An interesting blog posting on Public Party Funding from ThreeHundredEight.com:

One of the basic elements of the argument is that the Bloc is dependent on the public subsidy for survival, and that Canadian tax-payers are funding a sovereigntist party. Of course, the $1.95-per-vote subsidy is actually funded by the voters themselves. If you vote for the Conservatives, your $1.95 will go to the Conservative Party. If you vote for the Bloc, your $1.95 will go to the Bloc. That is a very democratic way of giving the parties public funding.

But the argument falls flat when you realise that private donations to political parties are subsidised at between 50% to 75%. So, if you donate $400 to a political party, you will get $300 back on your taxes. In that way, Canadian tax-payers are funding political parties in an undemocratic way. For example, if a party gets about 60% of all private donations (as the Conservatives did last year), but only had 36% of the vote, that party would be funded by tax-payers in a proportion larger than their portion of the vote.

Click here for the full article.