I Don't Care Too Much For Money

The fundraising numbers for the Liberal Leadership contenders have been released and the Blue Blogging Soapbox takes a look at some of the more interesting donations.

I wish I could include a link to the Elections Canada site but there are no permanent links and it's the most complicated database to access. Nevertheless, when I finally did make my way to it, I found the following interesting donations:

-Robert Keith K. Rae donated $10,000 to the Bob Rae campaign. Yes...$10,000. So either someone at Elections Canada made a major typo or Bob Rae picked the most obvious way possible to break elections financing laws. I tend to think it's the former. (Update: Looks like candidates are allowed to donate 10 grand to their own campaigns)

-Alfred Apps was generous in his donations to the Michael Ignatieff campaign, making two donations. One of $900 and one of $5,000. I suspect there may be an Alf Apps Jr. involved here because if there isn't, this is another violation of the election laws. I will give Iggy credit for managing to bring in a lot of small grass roots donations including a few from Liberal bloggers.

-Karl Littler, always a supporter of female candidates not named Sheila Copps, donated $500 to the Martha Hall Findlay campaign.

-Robin Sears, a frequent panelist on Politics, donated to the Bob Rae campaign.


UPDATE: This is more complicated the roadmap to peace in the Middle East, but here's the roadmap to find the donations page on the elections.ca website:

1. Click on Frequently asked questions on right hand side
2. Click on Election Financing
3. Click on "Where can I find detailed information about political parties and candidates?"
4. Click where it says "click here"
5. Click on the database
6. Click on Quarterly Returns
Note: Click on the last link and you can skip the first few steps...I just wanted to share my frustration of finding the site. The next few steps don't have permalinks though
7. Select "Liberal Party of Canada" and click on "search"
8. Select "June 2006" and "add" it to the bottom
9. Click "search"
10. Click the second link - "by return detail"
11. Select "2b - transferred to leadership contestants"

From here, you can sort by donation, candidate or name.


LATE NIGHT UPDATE: Cerberus has a good analysis of the donations and what we can read into the numbers.

Also, Democratic Space has an interesting breakdown by region.