Winning Power by Tom Flanagan

Author:Tom Flanagan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2014-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE HARPER REFORMS, 2011

When Parliament convened after the 2011 election, the new Conservative majority government announced that it would legislate an end to the quarterly allowances. The allowances would be continued through the 2011–12 fiscal year, after which they would be phased out in three steps, following the Conservatives’ platform commitment. That means that parties will receive 75 per cent of the present amount in 2012–13, 50 per cent in 2013–14, 25 per cent in 2014–15, and nothing thereafter. Thus, between the 2011 election and the next election, currently expected for October 2015, each party will receive the full subsidy for one year, plus 150 per cent of its current annual subsidy over the following three years, as compared to 400 per cent if the fiscal regime had not been changed.

That sounds like a big cut, and it is. But it is also true that parties’ financial requirements will be smaller, because there will not be another election for four years, whereas in the recent years of minority government, parties were paying for an election campaign every two years. Given this reduced spending requirement, the reduction in federal subsidies will not drive anyone into bankruptcy before the next election. The Liberals will have the toughest challenge – to start spending like a minor party. That won’t be easy, after having been a contender for government since Confederation. Yet many other parties, including the NDP, the Canadian Alliance, and the Progressive Conservatives after 1993, have run balanced budgets in straitened circumstances. The Conservatives and NDP, with their much larger phase-out allowances, will easily pay off any 2011 debts and still be in good shape for 2015.

The 2015 election will be decisive for the future of the centre-left in Canada. Unless the Liberals, reinvigorated by Justin Trudeau’s leadership, are able to resume their leading position in federal politics, the parties of the centre-left are likely to face serious financial problems. As they try to pay back campaign debts without corporate and union donations, or subsidies from the federal treasury, the Liberals, NDPs, and Greens will confront an unpleasant reality – there may not be enough financial room for three centre-left parties in Canada. The 2011 election showed there is not enough political space, as the NDP surge put a majority Conservative government in office by defeating the Liberals in Ontario. The 2015 election may show that there is not enough financial room, either.

If the Liberals under Justin Trudeau do not win in 2015, the centre-left parties will have to become more realistic about the Conservative nightmare they face – a well-funded, cohesive party of the centre-right, commanding about 40 per cent of the popular vote. In Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system, such a party wins every time against three underfunded, bickering opponents running against each other to determine who will become the official opposition. There may have to be a merger or an electoral coalition, or one or more of these parties may have to go out of business if the centre-left can ever hope to win again.

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