it ' s the fact that Trudeau is breaking his own rules which is ruining his credibility . There are two possible angles to this story . The first angle is that the $ 1500 donationfundraisers are actually influencepeddling , such that people who donate have a meaningfully greater chance to influence policy than those that don ' t . This is ultimately a factual question , and it can be answered by looking at the nature of what ' access ' was provided . From reports of these fundraising thankyous , they seem to involve no more than a handshake with the government minister and some small talk . In and of itself , it seems that there is little opportunity for and less evidence of policy changes in response to the fundraising . The second angle is the perception one , whereby even if the fundraising is actually aboveboard , it looks bad and decreases trust in government . This complaint is more substantial , but it ' s also relative to popular expectations . We can all agree that alien mind control of our politicians would be bad and the appearance thereof would also be bad , but does that mean that Trudeau should have weekly MRIs to prove that he has no mindcontrolling implants ? In the long view , I ' m pleased that our expectations of good governance have gotten to the point where we think $ 1500 can buy backroom deals 1 . In the US , I think you ' d be laughed out of the media for expecting nefarious influence for any cheque without another couple of zeroes on the end . However , we ' re also getting to the point where fixing this perception risks undercutting political fundraising at all . If lunch with ministers is nefarious , it ' s a short hop to saying that lunch with an MP at all is nefarious . After all , they vote on bills , propose changes at committee , talk with ministers in caucus meetings , and might become future cabinet officers themselves . If access to MPs is bad , then so is access to their staff , or access to other paid party staffers , or access to declared candidates , or access to people who might become declared candidates . There ' s no purely principled place to draw the line . The existing donation limits were set out in part because $ 1500 was supposed to be too low to lead to any untoward arrangements , and so it would be transparently credible . If that credibility is in doubt , then it ' s probably time to lower donation limits and be done with it , even if we need to increase public subsidies of parties to retain more or less the same budgets . 1 mdash the donation to the PET foundation is a bit different here , mind .