In the showdown between the Conservatives and an erstwhile Liberal-NDP coalition, one point gets obscured. In the Canadian political system, the voters do not vote for a government. When we vote, we vote for a local Member of Parliament. The formation of government is a byproduct of that, not the direct choice of Canadians. So, who does choose who forms a government. Very simply, it’s the Governor General. Most of the Governor General’s power’s are heavily constrained by convention, in that the GG has to follow the advice of the Prime Minister and cabinet.
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Towards a citizen-based system of party finance?
I always enjoy reading or listening to Andrew Coyne, even when I think he’s wrong. Today’s blog post praising the proposed elimination of the per vote subsidy is an interesting defence of the Conservatives’ announcement. In the post, he argues that this moves towards a citizen-based finance system for political parties, arguing that party support should be a private matter between citizens and parties. If that’s what we want, the problem is that the per vote subsidy isn’t the biggest culprit in this respect. Remember that there are three sources of public money to parties:
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The end of $1.75 per year per vote?
According to the Ottawa Citizen, the Conservatives are going to propose the end of the $1.75 per vote per year subsidy that came in 2004 as part of the reforms to party finance. The Conservatives are justifying this by saying that the country can’t afford this in times of economic downturn. That explanation doesn’t really make a lot of sense, considering that the $28 million that this cost taxpayers in 2007 is a tiny part of the multi-billion dollar federal budget. What seems more likely is that the Conservatives have wanted to do this since they can easily live without the subsidy. Only about a third of Conservative revenue comes from the state subsidy.
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Party Platforms – Analyzing When Voters Research their Vote
We use Google Analytics to monitor and analyze the traffic we receive on re:politics (formerly, Maple Leaf Web). The level of detail provided by Google Analytics is simply astonishing and it provides a unique look into how people are using re:politics (formerly, Maple Leaf Web) to research important political topics.
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How do you pay off a $200,000 leadership debt? $1,100 at a time
So, Stephane Dion has announced he’s quitting … eventually. There’s lots of speculation as to why he’s staying, but one popular theory is that he’s sticking around until the party crowns a new leader in order to pay off his lingering leadership campaign debt, estimated to be over $200,000. I thought it might be useful to quickly review the law over leadership finance to understand how daunting Dion’s task is. When the Liberals changed the party finance laws in 2004, they put in a $5,000 cap for a number of kinds of donations, including to leadership contests.
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If the Liberals thing replacing Dion will solve all of their problems, they’re delusional. Or stupid. Or both.
For most of the parties on election night, there was some good news. The Conservatives and NDP both have larger caucuses, the BQ was revived againm and the Greens increased in votes and dollars from the annual state subsidy. For the Liberals, however, you had to look hard for good news. The party earned its lowest share of the popular vote in its history, had one of its lowest seat totals ever, and was down in almost every region of Canada. The bright spots? Well, Quebec was bit kinder to the Liberals than most people expected. Also, despite a pretty ineffective campaign, the party still has a significant degree of support. The Liberals may have reached bottom and the only way to go is up.