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What principles might underpin a new campaign finance regime? Let me suggest a few:

Only individuals should be allowed to contribute. In an election, only voters vote, and every voter gets only one vote. Why, then, should non-voters be granted extra capacity to influence the debate, not given to others? So: no corporations, and no unions, as is the case federally.

Treat third-party and party spending the same. While voters vote as individuals, in a campaign they may also choose to combine their voices with others. Parties are one way to do this, but they are not the only way: advocacy groups often take up issues the parties ignore.

At times Canadian law has controlled third-party spending much more tightly than the parties’, to the point of outlawing it. Ontario is at the other extreme. In fact there is no reason to discriminate one way or the other. It should be up to the voter to decide which way of participating he or she prefers.

We have to have some limits on political contributions: otherwise we are effectively endorsing bribery.

Limit donations, not spending. It is not fairness between parties we should be after, but fairness between voters. To subject a party with 100,000 members to the same spending limit as a party with 1,000 discriminates against members of the larger party, who are individually more restricted in their ability to contribute to the debate. Besides, limiting spending at the party level, absent other reforms, only encourages a mushrooming of alternative organizations.

Limit total donations, not each one. Again, limits on individual donations, on their own, lead to a multiplication of “political action committees” and the like. Limit, rather, each donor’s total annual contributions, and the incentive for such gaming is eliminated: the more he contributes to one cause, the less he has left for the rest.