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If the Liberals seem peculiarly shameless in trading proximity to power for cash — no amount of bad press seems likely to persuade them to give it up — it may be because, as others have suggested, they have the most to lose if the practice were banned. Even today, five years after legislation abolishing the per-vote subsidy was passed (it was not fully eliminated until 2015) and more than a dozen years after corporate and union donations were first restricted, they struggle to compete with the Tories for individual contributions.

Conversely, as the party with the largest number of votes in the past election and very likely the next, they would obviously have the most to gain from a subsidy pro-rated to support at the ballot box. All in all, they’d be happy to make the trade. But should the rest of us?

Leave aside the toxic history of the per-vote subsidy — whose chief past beneficiary, recall, was the Bloc Québécois, who raised next to no funds on their own — or the offensiveness in principle of forcing people to foot the bill for a party to which they may have the most violent personal objections (an argument that applies not just to the per-vote subsidy, but also the fantastic regime of tax credits for donations and reimbursement of expenses the parties have arranged for themselves).

Think, rather, of the precedent that would be set. At worst it would amount to rewarding the Liberals for a practice that borders on influence-peddling; at best, we would be paying them to stop. Paying people not to do something illegal or unethical is not usually considered good public policy. Most often, it is referred to as ransom.