We have witnessed a significant semantic drift in the context of the debate about the financing of political parties. To qualify the contributions of citizens, we used the term “private financing”, when it is rather popular financing.
The word “popular”, from the Latin “ popularis », refers to the notion of people. Popular financing is therefore financing by the people, constituting by definition a basis of democracy.
When Prime Minister François Legault referred to the legacy of René Lévesque to express his desire to put an end to this method of financing political parties, it was in fact quite the opposite. Through his electoral reform of 1977 – Bill 2 of his illustrious government – Lévesque put an end to true “private financing”, that is, financing from legal entities. The principle at the heart of this legislative document was citizen ownership of political parties. The former prime minister even claimed that this was his greatest political legacy.
As explained by Francine Barry (assistant to the chief electoral officer from 2000 to 2007), Robert Burns (minister of state for electoral and parliamentary reform from 1976 to 1979) and André Larocque (deputy minister for electoral and parliamentary reform from 1977 to 1985 and Deputy Minister for the Reform of Democratic Institutions from 2002 to 2003) in an open letter published in The duty of November 16, 2012, for Lévesque, it was then a question of enshrining in the law that “the parties are the property of the citizens”. Thus, “they must be born, maintained and, if necessary, die according to the will of the citizen, not otherwise”.
Quite the opposite of the current legislative framework, where a party which no longer attracts the population could still benefit from a prize pool artificially inflated by financial support from the State, which would give it a substantial comparative advantage in anticipation of the next elections, and this, solely on the basis of the results of the previous ones.
In this sense, in the context where Minister Bernard Drainville was preparing to allocate the largest share of the financing of political parties to the State after the election of the government of Pauline Marois, the trio added this: “the orientation of departure [de la loi] is distorted and even reversed. State funding is being substituted for popular funding. We substitute war for corruption for the democratization of institutions. We are replacing political parties with citizen will.”
On an ethical level, it is obviously unacceptable to compromise access to ministers in exchange for a political contribution as certain recent revelations suggest (or downright indecent, in cases like that of the couple Antoine Bittar and Elizabeth Rivera, who has made headlines in recent days), but this practice, like those revealed by the Charbonneau commission a decade ago, must not become the pretext for a false virtue that would divert the discussion of additional controls necessary for the supervision of popular financing. This must absolutely take place: it is a crucial question of trust between democratic institutions and the population.
François Legault also recognized this during a press briefing: the biggest blind spot of 100% state financing (a more appropriate semantic than “public”, here too) arises in the impossibility for a new political movement to form and compete in the electoral arena. Indeed, if parties can only function on the basis of sums collected based on their support in previous elections, a new political formation could not benefit from any financial room for maneuver as long as it does not have passed a first ballot.
But how can you imagine running a campaign without money? This would constitute an inexorable barrier to entry. No election signs to display, no advertising to make their ideas known, no places to gather, and the list could go on and on. As a candidate for mayor of Longueuil, I myself founded a new political party which could never have seen the light of day without popular funding, thanks to which we raised close to $100,000 through donations. of $5, $20, $100 and $200* from citizens eager for change.
Quite frankly, what we should realistically be discussing at the moment is the increase in the individual contribution ceiling (*$200 only in an election year, $100 the rest of the time), which has never been increased since the Drainville reform of 2013. Worse still, in the case of municipal, the spending ceilings have also been the same since that time, contrary to the automatic indexation enjoyed by political parties operating on the Quebec political scene.
In other words: the maximum amounts that can be spent by municipal political groups during electoral campaigns have been the same for more than 10 years, while our expenses are facing the same upward pressure as the cost of living in general. We deplore the low participation rates while we have fewer and fewer means to reach the population.
Remember that during this time, Canadian citizens can donate up to $1,725 annually to a federal political party, or 17.25 times more than to a provincial or municipal political party registered with the Director General of Elections of Quebec , without this situation raising anyone’s eyebrows.
Ultimately, the debate should not be one of financing entirely by the State: we must instead consider increasing the place of popular financing by returning to the essence of René Lévesque’s legacy, or by providing custody -sufficiently important to avoid drifts. The debate is there, and any attempt to distract it would be a mistake.