The committee met at 9:04 a.m.

[J. Brar in the chair.]

J. Brar (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Jagrup Brar. I’m the MLA for Surrey-Fleetwood and the Chair of the Special Committee to Review Provisions of the Election Act.

I would like to acknowledge that I am joining today’s meeting from the traditional territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo and Tsawwassen First Nations. I would ask all the members to reflect upon the territory that you are on today.

Our committee’s mandate is to review whether the an­nual allowance paid to political parties should continue after 2022 and, if so, the amount of the annual allowance and how many years it should be paid. We must report to the Legislative Assembly with our recommendations by September 1.

[9:05 a.m.]

British Columbians can share their views by providing a written, audio or video submission. The consultation will close at 5 p.m. on Friday, May 28, 2021. More information on how to participate is available on the committee’s website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/rpea.

Today we will hear from four presenters, Members. Each presenter will have up to 15 minutes to present, followed by up to 15 minutes of questions and answers with members.

I will now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves, starting with Adam.

Adam, go ahead.

A. Olsen: Hi. I’m Adam Olsen. I’m the member of the Legislative Assembly for Saanich North and the Islands

I’m proud to be doing my work from my home village here of W̱JOȽEȽP in the W̱SÁNEĆ territory.

P. Milobar (Deputy Chair): Hi. Good morning. I’m Peter Milobar. I’m the MLA for Kamloops–North Thompson, and I’m currently at home in Kamloops.

J. Brar (Chair): Peter is the Deputy Chair of the special committee.

B. Anderson: Hi. I’m Brittny Anderson. I’m the MLA for Nelson-Creston.

I’m on the traditional, unceded territory of the Ktunaxa, Sinixt and the Syilx peoples.

G. Kyllo: Good morning. Greg Kyllo, the MLA for Shuswap.

I am on the traditional territory of the Secwépemc peoples.

R. Leonard: Good morning. I’m Ronna-Rae Leonard, the MLA for Courtenay-Comox.

I live, work, play and enjoy the lands of the K’ómoks First Peoples.

A. Mercier: Hi. I’m Andrew Mercier, the MLA for Langley.

I’m on the traditional territory of the Kwantlen, Katzie, Matsqui and Semiahmoo-speaking peoples.

J. Brar (Chair): Our first presenter today is Dr. Dennis Pilon.

Welcome, Dr. Pilon. You have up to 15 minutes for your presentation. Hansard Services has provided a timer, which will be visible on your screen.

We are also joined, Dr. Pilon, by staff members. We have Ron Wall, Jesse Gordon and Susan Sourial. So three staff members.

With that, Dr. Pilon, please proceed.

Presentations on
Provisions of the Election Act

DENNIS PILON

D. Pilon: Great. Thank you. I’d like to thank the committee for having me appear before you today.

I’d also add…. Though I’m coming to you from Toronto, I’m actually from British Columbia. I grew up all over British Columbia — Cassiar, Williams Lake. I worked in Smithers, B.C. for a while at a radio station, and my first academic job was at the University of Victoria. I know B.C. pretty well, and I come to you today as a B.C.’er at heart, even if not in location.

I’ve provided you with a five-page report. I’m not going to use all of the time that’s allocated to me. You’ve got the report, and I also provided a one-page summary of that report. I’ll just run over what I think are the greatest hits and then leave as much time for discussion, anything that you want to raise that touches on those areas.

Let me give you a little bit of my thinking in putting to­gether this brief. In looking at what the government legislation is and the questions that were asked, I guess what I wanted to do was to draw in insights from comparative experience with per-vote subsidies in countries that are comparable to Canada. We’re not going to bring in countries in Africa or East Asia. We are going to compare us with countries that are comparable to British Columbia in terms of its political and economic development. So mostly western European countries, the Anglo-American countries as examples of similar polities.

Now, I guess the questions I wanted to address were…. Who else is doing what in terms of public funding, and what has been the experience in those jurisdictions? I think that’s important because the discourse in Canada…. There is an element of it that seems to suggest that there’s something strange or weird or untoward about per-vote subsidies, that they are somehow unacceptable. I wanted to compare that to other countries and to say: “Well, is that the case in other places?”

[9:10 a.m.]

Then I wanted to address whether or not we can say that the reasons the legislation was brought forward have been satisfactorily addressed and, as such, maybe the legislation can be done away with. Those were the two areas that I wanted to look into.

My brief only addresses two of the three questions that are posed by the legislative committee. Namely, should the current annual allowance to political parties in British Columbia be extended? And if so, how long should it be extended for? My brief doesn’t get into the question of how much the allowances should be. I think that that question involves concerns about how much money parties actually need to function and what the scope and purpose of the original act were, and I’m not in a position to comment on either of those.

The brief draws on comparative and Canadian academic research on campaign finance and party funding, along with relevant work from B.C. political history and comparative institutional reform. The brief notes that support for public funding of political parties is widespread across western countries. It is endorsed by academics and their research, a broad range of partisan political actors from across the political spectrum and all of the major non-partisan international electoral support agencies — groups like IFES, IDEA and ACE. In fact, the per-vote subsidy approach is the dominant form of public funding for political parties across comparable western countries.

Support for the policy is driven by three issues: equity, transparency and need. Equity relates to economic and re­source inequalities that exist in different places and the concern about the extent to which they may lead to un­equal political influence and outcomes. Transparency speaks to concerns about the role of private money in politics and whether it buys influence. Need is about the kinds of resources that a political system requires to function effectively. In other words, to link the people to their representatives, what are the funds that are required to make that realistic in the context that we now live within?

Research on public funding by academics has raised its own concerns about its possible impacts. They’ve looked at concerns about whether it may empower parties over voters, that it may weaken the link between voters and parties or that it may spur irresponsible spending by parties. However, the evidence that has been gathered by researchers does not support these concerns. It doesn’t suggest that, in fact, these things have come to pass with the introduction of public funding.

Now, to assess whether to continue with the existing policy, I think, begs the question about whether the concerns and conditions that gave rise to the policy still exist and whether we can say that they could be reasonably anticipated to continue to exist into the future. I think, on all three criteria — equity, transparency and need — the answer would be yes.

By a host of economic and social measures, B.C. is a highly unequal society. As such, the concerns about equity remain. Transparency in who is funding policy and what they expect to gain by doing so remains a priority despite, I think, the gains that have been advanced by this specific legislation. The financial demands of operating a political party that can function effectively in our present context, I think, does appear to require public support.

The form of support is crucial. Only a per-vote subsidy form of public funding can address the need for equity and inclusion via such a policy. So there are basically three different forms of public funding that are typically introduced: block grants, a per-vote subsidy…. And now I’m drawing a blank on my third.

The block grants are often grants that address particular issues. Funding to help support opposition parties run their offices — that’s the example in the UK. Or in Canada, we’ve seen, at the federal level, funding to help parties offset campaign costs, election costs. The per-vote subsidy was much less common in the Canadian context until, of course, we saw it introduced at the federal level.

[9:15 a.m.]

There are all kinds of challenges with each of these ap­proaches. In terms of the per-vote subsidy, it is often allocated on the basis of either legislative results — so the number of party seats that a party wins — or the votes that a party gains. Depending on which one is chosen, the results of the policy can be more or less equitable. I would argue that, given the evidence we’ve seen, the per-vote subsidy approach is the most equitable approach in terms of addressing the inequalities that exist within our civil societies.

I think an overview of this research, looking at what has been accomplished over the last 20, 25 years in western industrialized countries, the normative arguments and the evidence-based research support a per-vote subsidy ap­proach to public funding of political parties. By recourse to evidence, I think the case is fairly strong that B.C. should continue in this vein. That is the most equitable and fair way to approach the question of public funding for political parties.

However, it should be noted that decisions about such policies are typically decided in a partisan way. When we draw from the research on comparative political institutions, the partisan mix, the coalitions that exist within different political jurisdictions, are often decisive in deciding whether or not a policy will actually continue.

Of course, we saw that at the national level, where the Liberals had introduced a per-vote subsidy, and the Conservatives had been against it. When they gained a legislative majority government, they got rid of the policy. So looking ahead in British Columbia, probably the biggest predictor is what kind of coalition dynamic exists in favour of the policy.

