Voter Subsidies

There, he's said it again. Tried once, in a 2008 budget that the Conservatives dangled before their political opponents, and it raised their ire to a fiery degree. To the extent that they were prepared to bring down the government, just newly elected. And to replace it with themselves, combined in an alliance of the also-ran, but voter-rejected.

And now, on yet another occasion, when the opposition allied themselves to bring down the government over another budget that the Canadian electorate felt served them well, the Prime Minister has promised that if returned to a majority government he will undertake to cancel the vote subsidies paid for by the taxpayer.

The $2-per vote returned to each political party, post-election, as long as the party receives over 2% of the popular vote, irrespective of seats taken or not, maintains a campaign chest for all of Canada's major political parties. And two parties which cannot be deemed to be either major or national.

Political parties, because they don't have to raise their own funding, don't really exert themselves in that arena, thanks to a parting gift from former PM Jean Chretien who resolved to make the issue 'fair' and 'above-board', after the previous raising of campaign funds from all sources had served him so very well.

There are many in the public who don't believe that these subsidies are the way to go. There are other ways to challenge the fund-raising ingenuity of political parties, and some of them have proved very successful at it. Withdraw the vote-subsidies, by all means. Most people do not wish to fund political parties, and particularly those whose agendas they strongly dislike.

Those who do agree that they want to give their charitable dollars to the political party of their choice are free to do so. We can think of a whole lot of ways that tax dollars can be spent in much better ways to produce value for the country. Many Canadians see no value in funding someone's personal environmental dedication.

But a far greater number of Canadian voters see it as an insult to the country to continue funding out of taxes extracted from the hard-earned earnings of all Canadians, a political party that sees them all as cows to be milked for a Quebec dairy. In support of a political party whose only mission is to benefit Quebec, not the whole of the country. And to the detriment of the rest of Canada.

The Bloc Quebecois sees its raison d'etre as convincing the Province of Quebec and its voters to overwhelmingly reject Confederation for the greater good of setting out on their own as a sovereign state. Why that mission should be funded by all Canadians makes no sense whatever.

So abolish the vote subsidies by all means, and the sooner the better.