Angry in the Great White North

The Green Party functions under the same financing rules as the Conservatives and the Liberals and the NDP.  That includes limits to donations and the publication of the names of donors.

So how does the Green Party explain hundreds of dollars in donations from an anonymous donor?

(click to enlarge)

OK, this isn't really a great example of investigative blogging.  The Green Party submitted their returns listing a total of $565 in donations from "Anonymous Donor".

Brilliant, Holmes!  How do you do it?

Sarcasm doesn't become you, Watson.

Joking aside, I checked all the returns for all the parties through 2007 and 2008, and no other party accepted donations from anyone whose last name is "Donor", whether Anonymous or his cousins Unknown and Unnamed.

Clicking on the link for Anonymous Donor reveals nothing.  No information was reported to Elections Canada with regards to where in Canada these donations came from.

We can't even be certain the donations came from Canada.  Of all the parties, the Green Party is most closely linked to Green Parties in other countries.  These donations could have come from a corporation or a union, or some other association, instead of an individual.  If these donations did come from one or more individuals, there is no way to be certain that these donors aren't contributing beyond their allowed $1,100 annual limit.

Is $565 going to swing a riding to the Green Party?  Of course not.  But we all know the rules.  Accepting anonymous donations is illegal.  It isn't subject to interpretation.  I wonder what would happen if some other major party was spotted accepting anonymous donations.  Would Elections Canada kick in the door with cameras rolling, grab all the files, and then study each donation and supporting paperwork in detail to make sure that every other donation was also legitimate?

Update:  There is a way for this to be legal.  In the case of a "pass the hat" event, you can end up with a large contribution, but there are rules for this:

404.4 (2) If anonymous contributions of $20 or less per person are collected in response to a general solicitation at a meeting or fundraising event related to the affairs of a registered party, a registered association, a candidate, a leadership contestant or a nomination contestant, the person authorized to accept those contributions must record the following:
(a) a description of the function at which the contributions were collected;
(b) the date of the function;
(c) the approximate number of people at the function; and
(d) the total amount

That might very well be the case here, but here's the problem.  No other party reports it this way because this is not the way it's supposed to be reported.  These donations are reported in the section for donations of $20 or less (found at the bottom of page 2A of the return), and the supporting documentation explaining where these little donations were collected would be delivered to Elections Canada (or otherwise be made available) to support the amounts declared there.  No one identifies an "Anonymous Donor" in the singular, as if it was one person, and reports the amount on the section of the report specifically reserved for individual donations or $200 or more.  On paper it looks like no more than three anonymous donors (and possibly the same anonymous donor) made three discrete contributions, two of which were well over the limit allowed for anonymous contributions.

In Section 2A for the December 2007 return, the Green Party notes that $179,883.34 was donated in contributions of $200 or less, from 2,893 donors.  The Green Party also report no donations whatsoever of $20 or less in that quarter.

Compare this with June 2007 return when the Green Party reported 82 donations of $20 or less, totaling $1,264,50.

Either their paperwork is a mess and small donations are being reported incorrectly, or someone in the Green Party accepted a bad donation.

So could this be simply that the form was filled out wrong.  Could these donations are actually the aggregate of individual donations of $20 or less, collected at a Green Party event, as allowed by law?

Look again at the numbers -- $470 on November 30, $75 on December 3, and $20 on December 31.  They are round numbers.  No change, or even an odd number of dollars.  And the donations from "Anonymous Donor" occured on three distinct dates, which would have to mean three distinct fund-raising events (none in the spring or summer when you'd expect to have fund-raising barbecues), and three distinct collection of small donations.  Are we to believe that a "pass the hat" happened on New Year's Eve, and that when the money was poured out and counted, it amounted to $20 exactly?