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John Stuart Mill argued that votes should be weighted according to the educational attainment of the voter. John Adams argued that votes should be the domain of property owners. One American venture capitalist has said, possibly in jest and possibly not, that voting should be open only to those who pay their taxes and that the more taxes one has to pay the more votes one should get. Women, ethnic minorities, children, and prisoners have all been denied or granted access to the vote in different places at different times.

For our purposes, chief among Canada’s qualifications to vote is that one must be Canadian. Whether we allow too few people to vote, too many, or just enough, we ought to at least be fairly consistent in our wisdom or in our error and apply a reasonably similar standard to contributions.

Now, if Canadian democracy were at an embryonic stage, those in favour of foreign contributions might have a stronger argument. This argument would claim that foreign contributions can help build democracy where democracy does not fully exist.

But here too is an argument that may be correct or may be idiotic, but either way is totally irrelevant to the Canadian context. As Canada is not a new democracy, it thankfully does not need to debate whether infusions of foreign cash can kickstart competitive elections by helping political parties organize.

Given Canadian voting regulations and Canada’s democratic development, the best conceivable defence for allowing foreign campaign contributions, then, is not that they are appropriate for our system, nor that they are helpful to our system, but that they will not cause any harm to our system. At least that would be the best defence, if only it were true.