Conservative candidates’ reliance on business contributions remained stable at just under
one third as well. NDP and BQ candidates, never heavily reliant on contributions from
business, further reduced their corporate contributions to less than ten percent of their
income.
In the case of both the Liberals and the NDP, the severing of the financial
relationship with former donors has not dealt a death blow to ongoing connections. The
Liberals remain connected to segments of corporate Canada via individual contributions
and contributions to Electoral District Associations (to say nothing of complex inter-
linking social ties), while the NDP remains committed to its partnership with organized
labour.
Conclusion
Although Canada’s new electoral finance regime has only been in place for
eighteen months, it has had profound impacts on internal party organization and the
conduct of politics. Among the many initial effects, however, we find little evidence that
Canadian parties are tending in the direction of Katz and Mair’s cartel-style parties. If
any of the parties are tending in this direction, it is the smaller parties that are the most
heavily reliant on public funds, lending some credence to the cartel argument. The largest
parties, however, are caught in a deeply competitive relationship that is standing in the
way of the complacency that would allow cartelization to occur.
That said, there is little evidence to suggest that state funding has liberated the
parties to engage in more meaningful ways with the electorate. Parties have not taken on
a more prominent role in policy development, mobilization of citizens, or public
education with their new funds. This raises the question of what expectations, if any,
should be placed on political parties serving as ‘public utilities’ – funded by the public
for public purposes. In its 1991 Report, the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and
Party Financing argued that publicly-funded political parties should be obliged to create
policy foundations aimed at augmenting the policy-development function of parties and
mobilizing citizens via policy discussions. Neither this proposal, nor any other that
19
Convention