3 Comments

This is a very useful discussion:

let's think this thru a little further ( for / in Ottawa) ; developers who want to influence Council votes will find other ways ... and may go further underground / under the table to do so. The climate of developers and their $$ influence ( ie. morally, it's corruption - but legitimized by the City / Province itself ) ... in Ottawa, has been one of long standing. Thus probably hard to root it out in <20 years. So my sense is that 1st option might be the better one: significantly reduce the amount anyone can give and insure there is transparency about who is making the donation ( full name/address) , and let the sleuths among us do the dog work to follow the money / track down the extent to which its attributable to developers. Also, follow the Council 'votes-donations' alignment trail.

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So in other words ending undue influence by hiding undue influence? Talk about double think.

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By anonymizing the identity of donors, any undue influence disappears. The recipient doesn't know who made the donation, so they can't have any sense of obligation or reciprocity towards them, conscious or not.

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