The Public Order Emergency Commission released a report Thursday examining the finances of the Freedom Convoy and it indicates that most of the fundraised money came from within Canada and that most of it never made it to protesters.
In a presentation given on the report during the public hearing, a table showed the foreign and domestic funding for each of the different methods used by the protesters to amass funds.
The table indicates that 86 percent of donors to the GoFundMe crowdsourcing campaign were Canadians, and that percentage rose to 89 percent when considering the value of donations.
That campaign had gathered over $10 million before it was shut down. GoFundMe executives had concerns about the velocity of the campaign and the respect for its terms of services.
They reached out to the City of Ottawa, and its mayor Jim Watson told them that the “funds were funding what he considered to be unlawful activity that was harmful to the City,” according to the report.
The $1 million from the funds that were disbursed to Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich before the campaign was shut down were frozen and paid into escrow, says the report citing court documents.
The escrow was the result of a Mareva Injunction from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Feb. 17 obtained by plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against organizers and participants of the protest.
After GoFundMe shut down the Freedom Convoy fundraiser, funds started flowing to another convoy fundraiser on the platform GiveSendGo.
The commission report shows that 35 percent of donations to GiveSendGo originated within Canada and 59 percent from the U.S. In terms of value of donations between the two countries, it was even at 47 percent.
No funds collected on GiveSendGo were ever paid out to protesters, with some donations refunded and others placed into escrow due the terms of the Mareja Injunction.
The Adopt-A-Trucker fundraiser on GiveSendGo had 43 percent of donations originating within Canada and 51 percent from the U.S. The value of donations was 55 percent for Canada and 41 percent for the U.S.
Around $330,000 was paid out to the campaign, and $375,000 was put into escrow, says the report.
Government Claimed Convoy ‘Foreign-Funded’
The Liberal government invoked the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14 to clear the cross-country protests and blockades demanding the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, and used the argument of foreign funding in its explanation for declaring a public order emergency.Its Section 58 document providing an explanation cited a CBC article on the analysis of the hack of the GiveSendGo platform.
“According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s February 14, 2022 analysis of the data, 55.7% of the 92,844 donations made public were made by donors in the U.S., compared to 39% of donors located in Canada,” says the document.
