Saturday, July 03, 2010

Contributions, what contributions?

The Liberal Party's accounting problems reminds me of a line from a 1948 movie The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre

Famous line here.Copied here, here and here.

Alice Funke at Pundits' Guide demostrates again why her site  is  the destination of choice for number crunchers in Canadian Politics.

She makes two conclusions regarding The Case of the Missing Half-Million: A Closer Look at the 2009 Financial Returns

1.that the quarterly filings from the parties (especially the Liberals at the moment) are not reliable indicators of the final amount of contributions that will be reported in the audited year-end statements, and

2.that the dates attributed to donations in either report are not always accurate.



The Liberals remain the MOST dependent on large donations, even though they have a problem recording and collecting as demostrated by their quarterly reports vs their Year End Financial Returns. The Liberals earned the moniker 'party of Bay Street' years ago and it is still the case.

In my opinion Dion may have been responsible for the improvement in fundraising.  The leadership change in December 2008 to install Ignatieff has only resulted in 7,000 new contributors. Iggymania should be concluded as another manufactured newstory by the friends of the Liberal Party.

The Democrats and Conservatives do not rely on large donations. Smaller donations from a larger number of supporters in the lower amounts make up the bulk of the financial support.


How will the media report the financial reporting errors of the Liberal Party, will they provide equal coverage and analysis as they did with Rahim and Pablo?

1 comment:

Patrick Ross said...

One expects better out of an institution that has governed Canada so much that it considers itself entitled to govern.

Incompetency from the Liberals would, sadly, be nothing new. But frankly I suspect there's far more to this than simply some incompetent accountants.

They be hiding something.