Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 17th, 2017

[Greg Essensa]

As I stated many times in my appearances in Ontario and I have stated here, I am a believer in a balance between public and private financing. There are many models, and prior to my appearance here, I reviewed the models of some of the other individuals who appeared here. Mr. Conacher was one, and he advocated for the Quebec model.

I am aware of other jurisdictions, based on my 32 years in the electoral business. New York City has a matching grants program. There are another couple of jurisdictions in the United States that have matching grants programs. I don't advocate for one over the other, from a public policy perspective. I do advocate very strongly, though, that no public financing model should unduly enrich the political parties and/or candidates. At best, it should be revenue neutral, from my perspective.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

How would you approach that?

[Greg Essensa]

That is based on the fact that, for a number of years, electoral management bodies, Elections Ontario and Elections Canada, have a great number of historical records and information based on fundraising activities and on the amounts that both candidates and political parties have raised over the years and have spent. We have all kinds of statistics to show what the average political party has spent on a campaign in Ontario over the last 10 to 15 years. There can be some fairly easy analysis done on that to ensure that, whatever model you put in place, it does not unduly enrich political actors.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

It's interesting. Just to be fair-minded, in the past regime, most of the political parties were within the boundaries you are suggesting, with the exception of one significant party. I'm not going to name it, but the story goes that basically they didn't have to do any fundraising because that just covered everything they needed, and I would suspect that it starts to enter into the domain that you're suggesting is an unfair enrichment. This is what I meant by my first question.

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that there is one party that benefits for a whole host of reasons, and yet it works fine on balance for everyone else. How do you go about trying to get a system that would be fair for everyone when the dynamic of one party is such that it's just going to be almost impossible? Do you kind of live with that?

I'm asking because, in my opinion, you could say that the regime we had federally before was fair-minded for most of the players—it struck that balance that you've talked of and most of us feel comfortable with—but not that one. You are never really going to find a regime that would bring that in in the same way just because of the dynamics of the party and the way they approached federalism.

Have you any further thoughts? Do you still live with it if you say that we have 80% of the players covered, and the 20% we'll just have to live with? Is there a mitigating factor I'm not thinking of? Could I just have your thoughts, sir?

[Greg Essensa]

I would recommend to the committee that, in addition to the provisions that are currently in the bill, political financing is something that I as Chief Electoral Officer believe should be reviewed on a consistent basis, and there should be a committee to examine, as you just suggested, whether there is a public financing regime that is unduly enriching one political party.

There should be some analysis done after every election. Unfortunately, at times in this country, as I've noted looking at various jurisdictions, we tend to take a very long-term approach to electoral reform, and it can be campaign finance reform. As I indicated, in Ontario it had been many decades since we had significant reform. I think that is a mistake.

We should have a more regularized process enshrined in the statute whereby we would have an analysis done after every election, every five years, no different from what we do with other components of our society. We have the census every 10 years. It is automatic. For electoral reform, we should have something similar at both the federal and provincial levels.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I hope I'm not putting words in your mouth, but that would prevent things from getting worse, bad, terrible, horrible, with public scandals, and then wholesale change again. Rather than that, we could do it on a regular basis to stay on top of the thing.

[Greg Essensa]

As I indicated in my opening comments, the law of unintended consequences is something we have seen in Ontario. I have already written once to the legislature about that based on the reforms they put in place at the end of 2016. I suspect I will write again after our 2018 general election, after what I have seen.

Quite honestly, the electoral process is at the heart of our democracy. It is something that parliamentarians should look at on a regular basis.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

As I've grown to expect, the contribution of the public service in Ontario is fantastic, and you showed that again today. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Chair. I'm good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Thank you very much for coming.

I have two quick things for the committee. When we're doing clause-by-clause, I assume it's okay if we have the officials here, as is normal, in case we have any questions.

Second, could each party bring their suggestions for our study on parent-friendly, women with babies..., for the end of Thursday's meeting so we can—

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Chair, parents with babies are parents of any gender.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I mean parents of any gender. We'll start planning at the next meeting.

Thank you. It was a good meeting, everyone. Thanks.

The meeting is adjourned.