After a bruising week for the Ford government and its fundraising targets, with a transportation group apparently buying tickets to a Progressive Conservative event to get the attention of a minister, an advocate is calling for donation limits to be dramatically lowered to avoid future controversy.
On Monday, Global News revealed that the Progressive Conservative party’s fundraiser, Tony Miele, had emailed all cabinet ministers, telling them to hold a certain number of fundraising events before the end of the year.
The move was necessary, he said in an email briefly sent to the government emails of chiefs of staff, to put the party in a healthy financial position before the next election.
The PCs batted away accusations from the Ontario NDP the email was anything like the 2016 cash-for-access scandal they hounded the former Liberal government over.
One group, however, appeared to be under the impression buying tickets to a fundraiser hosted by Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria and Doug Ford would be a good way to draw attention to changes they were lobbying for.
The Ontario Trucking Association asked its members to buy at least 50 to 60 tickets to the fundraiser to “turn this event into an OTA member trucking event,” and send the Ford government a message.
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“Our industry supports your government, and we need your government to bring order to our sector,” the association said in its appeal.
Duff Conacher, from the group Democracy Watch, said fundraising rules in Ontario make it difficult to avoid the perception of conflict of interest.
“The problem is that the system is the scandal — it’s really a system of legalized bribery,” he said in an interview on Focus Ontario.
Conacher said the best way to crack down on the idea that attending a fundraiser could be a strategic way to advance your interests with the government of the day is to lower donation limits significantly.
“When you have this system of big donations that most people can’t afford, then making a big donation — and even more so helping with the fundraising of a bunch of donations — is a way of having more influence,” he said.
“The number one step is to do what Quebec did after it had a corruption scandal now about 15 years ago, which is to lower the donation limit to the amount that the average voter can afford. And in Ontario that’s only about $100 based on the donation records from Elections Ontario of amounts the average voter donates to a party.”
At Queen’s Park during the week, while the Ontario NDP repeatedly asked the government about the issue, the Liberals — who suffered through similar claims when they were in power — were less keen to discuss the issue.
“The NDP is just, in fairness, wasting a lot of valuable house time talking about that issue when they should be talking about the things Ontario families care about the most,” Liberal MPP Stephen Blais said Thursday.
He said that amount is “probably too high,” but otherwise suggested the rules as they stand are working.
“We had an extreme fundraising ban in the past — it didn’t work,” he said.
“If we want to have a vigorous debate when it’s time for elections, that requires that political parties are well-funded, to express themselves, and ensure that Ontarians can hear that message. That requires money, that requires fundraising.”
Undeterred, the NDP plans to table an opposition motion on Tuesday to stop ministers from receiving benefits or donations that directly or indirectly relate to the portfolios they manage.
Ontario NDP Marit Stiles previewed the plan on Thursday, saying cabinet ministers should not be fundraising off of people who have business in their ministry.
“That’s pretty explicit,” she said Thursday in the legislature. “The government has created a cash-for-access culture that is sending Ontarians a clear message that if they want to be heard, they need to pay up.”
— with files from The Canadian Press
Focus Ontario premieres at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 23, on Global TV.
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