As I say, in the brief itself, I go into quite a bit more de­tail, and I provide various links to resources that provide evidence on these questions. At this point, I’m happy just to end my comments and leave it up to you to drive the rest of our conversation in terms of whatever you may want to know.

J. Brar (Chair): Thank you, Dr. Pilon. I think that’s the right way to say it. I really appreciate you coming and making your submission to the committee members. This is very important to us.

Now I will open the floor to the members for questions.

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation, Dr. Pilon. I have a question around….

You talked about the evidence-based direction that builds that support. I’m wondering if you could explain that. What is the evidence that suggests that this creates equity — a per-vote subsidy? I’m not going to say “subsidy.” I’m going to say “allowance,” because that’s the word.

D. Pilon: The terms are somewhat interchangeable in terms of the way that different people talk about it. It means the same thing or it can mean the same thing, to talk about a party allowance or a party subsidy.

The point is: on what basis is public support being pro­vided to parties? The example I couldn’t call up a moment ago was the tax incentive approach. So you have a block funding approach, a tax incentive approach and a per-vote subsidy approach. Those are the three main approaches.

If we compare, say, the tax approach with the per-vote subsidy, that is where the debate often is in the Canadian context. The federal Conservatives very much argued that the tax approach was the appropriate way to go forward and the per-vote subsidy was not. But the problem is that the tax approach doesn’t address the equity concerns — that we live in a society where not everyone has an equal ability to participate in politics by virtue of their economic and social position.

If we are committed to a democratic society, then the idea is that all citizens, regardless of their economic standing, should be able to participate in a substantive way. So the per-vote subsidy is equitable because it makes the decision about funding on the basis of demonstrated support for different parties. Instead of allowing people on the basis of their financial position to decide whether or not they want to support parties, it says that regardless of the financial standing of the typical supporter of different parties, we will award funding on the basis of whether or not people appear to support that party.

[9:20 a.m.]

That’s where we get to the equity. There are a lot of fascinating details in the research about the knock-on effects. We’re not simply talking about economic equity in terms of class differences that exist, but there are also gendered and racial aspects to this as well.

In terms of comparing it to other western countries, we would look and say: “What have they done in places like the Scandinavian countries or Germany and France or the United Kingdom or New Zealand?” I think the weight of evidence over the past two decades is that the public funds are distributed more equally and equitably under a system of per-vote subsidies than they are under any other approach.

I don’t know if that answers your question.

J. Brar (Chair): Any further questions, Members?

A. Olsen: Thank you, Dr. Pilon, for your presentation. I greatly appreciate it. I guess the examples of allowances ac­ross different jurisdictions are all done. I remember when we were looking at this policy back in 2017, there were a variety of ways that were put before us that this could be delivered.

Without having an example of a system that perhaps you think works, I guess what you’re saying here is that we are looking to, if the government decides to go in this direction, use equity, transparency and need as the key benchmarks to evaluate whether or not the system that they’re choosing to take forward achieves that through…. I guess these are the evaluation markers that we’re trying to set.

D. Pilon: Yes. In putting these forward, I think I am drawing out of the comparative academic literature the themes that have emerged. If you look at some of the documents that I cite in the work-cited part of my submission, these international bodies — people like IDEA, an international, non-partisan organization that tries to develop best practices for elections in democratic countries — there’s a lot of room for nuance and taking account of particular context.

No country has exactly the same set of regulations, but in broad strokes, there are these similarities. I think they identify these themes as being the pressing ones and the ones that will address the substantive concerns about democracy.

Obviously, we are seeing a lot of discussion presently about democracy, a lot of concern about whether democracy is under threat, concerns about whether old people in a society are able to participate in a meaningful way in our democracy, and then an attempt to identify whatever barriers might exist. These are the ways in which these academics, but also practitioners, have identified these concerns, these concerns around equity and transparency and need.

Nobody argues that they’ve got all the answers. Nobody says that any of these particular approaches are absolutely perfect, but they do argue that some are better than others. I think that’s the gist. The thrust of my presentation to you is that, to the extent that the policy that the government has pursued addresses these, I don’t see any reason to stop doing it.

Again, I think the public discourse in Canada is rather unfortunate. It’s highly partisanized. We have seen fairly strong attacks from the conservatives and their supporters in civil society, and the media from think tanks, various right-of-centre columnists who want to delegitimize these approaches as somehow inappropriate. That just doesn’t match up with the comparative experience in other countries, where this is seen as normal, ordinary and in fact, mandatory, if one is going to address these concerns in a realistic way.

That’s what I wanted to try to do with my presentation, to try to say: “Well, okay, let’s rebalance this discussion.” Everywhere else people seem to be accepting that this is a fairly acceptable way to address these concerns.

The other issue I wanted to raise was: what were the reasons the policy was introduced, in the first place? Why did the government, with support from the Green Party and the minority government situation, identify this as being an important policy? If the reasons that it was introduced have not changed, then I would imagine that there is still a need.

[9:25 a.m.]

Frankly, I think the evidence supports that there is a need. If we look at Canadian census data, any number of measures of economic well-being, B.C. is, unfortunately, like most other Western jurisdictions, a highly unequal place in terms of economic opportunities, in terms of so­cial standing. Obviously, government is one way in which those types of inequalities are addressed.

We may have disagreements about how exactly to ad­dress them, but I don’t know that there’s a great deal of debate looking at the comparative literature on how to address it around the public funding of political parties.

J. Brar (Chair): Any other questions, Members?

R. Leonard: I appreciate your fulsome answers.

Towards the end of your presentation, you made a comment about building that coalition to create permanency — if you see the benefits of it and want to see it being permanent.

This is rather speculative, but do you see ways of crossing all of the different perspectives to find that common ground that will achieve that permanence that you suggest is a good outcome?

D. Pilon: That is a very difficult question. A great deal of my research is on political institutions and what leads to them stabilizing or being reformed, and ultimately, it comes down to what the political parties want. If there is a consensus across political parties for a policy, then it will be stable. Look at the 1974 reforms to the federal financing act. That was a very stable set of rules that lasted, almost unchanged, up until the new millennium. There was clear cross-party support.

In the case of the per-vote subsidy, as I’ve mentioned, there is a partisan wrinkle to the discussion. It would ap­pear that right-of-centre forces in the Canadian context are highly critical of it. However, we have recently seen the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, who campaigned on getting rid of their per-vote subsidy, change their mind. Now they’re going to keep the per-vote subsidy that they have here in Ontario, at least for a short period of time.

I don’t know that there’s any way around this in the context of a first-past-the-post voting system. If another party were to come to power that was not happy with this, obviously, they could just change it, and there’s nothing really anybody can do, unless, of course, that party changes its mind and decides that they have some interest in this policy as well.

J. Brar (Chair): Any other questions, Members?

B. Anderson: Yeah, I thought it was interesting that you had noted the tax portion. Then it occurred to me that we have….

First of all, actually, thank you so much. I really appreciated your report and how detailed it was.

Actually, we have a hybrid system currently because we do provide tax receipts. I thought that that was interesting — that we have a hybrid model for contributions. I just wanted to highlight that.

D. Pilon: Yes. I think that’s a really good point to underline. When we look at the comparative literature, we find that many countries have hybrid systems. I’m not sure it’s exactly most. It might be near about half have some hybrid of public funding through a per-vote subsidy and then some approach to either tax incentives or simply that they allow private donations.

I think that there is, amongst the international experts, support for the idea that there should be some degree of private donations but that they shouldn’t dominate the system and that there should be checks and balances in terms of spending and contribution limits. To the extent that you have those in place, as B.C. does, then you have a good balance in terms of the focus on public funding, as well as allowing people to make contributions as they see fit.

You’re right that mixed models are very popular. Some countries don’t have tax incentives but a number do.

[9:30 a.m.]

J. Brar (Chair): Thank you, Members.

Any other questions?

