Bill C-25 Would Make Liberal Fundraisers Harder to See Before They Happen

After years of cash-for-access scandals, Ottawa should be adding sunlight to political fundraising — not moving key disclosure after the room has already met.

A r/canada thread this week pointed to a quiet but important change inside Bill C-25, the Carney government’s democracy bill: regulated political fundraisers would become harder for ordinary voters to see before they happen.

The legal text matters. Canada’s existing political-financing rules require certain high-dollar party fundraisers involving senior political figures to be advertised in advance. Bill C-25 repeals section 384.4 of the Canada Elections Act and rewrites the surrounding fundraiser provisions. The replacement system emphasizes a report filed after the event. In plain English: less “who is meeting the minister next week?” and more “who met the minister after the room has already closed?”

That is exactly backwards.

Canada created regulated-fundraiser rules because cash-for-access politics damaged public trust. When cabinet ministers, party leaders or leadership contestants attend high-dollar events with donors who may also have business before government, the public interest is not served by delayed disclosure alone. Post-event reports can be useful, but they do not let journalists, watchdogs, opposition MPs or citizens ask timely questions before influence is purchased, access is granted or policy conversations happen behind closed doors.

The issue becomes sharper under Carney. This government is preparing huge decisions around the Canada Strong Fund, public assets, infrastructure corridors, housing, energy, ports, defence procurement and industrial policy. CityNews, carrying Canadian Press reporting, has already noted Carney’s openness to selling public assets where the government says it makes sense. In that environment, fundraiser transparency is not a side issue. It is the firewall between democratic government and insider access.

Supporters may argue Bill C-25 modernizes election law, tightens digital rules and still requires after-the-fact reporting. Some of that may be true. But the conservative accountability question is not whether one part of the bill has merit. It is why the government would remove advance visibility for fundraisers at the very moment Ottawa is building new pools of public capital and deciding which private players get a seat at the table.

The fix is simple: keep advance publication, strengthen post-event reporting, and require machine-readable disclosure of attendees, ticket prices, host names, beneficiary riding associations, senior office-holders present and any registered lobbyist attendance. If privacy is the concern, write narrow safeguards for personal security — not a broad retreat from public notice.

Canadians do not need another Liberal promise that ethics rules are fine because the paperwork comes later. If a fundraiser is legitimate, advertise it. If access is being sold, the public should know before the cheque clears, not after the donors have gone home.