Thanks to all the media attention surrounding the legal tussle between the federal Conservative Party and Elections Canada, Canadians are getting a crash course in election law.
Lawyers and academics are all over TV news programs discussing the finer points of election law regulations; politicians and bureaucrats are debating differing interpretations of these laws; journalists are writing endlessly on the ins and outs of election law financing.
On the surface it can all seem pretty complicated and convoluted.
Yet, in reality those election laws which regulate political spending are actually based on a simple, straightforward premise.
And that premise can be summed up in one stark sentence: Canadian voters are deemed to be stupid.
That may sound harsh, but it's true. The people who make Canada's election laws assume Canadian voters are a bunch of naive, easily misled simpletons who can't be trusted to make decisions on their own.
That, in a nutshell, is why we have laws governing how much money politicians can spend during elections.
It's feared that unless we have these restrictions in place, some unscrupulous rich person might bamboozle gullible voters with a glitzy advertising campaign and end up "buying" an election victory.
But how can you buy an election? How can you buy votes?
SPENDING A MESSAGE
Sure, if a politician spends bucketfuls of money on political advertising, it will ensure lots of people hear his message, but that doesn't necessarily mean voters will buy that message or support him at the ballot box.
Despite what our politicians and bureaucrats might think, Canadian voters are actually pretty bright.
They make their decision based on the facts and issues, not on how much money one side spends.
Just consider the referendum on the Charlottetown Accord back in 1992. In the weeks preceding that referendum the "Yes" side outspent the "No" side by a margin of about 12 to one.
Yet despite being outspent by such a degree the "No" side still prevailed in a landslide.
So much for the money buys elections argument.
Now besides insulting the intelligence of Canadian voters, these election spending laws also infringe on free election speech by limiting the ability of politicians to express their views through advertising.
And it's not just the free election speech of politicians which is limited.
We also have election "gag laws" on the books which impose severe legal restrictions on how much money private citizens or non-partisan groups can spend on "election advertising."
These laws essentially make it impossible for citizens or groups to freely and effectively to promote their agendas during federal elections.
Anyone who breaks these laws can face up to five years in prison.
DRACONIAN
Again, the lame justification for these draconian gag laws is that they are needed to stop elections from being bought.
None of this is good for democracy.
Democracy works best when there is a free marketplace of competing ideas. If you don't have free speech, you don't have a free election.
It's that simple.
That's why we should scrap all these election gag laws designed to regulate political spending and to muzzle free speech.
Simply put, we don't need them. All we need to do is trust in the intelligence of the Canadian voter.
