What special privilege separates your Ottawa City Councillor from your Member of Parliament? Come election time, your Ottawa City Councillor can accept funds from corporations, including those doing business with City Hall. Yep, even  developers and waste companies. If you think that sounds wrong, it's because it is.

Now there is a $750 limit in place per donation, leading one councillor to declare that she can't be bought for that amount. Perhaps she could share with us how much it would cost? But better yet, why even allow this? Especially when it's revealed that in the past a company with multiple addresses gave $750 for each of its offices, or that company X gave $750 to a candidate, as did the owner of company X, as did his wife, his brother, and so on. It adds up to a big chunk of some candidate's budgets.

This simply is not allowed at the federal and provincial levels, and Manitoba and Québec don't allow municipal politicians to do it.

Councillor Alex Cullen prepared a report detailing the problem, including the beautifully titled section "Whose Your Daddy?". I spoke with the councillor to uncover what the problem is, and how it could work if corporate and union donations were banned altogether.

A copy of Councillor Cullen's report is available here.