Liberal party president Stephen LeDrew minced no words, proclaiming the idea “dumb as a bag of hammers.”

Wow. The idea must be more than just run-of-the-mill dumb; it must be hugely dumb — dumber than, say, tax incentives for child pornographers.

So it might come as some surprise that the idea stirring up this kind of bile is the proposal — now being pushed by the Chrétien government — to ban corporate (and union) donations to political parties (donations to individual politicians would be permitted). Many people might regard the ban as one of the few reasonable thoughts to come out of government in recent years, with the only question being: Why dilly-dally with a partial ban, rather than an outright ban on these donations?

It’s hard to think of anything more fundamental to what’s wrong with our political system than the enormous role corporate money plays in influencing government.

Polling by Ekos Research Associates shows that the public feels big business has too much power, while ordinary people have too little. Government, on the other hand, is considered to have lots of power, but this is seen as appropriate.

Ekos polling also shows strong support for government investment in public programs such as health care and education, suggesting the public has different priorities than business, which pushes for tax cuts and privatization. We seem increasingly in danger of slipping into a U.S.-style political system, where corporations have a virtual hammer-lock on government.

As the Washington-based Centre for Responsive Politics has noted, Democratic candidate Al Gore financed his 2000 campaign largely with money from the telecommunications industry (a reward for the Clinton-Gore administration’s lax telecommunications regulations), while Republican George Bush was financed heavily by energy industry money. Since Bush ended up in the White House, Big Oil has been rewarded with massive new subsidies and a rollback of environmental regulations, not to mention stepped-up war plans to gain control of Iraqi oil reserves. Given the seriousness of the problem of corporate money in politics — nothing less than the effective disenfranchisement of our citizenry is at stake — it’s hard to imagine what possible objections there could be to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s plan, other than it doesn’t go far enough.

But this isn’t what the critics are arguing. Instead LeDrew has complained that curtailing corporate funds will oblige taxpayers to pick up the costs of elections. But the public already does this; corporations routinely deduct part of the cost of their donations from their taxes as business expenses.

And the public “pays” in another sense — with a loss of control over public policy — something that presumably matters in a democracy. To suggest otherwise, to suggest that we are getting “free” money from corporations that simply want to promote a healthy democratic process is, well, at least as dumb as a bag of hammers.

For that matter, why should we feel obliged to replace corporate money with direct public subsidies? How about simply letting political parties do with less money?

Does anyone really believe that the democratic process would be thwarted if political parties had to carry on campaigns with, God forbid, smaller budgets?

One result, according to Aaron Freeman, co-founder of the Ottawa watchdog group, Democracy Watch, would be that parties would have to look elsewhere for money — even seek support from more ordinary people. How bad would that be?

Another likely side-effect, suggests longtime political observer Tom Kent, would be the demise of those expensive TV campaign ads, best known for delivering nasty, below-the-belt and often misleading attacks on opponents.

Much as they’ve contributed to elevating public debate in this country, one suspects we could struggle by without them. Instead, TV stations could be required to give more free time to politicians and political debates during a campaign — at no extra cost to the taxpayer.

Sheila Copps, a likely Liberal leadership contender, suggested last week that the dominance of corporate money in politics delayed Canada’s passage of the Kyoto Protocol, which could have been approved years earlier.

Of course, in the end, Chrétien pushed Kyoto through, despite corporate opposition. But he might not have, if he’d been planning to rely on corporate financing for a re-election bid.

It’s likely that limits on corporate donations are only being proposed because we have a lameduck PM who, for that matter, was never particularly close to the corporate elite.

All the more reason to make hay while the sun shines. I fear it’s going to be a while before we luck into a situation this good again.

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...