Parliamentary staffers for the Liberal government expressed skepticism regarding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s claim that the Freedom Convoy received “disturbing amounts” of foreign funding, according to internal emails.
The
emails, which were submitted to the Public Order Emergency Commission and first reported on by Blacklock’s Reporter, detailed the political aides’ discussion around a media inquiry from the Wall Street Journal asking for clarification on the prime minister’s claims.
“I don’t think we’d have anything to say on this,” said Alexander Cohen, communications director for Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, in an email to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s press secretary Adrienne Vaupshas on Feb. 21.
“Tbh [To be honest] we’ve tried to avoid questions about the foreign funding angle because we don’t have hard information on it, and most of it is actually legal (despite being objectionable etc.),” Cohen added in the email.
“This [question] has been a bit of a hot potato,” said Adrienne Vaupshas, press secretary to the Minister of Finance, in an earlier email the same day.
“Does [Trudeau’s remarks on foreign funding] come from the leaked GiveSendGo data or was there any other source? PS [Public Safety] says they don’t have any data to back this claim.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during a
press conference on Feb. 21 that one reason the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act was that the Freedom Convoy “received disturbing amounts of foreign funding to destabilize Canada’s democracy.”
On Feb. 9, the prime minister also said in the House of Commons that there was a “flow of funds through criminal activities” being sent to the Convoy. Just over a week later, he also said the Convoy was “being heavily supported by individuals in the United States and from elsewhere around the world.”
“We see that roughly half of the funding that is flowing to the barricaders here is coming from the United States,”
Trudeau said on Feb. 17.
Executives from GoFundMe, an online crowdfunding platform that had a Convoy fundraising page from Jan. 14 to Feb. 4, previously said that 88 percent of funds donated to the Convoy through the platform originated in Canada.
Foreign Funding
GoFundMe general counsel Kim Wilford confirmed during a parliamentary committee meeting last month that the platform had no evidence of criminal funds being sent to the Convoy.“There is no evidence that any of the funds originating to your platform were proceeds of crime?” asked Conservative MP Larry Brock during a Nov. 18
parliamentary joint committee meeting on the declaration of emergency.
“That is correct,” said Wilford.
GiveSendGo, a faith-based online crowdfunding platform through which supporters donated to the Freedom Convoy after GoFundMe shut down their Convoy fundraising campaign in early February, reported a higher number of Convoy donations originating from outside of Canada.
Conservative MP
Dane Lloyd asked GiveSendGo’s co-founder Jacob Wells in March if it was true that around 60 percent of Convoy donations through the platform originated in Canada and about 37 percent from the U.S.
“I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me, but I believe that to be the case, yes,” Wells said during a Commons public safety committee meeting on March 3.
A report from the Public Order Emergency Commission released Nov. 3 said 35 percent of funds donated to the Convoy through GiveSendGo originated in Canada while 59 percent came from the U.S., but the value amount was even at 47 percent for both countries.
No funds donated to GiveSendGo’s Convoy fundraising page were ever paid out to protesters after funds were frozen by court order.
Andrew Chen and Noé Chartier contributed to this report.