P. Milobar (Deputy Chair): This kind of ties in with…. You referenced it in your presentation as well, Dr. Pilon. It takes a certain amount of money to run an effective pol­itical organization. There’s lots of background work that happens in a party that people don’t necessarily see — staff and all of those operations.

In your research, did you find any…? We are talking about the hybrid systems, which just seem to be the prevalent way. Has there been a split of a rough percentage of the public per-vote versus what’s expected to come in by donation to properly operate? In other words, is it 50 percent? Is it…? If you’re assuming that it takes a couple of million dollars a year to operate a party, is it that you should reasonably expect about half of that from the per-vote and be in charge of trying to find the other half? What does that percentage look like?

D. Pilon: I’d have to go back and look at the specific reports to give you the amounts. Of course, they vary from country to country. Some countries have things….

Germany has a matching grant approach, where if a party can raise money, the government will match the amount that they raise from individual donors. They see that as a way of trying to encourage public support for par­ties. That is somewhat more rare. Again, there are concerns about the equity side of that.

As I say, all of the comparative systems usually have a combination of three ways of supporting parties through public financing. Block grants are often the way that they address some of those institutional requirements that a party has in terms of running an office in a local area, be­ing able to staff the party. So some combination of a block grant, which is allocated not strictly on the basis of votes gotten but more in terms of the practical needs of running a campaign.

Now, there’s usually a threshold that a party has to meet. They have to elect a certain number of people before they become eligible for that money. Then a certain amount of space is left for party memberships as a form of fundraising or individual contributions, again under certain kinds of restrictions about how much money people can give and how much money parties can spend.

The dominant form amongst comparable western countries to British Columbia is the per-vote subsidy. Depending on which country you look at…. The links I gave you will link you to some very specific and up-to-date information on all of those countries. In some cases, 60 to 80 percent of the funding is coming from the per-vote subsidy. So quite a significant amount of public support for those parties.

A. Olsen: Thank you, Dr. Pilon. You’ve raised, several times, equity and creating an equitable situation. I can’t help but ask how you balance independent candidates and people affiliated with parties in this. I think the question has to be asked, just what your perspective is around independent candidates.

I recognize Peter’s comments around not running a pol­itical operation, a political organization. There are some of these things that an independent candidate doesn’t do, just by nature of their independence. However, ensuring there is some equity in terms of being able to access voters and being able to put a message out…. Maybe just reflect on that a little bit, how you reconcile that.

D. Pilon: I guess the first thing that we need to recognize is that independent candidacies are fairly rare. If we look at comparative Canadian, provincial, federal or across western countries, 99.999 percent of voters support political parties.

They support candidates that are associated with political parties. In fact, most of them support candidates running for fairly popular political parties. We also see the public react badly to individual MPs or MLAs who get elected with one party and switch to another party, which again suggests that the party is the key factor that is driving voting intentions.

Now, occasionally an independent runs and gets elected, or an independent runs and affects the race. There are provisions in any number of approaches that allow individual candidates to recoup election expenses or, if they are ultimately successful, to benefit from some of the public funding.

[9:35 a.m.]

Again, there are usually thresholds. The thresholds can be a mix of jurisdiction-wide and locality-wide. In situations where there are local ridings…. Of course, not all political systems have just single-member ridings, but where they do, there’s often a combination of thresholds. So maybe someone has to gain a certain amount of support within a particular riding or constituency or, if it’s a party, then, across the whole jurisdiction.

There are ways to craft legislation that would allow for the fact that an independent candidate could benefit from this. On the other hand….

Various people have suggested that what you don’t want to encourage is people to use the public financing as a way of making money. Certainly, that became a concern when the National Law Party appeared to be benefiting from changes to the federal finance rules in the aughts. They were basically pretending to run candidates for political office, but really, it was to benefit from the funding arrangement. So almost all of the considerations take that into account. How can we make sure that we’re not going to allow people to use this for purposes for which it’s not really designed?

If that’s what you’re interested in, I think that your re­searchers could draw from comparative experience to see how that could be factored in.

J. Brar (Chair): Thanks, Members. The next presenter has arrived.

Well, I would like to ask one more question, Dr. Pilon, to you. I understand that you were unable to suggest any specific amount for the annual allowance to political parties, but you state three pillars that are very important: equity, transparency and need.

Can you comment, if you can…? How do we, the government…? What are the key factors to determine the need so that we can figure out what the allowance will be?

D. Pilon: Obviously, this is where we see the devil in the details — that every country is different because every country is different. Every country has a different context, a different geographical mix, different challenges of representation, which are, in some ways, broadly similar across western countries: the need to represent political and ideological differences. But the context within which that takes place can vary quite a bit.

I think, on some level, you’ve got to ask: what are the real, concrete costs that people are facing to run for office? Then you have to ask: what is the scope of this policy? What is this policy’s…? Is it meant to completely replace private financing or efforts by political parties? I haven’t heard anybody say that. Then it’s the mix. What mix?

At some level, one of the concerns that came out of the comparative research was: would public financing just fuel more spending? With more money, would parties find new ways to spend it?

I think that is a fair concern. Obviously, it can be ad­dressed through things like spending limits. Spending limits then force all parties to decide what’s more important. Is it more important to have that billboard? Is it more important to go through social media? Is it more important to invest in doorstep people? That, to me, seems to be….

You obviously have some idea…. In looking at the re­turns that parties have put in about their costs, you have some idea about the general costs that the different parties face. That seems to me to be the place to begin, in terms of trying to establish what is a realistic or reasonable…. What kind of a subsidy is going to meet the goals you’ve set for yourself with this legislation?

J. Brar (Chair): Dr. Pilon, I would like to convey sincere thanks to you on behalf of all committee members. Thanks for your very well done submission and subsequent presentation. It certainly, I think, will help members to understand this public policy issue in a better way. Thanks for your time.

D. Pilon: All right. Thank you. My pleasure.

J. Brar (Chair): Thank you, once again, Members. Our next presenter is Dr. Gerald Baier.

[9:40 a.m.]

Welcome, Dr. Baier. You have up to 15 minutes for your presentation. Hansard Services has provided a timer, which will be visible on your screen.

Before you begin, I would like to ask the members, once again, very quickly, if they can introduce ourselves.

My name is Jagrup Brar. I’m the Chair of the special committee and the MLA for Surrey-Fleetwood.

P. Milobar (Deputy Chair): Hi. I’m Peter Milobar. I’m the Deputy Chair and the MLA for Kamloops–North Thompson.

A. Olsen: I’m Adam Olsen. I’m the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands, working today from my home office in Saanich.

G. Kyllo: Greg Kyllo, the MLA for Shuswap.

R. Leonard: Ronna-Rae Leonard, Courtenay-Comox.

A. Mercier: Andrew Mercier, the MLA for Langley.

I’m on the traditional territory of the Kwantlen, Katzie, Matsqui and Samiahmoo peoples.

B. Anderson: Hi. I’m Brittny Anderson. I’m the MLA for Nelson-Creston.

I’m on the unceded, traditional territory of the Ktunaxa, the Sinixt and the Syilx peoples.

J. Brar (Chair): Today we have three staff members assisting us in this process — Ron Wall, Jesse Gordon and Susan Sourial.

Please proceed.

GERALD BAIER

G. Baier: Good morning, everyone.

I’m grateful to join you from the unceded territories of the Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Musqueam peoples here in North Vancouver.

I also thank you for the invitation to speak today as you consider the provision of party allowances.

I speak in my capacity just as a citizen and academic, but also as a student, teacher and commentator on Canadian government and politics for the last 20 years. When I was a graduate student at Dalhousie University, I worked with a lot of people who worked on the Lortie commission on electoral reform and party financing. It’s been a topic close to my work for a really long time.

I presently work at the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions at the University of British Columbia. We spent the last nine years helping to encourage and prepare people interested in pursuing a legislative career. That work has made me concerned about the ability of regular folks to become candidates, to be attractive to political parties, so we can see more good people run for office. I think the question of party financing and electoral financing is, really, a big part of that.

I’d say, at the outset, that in principle I’m broadly supportive of the idea that political parties need to be encouraged and reinforced in their role as “primary political org­anizations.” That is the term the Lortie commission clai­med for the nature of political parties to recognize the role they play in parliamentary government in Canada.

