto Star confirmed what many watching Queen’s Park have long suspected, that Ontario cabinet members are assigned fundraising quotas — some as high as $500,000 per year — to keep the party flush with cash.