TPC Part IV - and the winner is.... (en francais)

The Liberal Party of Canada - TPC fundraiser of the Year.

I've finished the initial donation search. A total of 114 companies were identified through the TPC Annual reports. A search was conducted of the Elections Canada Database for the years 1996 to 2004 for each one of these companies.

Results:

Liberal Party 56 of 114 companies 49.1% $1,115,892.25

Canadian Alliance Reform Party - 7 of 114 companies 6.1% $114,526.54

Progressive Conservatie Party - 14 of 114 companies 12.3% $222,932.85

Conservative Party of Canada - 3 of 114 companies 2.6% $750.00

Bloc Québécois - 2 of 114 companies 1.7% $2473.52

As noted earlier, by no means do I think this is a complete list. Some companies currently listed at $0 in the spreadsheet may be listed under a numbered company. Some company names, comprised of initials, hyphens etc, are difficult to search for. For the next stage I would like to do some research on each and every company. I will try to find the principals, executives and board members wherever possible. These too, will be researched using the Donation Research tool. Over the next several days I will be reviewing all the data I have collected to try and find any errors that I may have made. I have reviewed it 3 times now, but it certainly doesn't hurt to walk away from it for a while and then check again. Feel free to download the spreadsheet and check things out. Let me know if you find any discrepancies.

Of particular note is the year 1999. Due to a WTO ruling the TPC program was virtually shutdown that year. The Liberals only managed to raise $6,183.11 that year from their TPC friends. Seems like when the government is handing out money, the companies aren't willing to return the favour. To be fair the other parties also didn't raise much that year.

On the other hand, this isn't about fair. There is no doubt that this is a totally partisan effort, I have never tried to make it anything else. The data I have presented is my effort at research to show just how much the Liberal party believes that your tax money is their cash cow. That being said, I have made every effort to make sure my data is accurate.

Unfortunately, Elections Canada has removed all the financial information for EDAs. At one time you could search the various categories of contributors across all the various party's riding associations. That feature seems to have gone missing. Wonder why? There's no doubt in my mind that there are hundreds of thousands of additional dollars in these records.

A couple of things come to mind as I review this stage of the research. What scares me is, this is but one part, of one funding program, in one department of the government. A program that is open to Parliamentary review and scrutiny by the Auditor General.

What of all the arms length foundations not subject to any of these pesky annoyances?

Think of all the other funding programs that the government carries out. Makes you shiver doesn't it! Given the astounding Liberal fundraising successes in Quebec, why wouldn't this expertise be transferred across the country?

Here's a challenge for all the other Blogging Tories out there. Pick a government department and a funding program and go digging. I'm sure there are plenty of other 'anomalies' out there for us to find.

If anyone is interested in helping with the next round of research, the help would be gratefully appreciated. People could "adopt" a company and do all the research possible on that particular company. Find out the executives, principals, board members, subsidiaries etc, so that a more complete funding picture can be drawn. Drop me a line - bluebloggingsoapbox@gmail.com I'll keep a running list here of who has adopted what company so as not to duplicate any work.

TPC Study LIST

TPC Excel File - zip format