Annoyed to see the integrity of his party and that of its deputies challenged, CAQ leader François Legault could not help but, despite his best New Year’s resolutions, once again hastily responded with a false good idea. To the ethical doubts raised by the invitations distributed by his elected officials to the fundraising cocktails of their fellow ministers, the Prime Minister responded by proposing a sledgehammer which, if formalized, would threaten the vitality of democratic dialogue.
The emails and text messages from CAQ deputies or employees, summoning mayors to come and meet with members of the Council of Ministers at the cost of a $100 donation, were extremely clumsy. However, there is nothing illegal about the actions criticized and do not suggest sectoral privileges. As for their compliance with ethical rules, it will be up to the Ethics Commissioner, who rejected two of the four complaints lodged by Québec solidaire, to decide.
François Legault, however, did not want to wait. Desperate to quickly close the case, he instead rushed to put an end to all popular funding for his own political party, while also pressing the opposition parties to follow suit. The initiative also had the benefit, for the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), of threatening its rivals with losing 13% (for Québec solidaire and the Liberal Party of Quebec, in 2023) or 29% (for the Parti Québécois) of their financing, if they too had to renounce private contributions and rely only on electoral allocations from the Quebec state.
The foresight of the opposition parties is certainly not devoid of their own partisan interest either. But their rejection of the CAQ idea nevertheless preserves, and fortunately, this second part of political financing essential to democratic commitment. An opinion shared by the Coalition Avenir Québec… until last week.
Because a few months ago, the CAQ considered, in concert with the main parties, raising the ceiling on electoral contributions to $200. The day before the stone thrown by his boss, the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, – who had sponsored the last reform of the Electoral Act, having lowered this threshold from $1000 to $100 -, had even recalled that his former PQ government had rejected the hypothesis of completely eliminating popular financing in favor of exclusively public financing. “To ensure that citizens can give their support to an idea, to a party,” he repeated again last week. The about-face of his new government took place less than 24 hours later. This necessary citizen participation has not suddenly disappeared. But the dismay of the CAQ government in getting rid of these stories of poorly targeted solicitations has visibly supplanted it.
However, banning all popular funding would contravene freedom of expression and threaten the emergence of new political parties in the future. Such a revolution in Quebec’s political financing system would above all break this link between voters and their favorite party, which forces the latter to take into account the opinion of the former. The evolution of popular mood, between electoral cycles, would also lose any causality on the finances of the parties, which would remain entirely dependent on the votes collected years earlier. The electoral funds of political parties should, on the contrary, reflect their popular favor, since this, as we see in Quebec as at the federal level, can fluctuate quickly.
The opposite would in no way encourage citizen participation, which is already in too strong a decline. Voter turnout has been in steady decline since 1976, when a record 85% of voters cast their ballots. During the last two elections, this rate now hovered around 66%. Activism within political groups is also in decline, as is the number of donors supporting them monetarily.
The counter-proposal of the PQ and Solidarity, to prohibit all financing activities for members of the Council of Ministers, is nothing but false virtue. Insidious political influence is not restricted to such a framework. An attempted collusion can just as easily target another elected official, a political employee, or even members of an opposition party in the process of being brought to power.
State funding was abolished at the federal level by a simple parliamentary majority by the former conservative government of Stephen Harper. If the authorities of Quebec’s political parties wish to once again review the electoral financing rules, they should do so in consultation, together with the Chief Electoral Officer. And that they set about it in search of greater citizen participation and a real consensus, rather than in the blind hope of winning a few rounds in the partisan arena.