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And two, it continues to impose different limits on advocacy groups than political parties. The $511,000 limit on third parties may sound like a handsome sum, but it’s a tiny fraction of the amount the parties are allowed to spend: $55 million, in 2015.

Certainly the first should not be more loosely regulated than the second, or you run into the problem described above. But neither should they be regulated more tightly. Advocacy groups, like political parties, are no more than the sum of their individual supporters, vehicles by which they project and amplify their views in the political arena. Whether and how they choose to do so should be entirely up to them, without the state tipping the scales in one direction or another.

Suppose, instead of the near all-party consensus in favour of taking action against climate change, none of the parties offered a serious proposal to counter it. (Actually, you don’t have to suppose it: that is arguably the case.) Shouldn’t it be open to Canadians who support such action to be able to call them all out on it, rather than suffer in silence?

And if you agree with me there, then surely you will also agree with me that it should be open to Canadians who favour, say, a law restricting abortion to spend money during an election to make their views known, given the all-party refusal to discuss that issue? In other words, freedom of speech should be open to those we disagree with, as much as those we agree with. Even at election time.

That’s the irony in the present situation. When the Liberals brought in changes to the election laws tightening the rules on third parties, the target was imagined to be those U.S.-style political action committees famously popular among the right. Who knew it would be used to stifle their friends in the environmental movement?