It is important to note who the NCC is. It is neither National, nor has much to do with Citizens, nor is it a Coalition of said citizens. Its entire purpose is to use financial power of its backers in order to direct the debate in the hope that it can induce the public to vote against its own interests (aside: William Watson wrote a couple of years ago in the Notional Pest that more than half of Canadians get more out of the tax pie than they put into it). Against its own interests, and in the interests of the NCCs robber baron backers. Stephen Harper was its Class Warrior (tm). So its accountability has to be seen in that light.

Second, there is no evidence that third party election advertising hurts the political process. As shown in numerous studies in “Changing Dynamics in Election Campaign Finance: Critical Issues in Canada and the United States” (Jennifer Smith and Herman, Bakvis. Policy Matters. Vol. 1, No. 4. July 2000.), third party advertising has no clear effect in swaying voters. In fact, the most clear evidence of influence is that of the National Citizen Coalition hurting candidates they backed in the 1997 election! Third party advertising works only minimally in shifting opinions. Rather it seems to work in concert with other factors. Attempts to limit election advertising by third parties are not supported by any evidence. Rather, they are justified only on fear. I have a hard time using fear to justify limits on fundamental freedoms.

So now we reach the empirical issue. Many people on the "anti-" side of the free trade election in 1988 (like me, and I haven't changed my position) feel exactly the opposite, that the 1988 election was bought. But whether or not this is true, one has to wonder: if it doesn't matter to the outcome of an election, why is the NCC so passionate about being allowed to spend as much as it likes? Why go through all this trouble? Are these savvy businessfolk simply throwing their money into a black hole? What does it say about their business skills?

The truth is, it isn't the outcome of the election itself that is the only thing at stake; asking whether third-party election spending influences election results is only asking one-third to one-half of the question. Elections are a time of at least slightly higher political awareness on the part of the public. Third parties may not always directly influence an election---but they can and do set the tone for what is discussed and start the next mandate off on a particular foot. Even when the NCC-backed candidate loses, the winner has, in a sense, lost ideological ground to the NCC.

Anti-poverty and environmental groups lined up against the NCC on behalf of the government on this one, because they understand it as well as the NCC: that the NCC aims to exclude them from the discussion by drowning them out, as it did at least once before. These laws attempt to impose some kind of limit on this.

What the restriction on third party advertising does is make expression during elections something for the political elite—politicians benefiting from subsidizations—and not for the ordinary citizen. It requires that we the citizens decide on politics based on only what the political elite feels we should see and hear. We are expected to decide on the politics of this country based only on the information that politicians feel we should have. I think this puts way too much power into the political elite. The right should be for us to have information, not for the political elite to restrict it from us. The ruling in Harper v. Canada sadly sides with the political elite over citizens like us.

Ooooh, the political elite *shiver*. Contempt for politicians is often well-deserved by their individual behaviour, so I understand the temptation, particularly prevalent in certain parts of the country, to collapse into a form of faux populism of the manipulative/deceitful variety once practiced by Preston Manning and the like and still espoused in a muted sort of way by the Reform-a-tory mutant hybrid. But if politicians per se are the enemy, then democracy really is meaningless, because there is no democracy without politicians. If the court had ruled otherwise, it would have ruled in favour of a moneyed few over citizens like us. I would rather have people seeking to represent our interests set the agenda during an election than have the astroturf likes of the NCC do it.

As someone on this babble thread put it,

When these right-wingers talk about "free speech" watch out, because there's an agenda behind it. They mean freedom for the NewsCorps and GE's of the world to blast their right-wing ideology to the public unchallenged. Everyone else can stand on the corner and hand out leaflets. That's their idea of "free speech."

P.S. To quote Justice Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court, "money is not speech." By limiting money in the political process, the law maximizes speech for everyone, not just the ones who can afford it, and thereby crowd out everyone else's speech.

Or as "Anatole France" put it,

They must work for those goals before the majestic equality of the laws, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.

This is analogous to the way in which folks like the NCC wish to liberate us from our slavish adherence to the Political Illuminati Elite.