The results of the last Quebec elections have once again confirmed the limits of the first-past-the-post system. There is no need to recall the vagaries of the counting mechanism, which creates significant distortions between the number of votes and the number of seats obtained by the parties. However, we find in our political system a very real element of proportionality that almost perfectly reflects the popular will expressed during the vote: we are talking here about funding allocations, which are paid annually to political parties by Élections Québec.
The sum of these allowances is calculated by multiplying a basic amount by the total number of electors registered on the list of electors. This sum is then distributed to the parties according to the percentage of votes obtained during the last elections. In 2022, the base amount adjusted for inflation represented $1.71 for payments totaling $10,774,903.
This formula was implemented in Quebec in 1977, when the Lévesque government amended the Election Act to reduce the role of private money in the political financing regime. At the time, we wanted to offer compensation to political parties who saw their income decrease following the introduction of new rules to prohibit contributions from legal persons and cap the amount of individual donations.
However, radical changes to these terms and conditions were adopted in 2010 and 2012. In particular to combat the phenomenon of nominees, the amount of annual individual contributions allowed was reduced to $100, while the public allowances, raising them to $1.50. After the most recent elections, the CAQ (which obtained 41% of the votes) should therefore receive approximately $4.4 million per year; for the PQ and QS (15% of the votes each), this amount will be around 1.6 million dollars; for the PLQ (14% of the votes), $1.5 million; and for the PCQ (13% of the votes), 1.4 million dollars (calculation by the authors).
Since these recent changes, we see that the share of public funds in the financing of political parties in Quebec has greatly increased. According to Élections Québec reports, the proportion of public funding has increased from about 18% in 2009 to 81% in 2020. This trend should only increase, since the share of allowances paid to political parties increases each year, based on the consumer price index, while the amount of individual contributions has remained fixed at $100 for almost 10 years now. These allowances now represent the most important dimension of public funding of political activities in Quebec.
We believe that these changes in the sources of funding for political parties have important consequences for the structure of the party system. Several studies indicate that there is a link between the amount of contributions that activists make to parties and coordination incentives at the level of political elites. However, with the current funding method, based on popular support, each party receives an allocation based on its results in the last election.
Without these generous public allocations, political parties would have more incentive to recruit new members to finance themselves, and these might in turn demand greater coordination among elites, for example by forcing a merger of parties, such as this was the case in 2003 with the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party. Weaker political parties would also have to disappear, or at least reinvent themselves.
We do not believe that the allowances and the system of public political financing in Quebec have caused the breakdown of the partisan system, but the current system does not contribute to solving the problem since it helps to keep alive a multitude of political parties which do not all manage to obtain substantial representation in the National Assembly.
In other words, the proportionality of the public funding system contributes to supporting a multiparty system that does not coexist with our uninominal majority voting system. The major parties refuse to reform the voting system because it is not in their interest to do so; however, they want to maintain a public funding method whose terms would be more appropriate in a proportional electoral system. Why this contradiction?
We are of the opinion that the main parties represented in the National Assembly have strategic reasons to protect this regime which benefits them, especially in a context where militancy within the parties is in constant decline. The disconnect between citizens and parties has less impact on large parties when their funding depends less on activists and more on the state. Parties would feel the citizen disconnect even more if funding were more dependent on their members. Failing to modify the voting method, we believe that it would be useful to have a reflection on the current modalities of the mode of financing of political parties in Quebec.