Friday, August 1, 2008

Missing Liberal Donations??

With the recent posting of the quarterly financial reports from Elections Canada, there is a lot of interesting information just waiting to be uncovered. One such item relates to $105,793.80 in missing Liberal funding. Apparently, the Liberal Party raised $792,739.70 on behalf of their leadership candidates, yet only $686,945.90 was actually transferred on to the former contenders.

I have a screen capture from the Elections Canada database showing this (I cut out the individual entries between the header and the totals in order to show them together properly).

So what happened to the other $105,793.80?

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: It was suggested by a commenter that the missing funds could be accounted for by the Liberal Party skimming a certain percentage of these donations into their own fund. However, this is not the case. The vast majority of donations are passed on to the candidate in full, while in other cases, zero dollars are passed on. The amounts of donations in question range from miniscule amounts under $50 up to the maximum allowable of $1100. All other donations in these exact same amounts were passed on in full.

5 comments:

WE Speak said...

If you go back to the original leadership rules, you'll find that over a certain amount, the Liberal Party takes a percentage of the donation prior to passing it on. This is fairly common in political leadership races. Although it might be wise to end this take to help the contenders pay off their debt quicker I'm not sure if it would be allowed. Besides, the party needs the money too much.

WE Speak said...

I still think the money is being taxed by the party. From what you describe, I think the party lets donations go through for a period of time, assesses amounts owed and then recovers that money from the next batch of donations. Either way, I've sent an email to the Liberal Party to see if they will clarify.

Anonymous said...

Does the 'Party' have the power to 'tax' it's riding associations? Why can't, or why doesn't, it do this in a transparent manner, if this is what is happening?

Personally, I think that various individuals in charge of handling the money have 'taxed' it for personal reasons, depending perhaps on their debt load at that particular instant in time. The evidence so far presented supports my contention every bit as well as it does BBS's.

Liberals have always believed more strongly in plausible deniability than in ethical behaviour.

WE Speak said...

Nothing better than tenacity and good digging.

Congrats.

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