We have a confounding constitutional relationship with political parties in Canada. Our constitution is pledged to have one similar in principle to the United Kingdom. It obliges us to lean on political parties quite a lot for the operation of our governmental institutions, yet parties are not formally recognized in the court constitutional documents. They are barely recognized in law. Only in the last 50 or 60 years have they been recognized in that way.

Parties are critical to the formation of government; the aggregation, articulation and representation of preferen­ces; the legitimizing of the law-making function; and central, as you all know, to the robustness of the task of ac­countability in the Legislature. Still, the written constitution says very little. We have some recognition in law that has come from party financing rules, some around election expenses. But still, parties operate in a kind of ether.

Public financing, either in the form of reimbursement of election expenses, tax credits for political donations or in the form of an annual allowance, as you’re considering, acknowledges the fundamental role that political parties play in the effective operation of our democracy and further acknowledges that the effective operation of political parties and campaigns is dependent upon some degree of resources — and not necessarily entirely from volunteer labour or from private donations.

As I say, I’m broadly supportive of the idea of partisan allowances. That said, my observations of other facts make me a little bit uncertain or ambivalent about the scale of public funding and whether regular and reliable funds will truly build up our political parties’ capacity for aggregation and representation of interests and improve the dem­ocratic character of British Columbia politics.

[9:45 a.m.]

Allowances, I fear, might simply further centralize part­ies and party organizations, present challenges for candidate recruitment and fundraising and, in the process, further alienate political parties from broader public access and control.

I listened to your previous speaker, and I think Dennis comes very much from the Lortie commission’s point of view about a more European model of political parties. I think, like a lot of things in Canada, we’re stuck between a European model and the U.S. model. This legislation came out of, of course, the ban on corporate and union donations — and so recognition that parties needed allowances to compensate for some of that ban. The ban was brought in to try to avoid the worst of the American system, where money is so prevalent and so necessary and fundraising, of course, becomes such a critical part of any representative’s time.

I would make the case that even if the rationale for the introduction of party allowances was to wean the parties from some of that union and corporate money that was helping them to cover their expenses, there is still value in maintaining it beyond that initial purpose.

So the answer to your first question is yes. The allowances should continue, especially since we now have four years of evidence that the ban has significantly lowered the overall revenues of the parties. The charts that I’ve seen from Tara Carman with the CBC roughly suggest as much as 60 percent of the peak kinds of years of revenue that the parties had has been lost because of the ban on union and corporate donations.

You are down quite significantly, at least from election year peaks. That’s with the inclusion of the allowances. My own back-of-the-envelope calculations from the financial reports that are produced by Elections B.C. suggest that in the intervening years — and I have a small chart if you want to see it later — anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of party revenues is coming from the allowance. Each of you know your own party’s finances and that a considerable portion of that money is coming from the allowance itself, even as the allowance is declining. It’s not as generous as it was in the first year.

There are objections, of course, to this system. The Can­adian Taxpayers Federation described the public subsidies as political welfare, or money to be wasted on attack ads that could support more worthy public purposes. I disagree. I think, overall, the cost is modest, and the ancillary benefits to the quality of British Columbia democracy, of the parties having resources to remain organized and active between elections, means that it’s money well spent.

Maybe a less obvious criticism is that this could be lo­oked at as cartel-like behaviour. That is a term used in the political science literature about cartel parties — that parties who are already successful in B.C. politics are finding a way to maintain their success by shutting out others.

I have heard questions about independents and smaller parties in your last session. I think the evidence is a little bit on that side, that there is kind of a cartel-like behaviour here. The only three parties that qualified for the allowance before the 2020 election are the three that are represented in the Legislature. Even after 2020 and the addition of two new parties to the roster, we’re still looking at…. Ninety-eight percent of the money that is given to political parties through this system is going to the three major parties that are represented on this committee and in the Legislature.

I’m not as concerned about that criticism, although I think it could be a valid one. I do think that it does take some time for parties to recognize the incentives that are there and accommodate themselves accordingly. That means where they run candidates, where they put their effort and resources to match up to the incentives that are in the legislation so they have the opportunity to increase the popular vote in particular places that might get them over the threshold, and then they could get some of that support.

I don’t think there’s any question that allowances seem to keep parties better resourced between elections. The rolling average of revenues, I think, is higher with the allowance in place. And I think it also allows parties and candidates to devote their time to things other than fundraising. When the Legislature is sitting, I think that’s an important distraction that can be taken away.

I think it also speaks to the challenge, actually, of fund­raising in a more fixed election system. We recall that B.C. has now, for four or five cycles, been on a fixed election system. It’s harder to convince donors that an election is imminent when everyone knows the date in advance. It’s harder to fundraise in the private system that we had before if people are not convinced that an election is coming, because they see a fixed date.

[9:50 a.m.]

Having a predictable, reliable and regular source of revenue based on party votes rather than seats for parties, year over year, can only serve to improve their capacity to do the many things asked of political parties by our system. Again, the experience even of resources in the Legislature could remind people of this. When parties do not get official party status, the challenges of having access to money for research and communications and all the other things that parties need to do can be really challenging. That’s equally hard from the outside.

I hope you’ll see the merit of the maintenance of allowances, but I do have a couple worries that I wanted to suggest to you. My biggest concern is on the effects of party organization broadly, but especially when combined with the donation ban on the fundraising activities of individual candidates.

Let me try to be clear. What the allowance does is allow a central party to have fairly considerable resources and perhaps get more detached from donors and local associations, which it may have been more dependent on or attuned to in the past.

It’s hard to disaggregate the negative phenomena of ef­forts to buy influence from the positive idea that campaign donations signify approval of party personnel and policies, that if you’re successful at fundraising, it’s not because people are buying your votes. You’re successful at fundraising because you’re making a broad appeal that people see the need to support.

In the private funding model, parties had to stay connected with their supporters if they wanted to remain financially viable. Public funds have the potential to detach the parties from such concerns and, to that end, could be detrimental to the responsiveness and openness of the parties to public interests and to the interests of members or supporters.

We have, already, a highly centralized system of govern­ance in Canada, and it’s not better served by highly centralized party organizations.

The other concerns I have go back to my initial comment about preparing people for politics — the effect of the allowance on the ideological and economic profile of the candidate pool. The B.C. Legislature, as you all know, has become more gender-balanced and more ethnically diverse with each passing election, and that’s an unalloyed good, I think. But I’m not sure it’s been as economically di­verse as it could be. A reliance on small donations is likely to benefit candidates from the middle and upper middle classes with networks who they can lean on or who are willing to support them with campaign expenses.

To the extent that the central party does not have access to resources from generous fundraising to share with candidates during elections, it means that local constituency associations are more reliant on the candidates to be able to raise that money. Candidates without independent wea­lth or savings, or with modest fundraising networks, will be challenged to be competitive even after the considerable feat of winning a nomination.

My further worry, and there is clear empirical evidence of this from the United States, is that candidates reliant on lots of small dollar fundraising are more likely to appeal to more polarizing ideological positions to garner such donations. So there is a kind of secret math to getting lots of small donations — to be appealing to more polarized positions. There is evidence from state legislators in the United States that this is exactly how some people are able to be more successful.

Big dollar fundraising by the central party organization shared with the candidate pool in some ways can be equity enhancing. It can relieve candidates of burdensome fundraising and also allow candidates and parties to keep their policy positions more faithful to their own preferences and not to the more ideologically extreme and motivated voters, who are willing to underwrite their candidacy.

I remain broadly supportive of the idea of allowances, and I encourage you to make them generous. I think that there is no reason for them to be declining over time. I think they could be stable and actually rise with the cost of inflation. If you’re putting up campaign signs in the next few years, just the lumber, as you well know, is going to cost a lot more. I think that’s something to think about.

However, I do worry about the long-term effects on par­ty organization or on candidates of an allowance.

I’m happy, at this point, to answer your questions or clear up any of my muddy arguments or imprecise phrasing.

J. Brar (Chair): Thank you so much, Dr. Baier. I really appreciate your submission and your presentation to members.

I will open the floor for questions to members.

