Donations cut?
After years of debate, city council is once again considering banning corporate and union donations to candidates in municipal election campaigns.
Looking at the last election, the percentage of funding Toronto councillors took from developers, corporations and unions varies widely.
In the 2006 campaign, eight councillors including Michael Walker and Cliff Jenkins raised all their funds through individuals. Mayor David Miller also raised his $1,029,300 through 1,770 donations from individuals.
On the other side of the scale councillor Frances Nunziata relied the most on corporations with 72 percent of her campaign financed through these donations.
Locally, politicians relied largely on individual contributions.
Parkdale-High Park councillor Gord Perks said, “In the last election I didn’t take corporate donations and was one of a number of environmentalists, who vowed not to take donations from developers.”
However, he did take contributions from unions.
“I want to make sure we have a set of rules that works for everyone,” Perks said Jan. 23.
He reserved further comment until a report comes back on the issue this September.
However, Perks’ colleague in the adjacent ward, councillor Bill Saundercook did take contributions from corporations. He did not return repeated calls at press time.
St. Paul’s councillor Michael Walker has been pushing for election finance reform since 2001.
“There’s a perception out there that the average person doesn’t get a fair shake,” he said Jan. 13. “People who own a corporation can donate more than once.”
An owner of a company can donate once and again as an individual. As well, Walker mentioned that while affiliated companies with the same owner are not supposed to donate more than once to the same candidate, it’s difficult to track.
“With a numbered company, it’s hard to check ownership, so they can donate a number of times through various companies,” he said. “One person, one vote. It should (also) be one contribution per person.”
Eglinton-Lawrence councillor Howard Moscoe doesn’t support the policy change.
“I think this is a step backwards,” said the veteran. “With the system we have now, the public can tell precisely which corporation or union donated to who.
“With the proposed changes, the union will continue to donate (through individual members) but there will be less transparency.”
The city’s website publicly discloses the names and amounts of all donations over $100.
Council also passed a policy for the 2006 election that rebates would no longer be offered to corporate or union donors.
One group pushing for these reforms is Vote Toronto, which held a press conference Jan. 12 to launch a new report available at www.votetoronto.ca.
“I am not cynical enough to think $750 can buy a politician’s vote,” said Robert MacDermid, a York University associate professor of political science who researched 2006 election funding in 10 municipalities.
But he expressed dismay developers concentrate their donations to high-profile candidates and electing them makes council more development-friendly.
“What is being taken from democracy is a range of views that would be there without corporate donations,” said MacDermid, whose research tracked $10 million in donations to 672 candidates.
As a whole, all Toronto candidates, winners and losers, in the 2006 election received 12.1 percent of their funding from corporations compared to 68.2 percent from individuals.
By contrast in Pickering, 76.7 percent of campaign funding came from corporations and 18 percent from individual donors.
Back in 2004, Toronto city council voted to ban corporate and union campaign donations but did not have the power to make the policy change for the 2006 election. The province has since given the city the authority to pass a new bylaw before the 2010 election.
A vote on the new proposal is expected in the fall.