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Every ballot cast on May 2 amounts to a roughly $2 donation to a pool of taxpayer dollars that is later distributed to the parties based on how many votes they garner. This party allowance — which amounted to more than $28-million in 2008 — has long harried the leaders, even catalyzing the prorogation of Parliament in 2008.

Mr. Harper stated earlier this month that neither corporations nor unions nor governments should fund parties, and that per-vote subsidies degrade the parliamentary system because they help perpetuate constant electioneering.

“The war chests are always full for another campaign,” the Prime Minister said at a campaign stop. “You lose one, immediately come in the cheques and you’re ready for the next one, even if you didn’t raise a dime.”

Meanwhile, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said the Conservative plan runs afoul of fairness, because quashing the inflation-indexed subsidy would give the Tories — whose 2008 individual donations totalled twice that of the Grits and the NDP combined — a game-changing financial advantage.

In absolute terms, killing the public subsidies would hurt the vote-rich Tories the most (see graphic at bottom of post).

However, relative to total funds raised, the Conservatives have the least to lose: In 2010, subsidies accounted for 27.7% of the party’s overall revenue, compared with the NDP at 28%, the Liberals at 34.4% and the Bloc at 48%.

Perhaps predictably, then, the Conservatives argue that the subsidy unfairly funnels taxpayer dollars to parties that voters do not necessarily support — which sounds like a jab at the Bloc, the separatist party that raised just $713,085 in individual donations in 2008.