Today's poll question; should corporations and unions be allowed to make political donations and run advertising during election campaigns? You may have noticed in recent years that many major unions in Canada have been spending a lot of money on advertisements espousing NDP and other left wing positions. This allows the Dippers to flood the airwaves with friendly words promoting their policies and attacking the government without counting towards legal spending limits. In Ontario the "working families coalition" (aka CUPE) put more money and effort into re-electing Dalton McGuinty than Dalton did! They wanted to keep the gravy train rolling, and it was worth their while to spend millions of dollars making it happen.
Unions are becoming very politically active, or perhaps they've always been and I'm just noticing it more as I grow older. Peggy Nash is the biggest union cheerleader in the NDP leadership race, and she was on TV yesterday saying that if you are not in a union, you're probably struggling to get by financially. I'm not sure that we need more electoral law when we already have several laws that are outdated and should be scrapped. They were discussing this "political contribution" issue on the radio yesterday as I was driving to work, so I figured it was at least worth a poll question. Corporations were included in the poll question because reasonably, you can't deny one and permit the other. It is all or none.