B. Anderson: Thank you so much. I really appreciate the presentation. I was wondering if you would also…. I didn’t receive the document that you had written. I didn’t know if one had been submitted to us.

[9:55 a.m.]

G. Baier: I sent it to Stephanie last night. I had kind of late logistical arrangements. So I did my best to get it in when I could.

B. Anderson: Okay. Great. But we will get it. That’s awesome. I’m glad to hear that. I was just worried for a second that I hadn’t done my reading. I went and looked back, and that was why. I’m glad.

Can you just explain again…? At the very end of your talk, you were talking about how some systems create something that’s more polarizing and some systems create something that’s more central to the core of the party. Can you just unpack that a little bit more for me, please? Thank you.

G. Baier: I’m somewhat reliant on, actually, all of your expertise in terms of how to run a campaign at the local level. But what I know from the American literature — I have to thank a former graduate student, Mackenzie Lockhart, for pointing me in this direction — is that there is evidence in U.S. state campaigns that individual legislators will appeal to more ideologically polarized donors because individual donors tend to be more polarized than the PACs that we hear of in the U.S.

Dennis Pilon is correct. Big donations tend to cause transparency and equity problems. When big companies can donate millions of dollars to political parties, this is sort of seen as buying influence within the parties.

Once the parties have that kind of money, especially if they’re flush with cash, they can redistribute that sometimes to candidates that can use that in ways that can di­versify their candidate pool as well. Not everybody is a well-to-do lawyer or businessperson in their local community who can rely on all their friends to donate the maximum $1,300 to be able to do that. You can have a more economically diverse candidate pool if there is some subsidization coming from the central party.

If people are dependent on those small donations, the evidence is that they have to be more polarizing so that they can rile up the base in some way or another to support them. If they’re looking for strangers to support them, they often have to be more eager to represent a more polarized position. This may be a faithful position on their part, in the sense that they believe in the more polarized ideological views, but that means those candidates come out of the nomination process — the primary process, as they call it in the United States — on top because they’re more able to get that kind of support.

That’s just one example, and it’s from a system that does not have these allowances. My worry is that when the central party gets the annual allowances, that becomes part of, “Well, how do we use this at the central?” and not necessarily concerned about making sure that candidates are properly supported in their constituencies. In fact, we have seen evidence, at the federal level, anyway, of taxes on candidates in the sense that the central needs money from the candidates. “You’d better go and raise some money and bump it up to central so we can pay for some of the advertising and stuff that goes on.”

That money in the allowance structure is always going to be run by the central party administration. So the choi­ces they make…. I don’t think it’s up to the legislation or Elections B.C. to tell the parties where to spend that money, but from the standpoint of improving the diversity of candidates and all the measures that I talked about, you do have to try to help candidates on that fundraising side. Again, you’re all experts in that already.

A. Olsen: Thank you for your presentation, doctor. I think it’s important to acknowledge that there is this politics within the political parties. I think that’s largely what we as individuals have to work out what we would do. But of course, we get elected to deal with the governance and the politics of the jurisdiction.

It serves nothing more than just to emphasize the point you made earlier in your presentation — that the voter allowance allows for us to focus on the work that we got elected to do. I really think that that is…. I can’t tell you the number…. I think probably all of us on here have been pressed by our parties at some point along the line to make the fundraising calls, and I think that there is a great deal of importance for staying connected with people and staying connected with supporters. However, I think that that also has to be balanced with the job that we got elected to do.

I think one of the dangers of the American system is that…. We all hear the stories of the day after the election, picking up the phone to start the work of fundraising for the next election campaign.

[10:00 a.m.]

I just wanted to draw attention to that, because I think that it is important. The thread between the first two presentations we’ve had really is about the democracy that we get elected to be a representative in.

G. Baier: I think I would also point out that it’s really hard to talk about the effect of the ban on corporate and union donations and the allowance system on average revenues. If you look at the longitudinal line of revenues for parties, of course, it’s always like this with election years. There’s always this bump.

It’s quite extreme — the drop, of course. If you’re not campaigning, then it seems like there’s nothing that parties need to do. But of course, parties have a lot to do between elections. The more we can professionalize and regularize some of those functions, we’re getting a little bit closer to that European model of parties as these organizations that actually have responsibilities between elections and not just campaign organizations.

You’re part of a small caucus in the Legislature. If you didn’t have the party recognition, the work that you would be doing would be much harder and quite outside of what you have to do as a political party to try to stay organized and relevant so you’re ready for the next election.

The dark days for the NDP in the B.C. Legislature were when there were two members and they weren’t officially recognized as a party. Joy MacPhail will tell you lots of stories about how hard that was to do when the party, essentially, had no resources in the Legislature and was entirely reliant on what it could get from outside.

J. Brar (Chair): Any further questions?

Ronna-Rae.

R. Leonard: Thank you for recognizing me, Jagrup.

Thank you for your presentation, Gerry. I really appreciated you talking about the consequences that roll out of making these kinds of policy decisions. I guess I have a question. I am not sure that having…. The system is in…. Is it Italy that has multiple, multiple parties that sit in their government and the challenges that that presents to actually governing? I’m not sure that….

I considered: what is the impact of really spreading the seeds all over the field? How you actually get something that’s cohesive that’ll work in terms of governance?

I’m just a little bit curious about how you feel about…. You mentioned it almost in, I would say, a negative connotation to say cartel-like parties — that it’s not so much a dominating, heavy-handed scenario so much as something that is a little bit more reflective of what’s required to create a democracy that works.

G. Baier: My colleagues are more enthusiastic about electoral reform, but I always say I’m ambivalent about electoral reform. They would say that the first-past-the-post system is really about cartel-like behavior. It’s protecting the parties that already exist.

We've seen enough instability in the party system in Canada and in British Columbia to see party names cha­nge, parties that were in the wilderness become the party of government, and so on, over time. That’s definitely something that can happen. New parties pop up and alter the system again at the provincial level and at the federal level. So there is room for that.

I think in an allowance system, it’s providing some ad­vantage to existing parties. If you’re basing it on share of the popular vote in the last election, it’s a little bit backward-looking for what is forward-looking.

The best example I can give you of this kind of behaviour is at the federal level in the late ’80s. The broadcasting advertisements were…. The Elections Act had required broadcasters to provide that time. It wasn’t something that parties could really buy. So they had a broadcasting arbitration system in the legislation that was based on your share of the popular vote in the last election.

[10:05 a.m.]

The Reform Party in 1988 couldn’t get any advertising time because they didn’t exist in the ’84 election. It was clearly a player in that ’88 election that wanted to be part of that system. So that cartel-like behaviour was what was being protected there.

I think the fact that we’ve seen two new parties grab 2 percent of the share is suggestive that maybe that can happen. Maybe there is some need to look at the thresholds to see whether or not they could be a little bit lower or whether parties will, again, as I say, change their behaviour a little bit to recognize that if they can get over the threshold in a constituency or two, that could really help their chances at getting allowance.

Again, I’m open to Dennis’s concern about somebody just trying to make a living by collecting a party allowance. I don’t think that’s a big concern, but it would seem to un­dermine the intent of the legislation.

A. Mercier: I guess I’d say, Gerry, I really appreciated your comments on the complexity of determining whether or not a candidate is properly supported. Obviously, elections are big, crazy events run by folks that have to make a lot of difficult resource allocation decisions under a situation of scarce resources. So whether or not a candidate is properly supported looks different if you’re a candidate that didn’t receive support versus the one making the decision. It’s a really qualitative question.

I have a question just about a comment you made earlier about allowances and the system of allowances we’ve set up along with the fundraising limit, which is about roughly $1,200 with inflation, benefitting middle-income candidates over others because it benefits middle-class professionals — i.e., I’m a lawyer — people with broad networks that can fundraise.

I guess what I would say to you is that there is definitely, probably, an element of that. But at the same token, you also want people…. Candidates who are going to be successful are likely going to be candidates who have strong ties in their community.

