My wife remarked the other day that she doesn’t like the fact arenas, art galleries and other public venues are now “sponsored” buildings with a corporate name and logo dominating and permeating the facility.
The slow creep of corporatization has certainly accelerated over the past decade. We’ve become accustomed to corporate-sponsored public buildings, teams, textbooks, public events, fundraising efforts, etc. We’ve also had a growing sense that corporations are exercising more and more influence over politicians and public policy.
Recent events in B.C. should give us pause to consider if it’s now past time we put a stop to the influence corporations have on our political process by demanding that every leadership candidate in both B.C.’s major political parties commit publicly and specifically to election finance reform.
We need to end corporate donations (that includes unions) to political parties, leadership contenders and candidates.
The direct payment of the salary of the NDP’s party president by some unions and the “sponsorship” of NDP leadership candidate Adrian Dix by one of B.C.’s largest unions is further evidence of the need for dramatic change now.
The suspicion that big donors are buying influence over politicians and public policy may or may not be founded in reality, but we don’t need to keep feeding the deepening cynicism about politics and politicians by allowing this practice to continue — we should simply disallow businesses, unions, and other large organizations from donating to political parties.
Election finance reform should also limit donations from individuals, not allow numbered companies and anonymous individuals to donate, and speed up the time frame for the public reporting on who is donating to whom.
Our democracy is supposed to be based on “one person, one vote.” This fundamental and essential principle is undermined by the current ability of large organizations and the wealthy to influence the outcome of our elections (and potentially public policy) with large sums of money.
Bob Simpson is the Independent MLA for Cariboo North.