Ontario Premier Doug Ford attends Question Period as the Ontario Legislature resumes in Toronto on Oct. 21.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Ontario has extended for another two years its practice of handing millions of dollars in subsidies to the province’s political parties, ahead of a possible early election in 2025.
Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government had passed changes three years ago that would have phased out at the end of this year the subsidy per vote received in the most election. He had previously railed against the handout in 2018 as “political welfare” but later extended it during the pandemic.
Attorney-General Doug Downey on Wednesday tabled a bill, with the agreement of all parties in the house, that would again extend the per-vote subsidies until January, 2027, after the next scheduled election in June, 2026.
The subsidy, brought in by the previous Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne after a “cash-for-access” scandal over political donations, doles out $0.64 per vote per quarter to each political party.
This funding provides the Ontario Liberals with $714,898 a quarter, or $2.86-million a year. The NDP receives slightly less, at $710,016 a quarter or $2.84-million. The governing PCs get more than $1.2-million or $4.8-million a year. (The Greens, with two MPPs, receive $178,000 a quarter.)
Mr. Downey told reporters little about the move to extend the handouts.
“If we’re going to do it, now is the time to do it,” he said at Queen’s Park. “And I think you’ll hear the other parties discuss how it affects them. We made a decision to extend the status quo. It’s a way some people want their vote to matter.”
PC House Leader Steve Clark said the changes follow “very open conversations” with the other parties this week. But he would not say if it was part of an effort to clear up loose ends before an early election call.
“We’ve all been unanimous that this bill should have the support of every party,” Mr. Clark said, adding that ”this is something that will provide a level playing field and certainty, past, into 2027.”
The PC House Leader has also moved motions this week to force though several bills, including one on the government’s revised fiscal plan and another on its move to block bike lanes, with little or no debate.
Neither the Ontario Liberals nor NDP would comment on the move to extend the per-vote subsidy on Wednesday.
The PCs have the most to lose in terms of total dollars if the subsidy expired, as the party that won the most votes in 2022. But both major opposition parties have been drastically out-fundraised by the governing Progressive Conservatives, meaning the loss of the subsidy would be potentially more of a blow for them.
Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie’s party, which also lack full status in the House with just nine seats, has especially struggled with fundraising, although they have a large dinner for donors in Toronto set for December where VIP tickets will cost $3,375 a pop. The Liberals said last month they had brought in $1-million in the third quarter of 2024, which ended at the end of September, for a total of $2.8-million this year.
The Official Opposition NDP, which under leader Marit Stiles have 28 seats, said last month that it had raised $1.22-million in the third quarter, a record for a non-election year. So far this year, the party said, it had brought in $2.9-million.
But according to Elections Ontario numbers from last month, Mr. Ford’s PCs have raised $10.3-million so far just this year.
The governing party leads handily in most published opinion polls, but surveys also often show the Liberals and New Democrats more-or-less evenly splitting the opposition vote.