Angry in the Great White North

Here are the results from the first quarter of 2008.  You can click to enlarge the screen grab:

As you recall, the numbers looked bad for the Liberals.  The Conservatives raised $4,965,817.72 from 44,345 donors.  The NDP raised $1,119,647.67 from 13,329 donors.

The Liberals couldn't even breech the million-dollar mark.  The Liberals raised $879,926.75 in total, but $33,797.38 of that was transferred from riding associations and from one candidate.  Actually, $9,134.18 came in dribs and drabs gathered up from 31 different riding associations (in amounts ranging from $35 to $1535), while $24,663.20 was transferred from one candidate -- Shirley Chan.  It is likely a unique transfer covering some special situation not to be repeated.  When it came to response to direct requests for donations from individual Canadians, the Liberals raised only $846,129.37 from 10,169 donors.

The second quarter hasn't gotten much better:

As you can see, Liberal fundraising remained stagnant.  The good news for the Liberals is that they were no longer trailing the NDP.  But with only $912,378.43 raised from 9556 donors, the Liberals had increased the amount raised over the previous quarter by all of 7.8%.

Yeah, it's an increase, but at a few percentage points starting at a such a low point, the Liberals can hardly claim success.  They couldn't even break a million.

How about the other parties?  The Conservatives dropped 30%, but they were at nearly $5 million, so the drop to $3.5 million is a problem I bet the other parties would love to have.  The NDP has to worry, though.  They dropped from just over a million to just over seven hundred thousand in donations, which is a 36% drop.  Where did that money go?  To the Liberals?

Well, obviously not all of it.  Or even most of it.

Of course, with all the leadership candidates still competing with the party itself for that cash, this isn't going to get better anytime soon.

One interesting thing to note.  In the first quarter, Liberal riding associations transferred $9134.18 to the Liberal Party.  In the second quarter, that transfer jumped dramatically to $67,157.66. 

Neither the Conservatives nor the NDP report any substantial transfers in either quarter.  Only the Liberal Party moves significant amounts of money in this manner.

So why the big jump this quarter?  Interestingly, it's all because of one riding.

In particular, the riding association of Pierrefonds-Dollard transferred a whopping $30,000 to the party in two separate transfers dated April 2.  That riding is represented by Liberal Bernard Patry.  By way of comparison, in all of 2007, the riding of Pierrefonds-Dollard transferred a total of $8500 to the party centre (or maybe it was only $7700, see Sloppy Bookkeeping below).  That was out of a grand total of $57,933.57 raised from local donors in that year. 

That means that in one quarter in 2008, the amount transferred more from this one riding association than tripled the amount transferred from that same riding association in all of 2007.  Indeed, that one quarter's transfer is equal to nearly half of all of last year's income for that riding association.  No other riding association comes even close -- there are a few $5000 transfers, then all sort of tiny transfers of a few hundred bucks each (or less), and that's it.

How did the riding association of Pierrefonds-Dollard suddenly get so wealthy?  In the first quarter of 2008, no money was transferred out of this riding to the Liberal Party.

Bernard Patry has been the MP since 1993.  It's not likely his popularity has taken a dramatic leap.

I'd sure like to know where that money came from.

[Maybe the riding association didn't suddenly get wealthy, but just had money leftover from 2007.  With no election, the money raised was unspent, and hence the big transfer -- Leftover Cash below.  But why the transfer?  Was there a specific purpose behind getting the riding association to cough up the cash?]

Wild thought: Hey, maybe the missing Adscam money is in a shoebox somewhere, and gets doled out to riding associations to transfer to the party each quarter.  Someone made a mistake and gave the riding association of Pierrefonds-Dollard an envelope stuffed with $30,000 instead of $3000.  Just kidding.

Oops: In my first cut, I wrote about the Victory Fund.  Of course, the Victory Fund did not launch until July, so it's not relevant.  I've removed the references.

Sloppy Bookkeeping?  According to the Liberal Party's annual return, the riding association of Pierrefonds-Dollard transferred $8500 to the Liberal Party ($5000 on August 13, $100 on October 15, $300 on June 16, $2000 on May 14, $1000 again on May 14, and $100 on August 25). 

According to the annual return from the riding association, the association transferred $7700 to the Liberal Party ($5000 on August 13, $100 on October 15, $300 on June 16, $300 on June 7, and $2000 on May 14).

So the riding association is reporting a transfer of $300 on June 7 that does not appear on the Liberal Party return.  The Liberal Party is reporting transfers of $1000 on May 14 and $100 on August 25 from this riding association but that are not reported by the riding association.

And Elections Canada raids which party's headquarters?

Leftover cash?  Looking at the return for the riding association in detail, I see that total revenue was $74,589.50 in 2007 (there is just over $16,000 in fundraising in there on top of the $57,000 from before).  Expenses totaled $30,729.03, leaving $43,860.47.  With other liabilities counted in, that number drops to 42,801.32.  It might be as simple as having a grad wad of cash left over from 2007 that is being transferred in this quarter.  If fundraising in Pierrefonds-Dollard is going well, the riding association might have determined that they had more money than they would be allowed to spend in an election, and transferred the excess to the party.

A purpose?  Or maybe the riding association had cash leftover, and the party needed it for something else, regardless of how well the local fundraising was going.

Indeed, the amount of transfers overall was much high in the second quarter, and besides Pierrefonds-Dollard, five other ridings, all in Quebec, donated far larger sums than the average (the riding associations of Lac Saint-Louis (Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia), Mont-Royal (Liberal Irwin Cotler), Notre-Dame-de-Grace--Lachine (Liberal Marlene Jennings), Saint-Leonard--Saint-Michel (Liberal Massimo Pacetti), and Stephane Dion's own riding of Saint-Laurent-Cartierville each donated $5000).

Was there a reason for this sudden rush of cash?  Why did the Liberal Party suddenly need $55,000 when there was no election?

An answer?  The money is being used to borrow more money.  Now it makes sense.