I look at some of the folks on this screen who have been municipal councillors, who come from working-class backgrounds or backgrounds of having run small businesses. That levels the playing field to the extent that folks that have broader support in the community or a lot of small connections are going to be able to leverage that in the same way as people who are accountable to a couple of big donors.

I’ve run under both regimes, in 2013 and in 2020. It’s a different world to go and ask people for a lot of small donations than to go ask a few people for a lot of big ones.

G. Baier: Yeah. I think that’s the case. I think that it’s one of the built-in barriers, though, to some of that broader representation. People who have, I think….

It’s kind of a chicken and egg question about the con­nections you have to a community and if you have the ability to make those connections in certain kinds of professions. So we see teachers and lawyers being overrepresented in our legislatures versus people who have to put in shift work and the like.

To the extent that we’re looking for economic diversity in our candidates, I think that people could be quite successful. But sometimes the barriers to it…. What seems like the free time and the ability to connect with people that a lot of people would take for granted can be sometimes forgotten — that that’s not necessarily everyone’s experience.

I think you’ve probably found the magic formula for being successful as a representative, in that sense. You did come from local council or something like that, and you’ve had that ability to connect with people. You’re aware of the organizations that are in the community. The invitations roll in once you’re elected — in pre-COVID times, of course.

At the same time, a diverse candidate pool, as well…. It’s not just that we need good representatives who have those connections, but that we’re better served by a diverse candidate pool in elections, as well, so that it’s not the person who’s run five times before because they know that they can afford it, even if they were unsuccessful. But we want to see and the parties like to see new blood, as well.

I think that it is a very subtle and challenging thing, but there are systemic barriers that might stop some people from running and even having the time to make as many of those connections, although there’s nothing to say that they wouldn’t necessarily be good representatives if elected.

J. Brar (Chair): Thank you.

Members, our next presenter is here. I can allow one more question, if anybody has a question.

[10:10 a.m.]

On behalf of all the members, Dr. Baier, I would like to say thanks to you for your submission and very useful presentation to us. That certainly adds to our knowledge. I really appreciate you coming today.

Our next presenter is Dr. Maxwell Cameron.

Welcome, Dr. Cameron. You have up to 15 minutes for your presentation. Hansard Services has provided a timer, which will be visible on your screen. Before you start, I would like to ask the members to quickly introduce themselves.

P. Milobar (Deputy Chair): Good afternoon. I’m Peter Milobar, the Deputy Chair of the committee and the MLA for Kamloops–North Thompson.

A. Olsen: Adam Olsen, the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands.

G. Kyllo: Greg Kyllo, the MLA for Shuswap.

B. Anderson: Brittny Anderson, the MLA for Nelson-Creston.

I’m on the unceded, traditional territory of the Ktunaxa, the Sinixt and the Syilx Peoples.

R. Leonard: Ronna-Rae Leonard, the Courtenay-Com­ox MLA.

A. Mercier: Andrew Mercier. I’m the MLA for Langley.

I’m on the traditional territory of the Kwantlen, Katzie, Matsqui and Semiahmoo-speaking peoples.

J. Brar (Chair): Dr. Cameron, we also have three staff members helping us with this process — Ron Wall, Susan Sourial and Jesse Gordon.

Please proceed.

MAXWELL CAMERON

M. Cameron: Thank you very much, Chair and committee members. It really is an honour to speak with you today. My name is Max Cameron.

I live and I work at UBC on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish First Nations — the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh.

My research focuses on democratization from a comparative perspective, so I’m very interested in the role that political parties play in democracies around the world. I am not an expert specifically on party finance or on Canadian politics like the previous guests, but rather on the role that parties play in a democracy.

I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to bring much controversy to our discussion today. I have to say that I am almost entirely in agreement with everything that I’ve heard from the two previous speakers, my colleagues Dennis Pilon and Gerald Baier.

I want to start by just stressing something you’ve already heard but I think is very important, and that is just the vital role that political parties play in our democracy. This is something that political scientists broadly agree on. Parties have been described by political scientists as making democracy workable — that democracy is actually un­thinkable without political parties.

There are many reasons for that. Parties provide voters with absolutely critical information that they need about the values and beliefs of candidates. Party labels and platforms serve as cues and shortcuts that help voters to un­derstand their electoral options. Without political parties, voters would be faced with a bewildering array of choices.

Parties also make democracy workable for politicians by solving coordination problems, by giving them a longer time horizon, by helping them to organize and discipline their members. Parties benefit society as a whole. Democracy is more stable when powerful, political interests — for example, business or labour — are well represented in the political system. Powerful social groups are much less likely to engage in extra-parliamentary activity if they’re well represented in parliament.

Parties are also essential to governance, because they help to organize legislative life, to negotiate compromises, to ensure government is accountable and to prevent abuses of power. They play a key role in recruiting people into public life and socializing them into the norms of democracy.

Given that parties are so essential to achieving and to maintaining and to improving the quality of democracy, it seems to me that the case is very strong for funding political parties. Put simply, without parties, we wouldn’t have a democracy.

[10:15 a.m.]

In fact, I would suggest that the arguments one fre­quently hears — for example, in the media among opinion-makers — against the funding of parties have kind of a perverse quality. They often feed into narratives about parties as being self-dealing, untrustworthy or out of touch. These sentiments point to problems with political parties that can only be addressed by strengthening them, not by weakening them.

We need political parties with strong linkages to society. We need political parties that have a life between elections. We need parties that perform the functions of representation within, as Gerry mentioned a minute ago, our increasingly diverse and pluralistic societies. We need parties that seek compromise and consensus and find areas of policy convergence.

The trend in most established democracies is for fear of people to join parties, for fear of people to feel identified with parties and consequently, for fear of people to feel bonds of trust with politicians. I think that this is in fact a long-term, secular threat to our democracy.

Is it a problem that can be solved by the market? Can we rely on private funds to address the question? Without public funds, parties are compelled to solicit donations from private individuals. In B.C., I think we’ve wisely chosen to ban corporate and union donations and put a cap on individual contributions. This has not only levelled the playing field; it has, in fact, prevented the corruption of our democracy — the kind of institutional corruption that we now see is pervasive south of the border.

A system based on private contributions is not only un­fair because money talks and people with more money have a louder megaphone; it actually risks skewing politics in favour of the wealthy few. This can lead to policy de­cisions that increase income and wealth inequality. In­equality isn’t a natural or inevitable phenomenon. It’s the result of policy choices that privilege the wealthy few. Such choices are more likely to happen in a system that is dominated by private money. If we want parties that serve democratic functions, we can’t rely on the market to fund them.

Are there problems with the public funding of parties? Does it, for example, increase their dependence on the state? Does it burden voters with costly subsidies for org­anizations they don’t actually wish to support? Is it a step, actually, towards the regulation of political parties? My view is that all of these objections either miss the mark or can be addressed.

The case for parties, in fact, is much like the case for utilities. They supply a public good. As one of my colleagues puts it: electrical utilities supply power; parties supply democracy. The cost of financing parties is insignificant compared with the benefits that they provide for democracy. Public funding links revenue to votes, not to the wealth of private donors, and consequently, public funding can promote policy convergence.

We just heard a very good statement by Gerry about the logic for that. That private funding can amplify the power of wealthy minorities that may have views that are not in the mainstream of public opinion. Publicly funded parties are less likely to be taken over by wealthy interests. Public funding of parties creates a more level playing field. This is the argument about equity that Dennis Pilon mentioned — a more level playing field for all parties.

Finally, public funding of parties between elections en­ables parties to engage in activities other than campaigning — for example, strengthening grassroots organizations. The corollary of the analogy to utilities, however, is that funds should not be provided without regulation. I think it is entirely appropriate for public funds to be earmarked for the democratic function of parties.

Perhaps I would add to Dennis’s three criteria — the criteria of equity, transparency and need — the criteria of democracy. The point of funding political parties should be about strengthening our democracy by enhancing the capacity of political parties to perform their democratic functions. For that to happen, it might be a good idea to have parties, for example, registered as organizations with defined constitutions and structures.

[10:20 a.m.]

