Although Canadians gave more money than Americans, more than half of the donations to the convoy protest made through the crowdfunding website GiveSendGo came from the United States, an analysis of hacked data from the site reveals.
The data — hacked illegally and released publicly late Sunday evening — sheds light on the identity of thousands of donors to the crowdfunding campaign.
A check by CBC News found that multiple names in the hacked data set correspond to names, dates and donation amounts collected independently by CBC News as the donations rolled in to GiveSendGo.
The data, which includes the home countries of donors, reveals that 55.7 per cent of the 92,844 donations made public came from donors in the United States, while just 39 per cent came from donors located in Canada.
But while the U.S. donations included a number of large contributions — in some cases from names matching the names of donors to former U.S. president Donald Trump's campaigns — Canadians actually gave more money in total to the convoy protest.
Of the $8.4 million US in donations detailed in the data, $4.3 million US — or 52.5 per cent of the total — came from Canada, while $3.6 million US (44.2 per cent) came from the U.S.
Other countries don't even come close. Great Britain provided the third-largest number of donors — 1,831 donations totalling $77,065.
The last donation listed in the data set was made the evening of Feb. 10.
Law doesn't cover donations to political protests
The money flowing into the protest exposed a gap in Canada's federal political financing rules. Those rules prohibit people who aren't Canadian citizens or permanent residents from donating to Canadian politicians or political parties — but they are silent on donations to political protests.
The protest has seen donations worth millions of dollars coming from people who chose to remain anonymous.
The popular GoFundMe crowdfunding platform collected more than $10 million from more than 120,000 donations before it shut the fundraising campaign down and announced that all donations would be refunded. An analysis by CBC News found that at least one-third of those donations were listed publicly as anonymous or under obviously fictitious names.
When GoFundMe shut down the convoy fundraiser, protest organizers pivoted to the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, which by Feb 12 had raised $9.05 million US from 101,919 donations. In their comments, many donors indicated that they had donated to the GoFundMe campaign.
Restraining order against release of funds
At least 41 per cent of the publicly listed contributions in the GiveSendGo data are anonymous. Many of those listed among the named donations appear to use fake names.
Money for the convoy protest also has been donated through cryptocurrency fundraising campaigns. Much of that money is anonymous and untraceable. Truckers participating in the protests have also been receiving cash donations on the street from people they don't know.
In a news release issued Sunday, protest organizers said none of the money raised for the convoy protest has been released to the organizers.
While GoFundMe initially released $1 million and GiveSendGo's system sends donations directly to the bank account designated by organizers of a fundraiser, the Ontario government obtained a restraining order last week freezing the funds.
On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that half of the donations to the convoy protest on some platforms were coming from the United States. Sources over the weekend told CBC News that the information had come from GoFundMe but the company has yet to confirm that information.
Hacked convoy data shows more than half of donations came from U.S. - CBC News
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