Conservative Donors and Appointments

October 1, 2015 – SumOfUs Canada, a digital consumer watchdog, has compiled and cross-referenced official data on over 350 of Canada’s most federal influential public appointments, linking them to donations to the Conservative Party of Canada. The over 350 public appointments occurred between 2004 and 2014, and include political donations from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars.

Highlights of the research can be accessed through an interactive website at jobsfordonations.ca.

Appointments include:

  • The Parole Board of Canada, where at least 19 members are Conservative donors;
  • The Immigration and Refugee Board, where at least 9 members are Conservative donors
  • The Canada Revenue Agency, where at least 7 board members are Conservative donors
  • The CBC, where 9 members are donors
  • The National Energy Board (5), the Citizenship Commission (6), the Competition Tribunal (5), the Quebec Port Authority (3), the Halifax Port Authority (5), and dozens of others, including the Security Intelligence Review Committee, Ridley Terminal, The National Science and Engineering Research Council and the Canadian Institute for Health Research.

“This data shows literally hundreds of public federal appointments where hand-picked Conservative donors were chosen to take positions of influence,” said Rosa Kouri, Campaigns Director, “It’s really troubling to see this in one place — and alarming that the Conservative Party of Canada has extended its reach so deeply into the machinery of government, rewarding money and loyalty with appointments footed by the taxpayer.”

This data comes primarily from two sources. The first source was from a government site (appointments-nominations.gc.ca) that contains information on government appointments. The second source was Elections Canada data. Both sets of data contain the full name and residence of each person on the list, and once the data sets were merged these columns were manually compared to see if they matched, with any irregularities removed from the data.

For a copy of the data, or interviews with SumOfUs please contact Rosa Kouri at 613-725-7667 or by email at rosa@sumofus.org

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