Parties tend to be hierarchical and disciplined organizations. That’s largely as it should be. I say that because in our Westminster parliamentary system, we actually need disciplined parties to get legislation done. So a certain modicum of party discipline and centralized control is, in fact, important, I think, in our political parties. But I share Gerry’s concern about the possibility of public funding of parties enhancing central control rather than enhancing the capacity of ordinary MLAs to work as legislators.

I’ll just give an example of this. I had a conversation several years ago with a member who had sat with a political party and then sat as an independent. I asked him what the difference was. He said that the biggest and most noticeable difference was he had more resources, because he was now entitled to the share of resources that, when he was a member of a political party, was actually captured centrally.

I think it’s really important that if there be public funding for parties, that money not be entirely captured and spent centrally but that it actually be used to strengthen the role that ordinary MLAs can play, including backben­chers, including government and opposition. If we want political parties to be more democratic, with deeper roots of society, then parties need the resources to build robust and active riding associations.

One of the things that concerns me about the character of our democracy today is that in many cases, our riding associations have become more ephemeral. They play less of an important role in the life of the political party. I think that reinvigorating our riding associations is an important goal.

Perhaps better monitoring and management of nominations processes. I think that all of you know better than I how crazy nomination processes can get. Perhaps if there’s public funding for parties, we could look at ways of im­proving the ways in which nominations are run.

What about providing training for the next generation of leaders? I think it’s incredibly critical. This has to do with the socialization function of parties. Parties not only provide training for their members who have been elected but also grooming for people who have shown an interest, a vocation, for public service and might run in the future. I think it’s absolutely essential that funding be used for research and for staff, to enhance the performance of elected officials.

I think it’s also worth recognizing, given that our public is often disapproving of the degree of partisanship in our politics…. And I’m not saying that partisanship is a bad thing. Again, I insist, parties are central to democracy. We need parties to have a robust democracy. Partisanship is built into the DNA of our democratic system. But you can overdo it with partisanship if you’re not capable of working out compromises, if you’re not capable of working together, if you’re not capable of finding common ground.

One of the ways in which we find common ground is by engaging in common activities. This committee is a good example. Whenever people work across party lines to get work done, you create the possibility of discovering common ground. I think that there is an important series of issues around which we need to build consensus. We need to build a consensus that’s sustainable around things like climate change or reconciliation. So some of that funding could very well be earmarked for cross-partisan activities.

Finally, I’d say that if parties are to receive public funds, the public should know what it’s getting in return. That’s why we need mechanisms of reporting, perhaps periodic auditing. The kind of funding that’s provided should be known to the public, and it should be the kinds of things that the public would approve of.

Let me just close by putting the discussion we are having here today into somewhat larger historical perspective. There was a time when politics was dominated by tiny groups of powerful men and women, when legislatures were just assemblies of notables that provided advice and consent to monarchs and when governments had very limited responsibilities to the people. With the emergence of the modern state, two things have occurred.

[10:25 a.m.]

First, we’ve seen the development of vast bureaucracies. Civil servants running state institutions or agencies now number in the hundreds of thousands in countries like Canada and in the millions in the United States.

Second, politics has become dominated by people who live off and for politics — in other words, professional politicians who are members of parties. In Canada, they number only in the hundreds — thousands, perhaps, if we count mayors and city councillors. So you’ve got a small number of elected officials who occupy the apex positions within our states, yet they play a vital role in democracy, and they should be given the resources to perform that role with excellence.

Like the previous speakers, I don’t feel comfortable suggesting how large the allowance should be. It seems to me simply that one needs to look at the kinds of activities that we want to encourage parties to undertake and fund them appropriately. That being said, however, I would suggest that the allowance that we give to political parties is something that should be made permanent. It is a public good. It’s a good thing. It would enrich and enhance our democracy, or at least it has the potential to do so, and I see no reason why it should be sunset.

With that, I’ll conclude and look forward to your questions and reflections.

J. Brar (Chair): Thank you so much, Dr. Cameron, for your suggestions and for your work toward strengthening democracy.

I will now open the floor for questions. Members, raise your hand, and I will recognize you.

Adam, please proceed.

A. Olsen: Thank you, Dr. Cameron, for this presentation.

I’m wondering. I think it’s a… Here, I’ll just ask the question. Are there any jurisdictions you can point to that tie public funding to the democratic functions? It’s a novel idea, and I think, certainly, in building and investing in the robustness of our democracy, it’s important. Are there any examples of this that you can point to for us to maybe do further research in?

M. Cameron: It would be worth taking a look at the European cases that Dennis mentioned — the Scandinavian and, I believe, the German cases. It’s something that I’d be happy to look into, although I don’t have the information at my fingertips.

J. Brar (Chair): Next question? Any further questions, Members?

R. Leonard: Not so much a question, but just thank you for your comments. I think it’s an interesting road to travel down when we start talking about the impact of where the money goes and what it’s used for. I haven’t heard that so much, and the notion of strengthening democracy is what it’s all about. So I really appreciate those comments that you made.

I guess I do have a question around the last comment you made around the increase…. I remember I looked into this. I come from the British imperial colonizers of Can­ada, unfortunately, and was doing some research around the Family Compact and then the changes that happened to democratize Canada. I think that transformation was quite dramatic, and there was a push to change it even further with the republican insurgence.

Where we’ve landed right now…. You mentioned public servants and professional politicians. I wasn’t quite certain…. What does it mean to you to see the public service being large and the machinery that runs government?

M. Cameron: One of the things that I’m very interested in…. In this regard, I’ve worked closely with Gerry, as well, in the context of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions’ Institute for Future Legislators, where we are engaged in preparing people for public life. I’m really struck by the fact that, if you think about all of the different professions that are so critical to the proper functioning of our society, whether it’s doctors or lawyers or teachers or nurses or firefighters, and so forth, professionalization means that they are trained. They get experience.

[10:30 a.m.]

You mentioned the sort of social compact. The compact of the professions is we expect our professionals to serve the interests of the people who fall under their care. There is some kind of regulation. There are typically accreditation boards. There are penalties for malpractice, and so forth. That’s the way that the professions largely function.

Politics, I would like to assert, is also a profession. When you are engaged in politics, in some sense it is the highest and most ennobling of all professions. It doesn’t require specialized training because, of course, we want low barriers to entry. So we select people for the profession through elections, not through accreditation. That’s as it should be. However, you can ask the question of whether elections are in fact selecting people with the right characteristics.

We might want to think about — given the importance that politics plays, given the importance of the decisions that people make, given the breadth of the constituencies that politicians represent — whether a degree of professionalization is in fact in order.

If you look, for example, at trust in professions, you'll find that medical doctors are at the very top. Politicians are always at the bottom. I think one of the reasons for that is we haven’t given enough attention to the need to professionalize our politics. When I say “professionalize,” I don’t mean something elitist. I don’t want to suggest that we need to credential politicians or have barriers to entry. I think we want to encourage as many people as possible to enter politics.

We also want to make sure the activity of politics, the activities that involve representation, law-making, advo­cacy — all of those things — are undertaken with the greatest possible skill, knowledge and competency. If we don’t take that seriously, we run the risk…. I suspect that all of you would know better than I would what it’s like to be elected to office and find yourself now saying: “Okay, what’s the job? What do I do? What are the skills and knowledge I need to perform this well?”

You kind of have to learn it on the job. You have to learn it through trial and error and practice. That’s a good thing. Anything we can do to support our politicians so that they perform those functions more effectively, so that law-making becomes central to their activity…. This kind of activity is absolutely critical.

Representation of constituents is, obviously, critical. Taking on causes and addressing them, big problems in our society, are all critical things. How can we empower our politicians — not just our party leaders, not just the Premiers and the cabinet officials but all of our politicians — our city councillors, our mayors, our MLAs, and so forth? How can we empower them to perform to the best of their abilities?

That’s really what I’m trying to get at with the idea that parties perform these democratic functions. For example, in many European countries, political parties do have schools where they prepare people for public life. They do have training programs. They do provide a range of services to their members.

This is a caricature, and I don’t want to overstate it. In­creasingly, our political parties have become PR vehicles for candidates. That’s not going to help them in the long run, in terms of public trust, in terms of the public confidence in our democracy and the relationship with the civil servants. I’ll just end on this. Civil servants do have tremendous knowledge and expertise.

