I favour Democracy Watch's position and the coalition's position, which is that the matching funding that Quebec has is a better way to go. The matching funding should be higher in Quebec and the per-vote funding lower. Per-vote funding is fine as long as it's just a base amount that's being given. It's proportional, so it makes it more fair for the parties that don't win as many seats as they should based on the percentage of votes they receive, and that's an important thing.
One of the biggest public subsidies to the parties is that our first-past-the-post system gives some parties more seats than they deserve. Each one of those politicians who's elected gets $450,000 in public money each year. That's a huge public subsidy. The per-vote subsidy at least is democratic because it's based on votes that are received, the actual percentage of votes the party receives, so if a party doesn't get as many seats as it should based on percentage of votes, at least it gets that money.
Matching funding is better, though, because it would go up and down each year based on how much the party raised. You can also do it for candidates, but you can't do the per-vote funding for candidates. It would be unfair to anyone challenging an incumbent.
Quebec has both. It could also be on a sliding scale, as in Quebec. Quebec has a higher amount of matching funding for the first $100,000 that you raise, or $10,000 that you raise as a candidate, and that helps level the playing field as well. Someone may have a lot of donors who can only afford to donate $50 in Quebec; let's say that person has 1,000 donors, so they only raise $50,000, but the first $10,000 is matched at a 2:1 ratio, so they get another $20,000. If someone has 1,000 donors but they each can afford to give $100, they could raise $100,000, but the matching makes it a bit more even because the one ends up with $70,000 and the proportion isn't as much out of whack.
That's why I favour matching funding, it goes up and down each year as well for the parties. If the party breaks all its promises and loses a ton of support, it won't get the matching funding.