E-transfers & More

A prodigious pile of cash.

click image to enlarge; go to website here

I’ve discussed the money side of the Freedom Convoy previously. My conclusion was that the truckers raised more money from more Canadians than did the political party that’s currently running the country.

Andrew Lawton’s new book, The Freedom Convoy, provides further evidence of this. He explains that some people preferred to send convoy organizer Tamara Lich bank transfers rather than donate to the GoFundMe campaign.

Deposited into a designated account, those e-transfers totalled $400,000 - of which Tamara was able to withdraw $26,000 for the convoy’s use before the Toronto Dominion Bank (TD) disgracefully froze the account.

Lawton points out that Chris Garrah, based in Ottawa, set up a separate online fundraiser known as the Adopt-a-Trucker initiative. Established in mid-January, the appeal said that since convoy participants would require housing, water, and food, “Any donations would be amazing!”

Let us all remember that raising money is hard. Arts organizations and medical charities hire people whose primary task is to fundraise. Either small numbers of individuals are coaxed into writing large cheques, or crowds of people are persuaded to make small donations.

Having now examined Archive.org screen captures, here’s the chronology I’ve assembled:

• Adopt-a-Trucker funds raised as of January 21st: $3,441 (Canadian $$)

• Jan. 25: $27,279 (CAD)

• Jan. 31: $119,390 (CAD)

• Feb. 3: $203,246 (CAD)

Beginning on February 6, attempts to archive the campaign’s web page failed repeatedly. A Feb. 13 message suggests the platform was struggling to fend off “online attacks.”

On Feb. 16th, the page was in business again. But with two significant changes. First, donations were now displayed in US dollars. (When converted to Canadian funds, each US dollar was worth approximately $1.25) Second, despite the disruptions, the funds had tripled:

• Feb. 16: $588,413 (USD)

Police violently dispersed the truckers on Feb. 19. As of now, the campaign web page says $745,236 was raised in total - approximately $1 million Canadian dollars.

To sum up, therefore:

I previously calculated that the truckers had raised $14.3 million via two crowd-funding campaigns.

We now need to add in the $400,000 in e-transfers that were sent to Tamara - plus the $1 million in donations made via the Adopt-a-Trucker campaign.

This bumps up the total to $15.7 million.

(Versus the Liberal Party of Canada’s ‘historic’ $7.6 million fundraising during July-August-September of 2021.)

Never let anyone tell you ordinary people are powerless.

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