Just think about the pandemic and how important it has been to have public health officials whom we trust, sitting or standing side by side with elected officials we also trust, and giving us the kinds of messages that we need to figure out how to make our way through this pandemic. That relationship is absolutely crucial. Well, how do you build that kind of relationship? How do you ensure that the civil service and the elected officials work well together?

As we have seen in the United States under the Trump administration, with the fighting between the CDC and the White House, when that breaks down, the results could be absolutely catastrophic. There, again, I think Trump represents a good example of what happens when you have outsiders, people who are unfit for office and have no prior experience in office coming in and taking positions of tremendous importance. I’m not saying that public funding of parties could have prevented that, but it certainly is, I think, part of the solution.

J. Brar (Chair): Members, the next presenter is here. I can allow one more question, if anybody wanted to ask a question.

[10:35 a.m.]

If not, I would like to ask a question, Dr. Cameron. You mentioned that money should not be used by the political parties…. Can you comment on that, like how this annual allowance should be used by political parties?

M. Cameron: Well, I was not meaning to suggest anything particularly onerous or difficult, because I don’t think that what you want to do is create a whole new set of rules and regulations that are going to be onerous. But I think that simply, in the academic world, when we need funding for research, we prepare a research proposal, and we attach a budget to it. We are kind of expected to spend the money as we have committed ourselves to doing.

I think you could simply ask parties to indicate in ad­vance how they plan to spend the money. Make that a public document. Then there can be some kind of accounting for that at the end of the year. How was that money actually spent? Did it correspond with what was promised? I don’t think one needs to be particularly demanding in this regard. I think it could be done in a way that’s not particularly onerous.

I do think potentially some auditing of that to ensure that the money is being spent, not…. It goes to the objection that we’ve already heard: why should the public fund parties to engage in attack ads or opposition research? Right? Arguably, there’s a place for those in the context of campaigning, but I’d like to believe that our parties have a broader democratic function. Those would not be the kinds of things that you would necessarily put in a budget that you would submit, or that you would show that you had done, at the end of the fiscal year.

J. Brar (Chair): On behalf of all committee members, I would like to convey our sincere thanks to you, Dr. Cameron, for coming today and making a presentation to committee members and for your submission. This will certainly help us to understand this public policy issue in a better way.

Good morning. Our next presenter today is Ryan Campbell from Fair Vote Canada of B.C.

Ryan, first of all, welcome to the committee today, and thank you for coming today to make your presentation. You will have 15 minutes for your presentation, and there will be a timer on the screen. You can see that. Members will be able to ask questions after that, for 15 minutes.

With that, please proceed, Ryan.

FAIR VOTE CANADA

R. Campbell: Hi. Thank you for having me, and thank you for the invitation.

I am coming to you from the unceded, traditional territories of the Katzie, Kwantlen and Kwikwetlem First Nations.

It also happens to be the riding of the Chair. I will confess to also being a B.C. Liberal member, albeit not always a very happy one. That’s where I’m coming from.

Unlike the previous few guests, I am an engineer by trade. I am a volunteer with Fair Vote Canada. I’m not a political scientist. We’re a volunteer-driven organization. I won’t repeat too much of the equity arguments.

First of all, I guess I should say that we’re in favour of maintaining the current hybrid system of a per-vote subsidy and of personal donations, up to a cap. We support that for much the same reasons that the political scientists have outlined. We think it’s an equity issue — that it supports equality between voters.

That’s the core of what our organization is. It also has some pragmatic benefits, one being that the people who donate aren’t necessarily…. If we relied exclusively, at least, on political donations…. Individual donors, in my opinion, fall under two categories. They either have more money than the average voter, or they have a greater emotional attachment to the political process than the average voter. I would fall into the latter category. I’ll confess that I donate far more to political parties and political causes than I should. But it’s not necessarily healthy to skew our politics just to people like me.

We also support indexing the per-vote subsidy to inflation, at whatever amount it gets set at, just so that there’s stability in the long term. We would like to see some kind of forward-looking measures added. We talk about how in Seattle, there is a voucher program. It costs about $8 per household, but each household is given a voucher that they can direct to a political party.

[10:40 a.m.]

The disadvantage of the per-vote subsidy is it is backwards-looking. It’s based on past performance. A new par­ty could emerge, and new parties have emerged. You can imagine the B.C. Liberals in the 1980s, and you can imagine the Greens in the 2000s, where the past electoral performance has not been representative of their future potential. We think that would be something that should be considered to be added.

A question that came up here was around how you make something permanent when the next legislature can just scrap it. That’s a fair and valid concern. We suggest a way to add some weight and some inertia to the political financing process would be to have some kind of citizens’ panel or assembly — but perhaps a citizens’ assembly on a smaller scale — that would look at this and make recommendations for the long term. That, I think, would give some weight to what the status quo is or whatever the new status quo becomes. It would make it more difficult and less political for it to be repealed or reimplemented, and so forth.

I don’t really want to retread too much on what the other speakers have said. They have far more expertise in this than I do. One thing I would like to comment on, though, that I think Dennis Pilon brought up — I’m not sure who it was that brought it up — is the political funding for independents. We would support extending the per-vote subsidy to independents.

Ireland does this. Ireland has the most political independents out of any legislature in the world, and 19 of their 160 MPs are independents right now. That’s a bit a function of their voting system and a bit a function of just their political culture. People like independents there.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable, though, to suggest that an independent candidate should have the same financial resources for, say, a future run or in some form of reimbursement or some means to collect money in a savings account that a partisan nominee has. I think it’s just fair and right.

You can look at this right now. There’s a bit of a perverse situation where if you run as a one-member party, which was the Rural B.C. Party, and you reach at least 5 percent of the vote, you get a per-vote subsidy — it’s not a lot of money; I think they’re receiving $700 — whereas parties that run more candidates and collect more votes may not qualify because they don’t reach that average 5 percent threshold. I think that’s something that needs to be looked at and addressed.

Otherwise, I’m free to take questions.

J. Brar (Chair): Thank you, Ryan, once again, for coming today to make your presentation to committee members. I appreciate that.

I will open the floor for questions. Members, any questions? Any questions, Members? No questions?

Adam.

A. Olsen: Thank you, Ryan, for your presentation, and thank you for your addition. In addition, I think, to the presentations that we had with respect to proposing a voucher system of some kind, it is important to take a look at other ways than just simply the three that had been put in front of us. I just wanted to acknowledge that. Thank you for your presentation.

J. Brar (Chair): Any other questions, Members? Looks simple.

Thank you, Ryan, once again, for coming. Come sometime for a cup of tea to the Fleetwood office. That’s your office.

R. Campbell: I may take you up on that.

J. Brar (Chair): Any time, my friend. Any time.

On behalf of all committee members, I would like to say thanks to you for coming today to make this presentation to us. I really appreciate that.

R. Campbell: Thank you.

J. Brar (Chair): Thank you, everyone, for your time and for attending the meeting, listening to these presentations and asking questions.

This will be the last item on the agenda today, Members. The committee will meet again tomorrow, Wednesday, May 26, at 2:30 p.m. to continue our public hearing. Are there any other comments or anything?

Susan? Please proceed. You wanted to say…?

[10:45 a.m.]

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant, Committees and Interparliamentary Relations): We are meeting at one tomorrow. We’ve got an in-camera portion, and then we will start the public hearings. We’ve had a new presenter register. I’ll send out an updated witness list and agenda to committee members. We have our first presenter tomorrow at two.

J. Brar (Chair): So we meet at one o’clock for the private discussion. Is that what it is? Members’ discussion about this public policy, and then we start the public hearing at two?

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant, Committees and Interparliamentary Relations): Correct.

J. Brar (Chair): Two o’clock. Okay.

With that, Members, are there any questions or any clarification anybody needs? If none, could I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? So moved by Ronna and seconded by Adam.

The meeting is adjourned today. We’ll meet again to­morrow at 1 p.m. Thank you very much. Have a nice day.

The committee adjourned at 10:46 a.m.