Conservative Party of Canada Fundraising

This entry is kind of a follow-up to my previous one, where by the way, I was the one who photoshopped the picture. But after I wrote the blog, I had other thoughts about why Gary Goodyear was worried about saying he didn't believe in Adam and Eve.

If you look at this webpage, it is clear that the Conservative party of Canada has a huge fundraising advantage over the other parties. Note that the Conservatives have more contributors than the other four parties combined, almost 34,000. The other parties total just over 25,000. Also, the Conservatives have by far the highest per person contribution, $104.20. The average for the rest is $74.13.

Consider also the fact that more people voted for the other parties than the Conservatives, 5.2 million vs 8.4 million.

So apparently the Conservatives have unnaturally rich and/or fanatical supporters. No wonder they moved last year to cut off government funding for the opposition parties. Although their move actually failed, and could have backfired by drawing more attention to this fundraising gap.

Here are some ideas of where the money might be coming from. In the USA because of restrictions on maximum contributions, and therefore on corporate funding, many techniques have been developed for slipping money from one donor to another through families and clubs. So I would suspect the oil companies, who last year were rolling in dough. Are they supporting their hometown boy using these techniques to get around the corporate donation limit? Another great way to raise money under these rules is to appeal to fanatical religious groups, who can easily encourage their members to donate to a supportive political party.

With our Conservative Minister of Science and Technology afraid to come out clearly for the scientific theories of evolution of species by natural selection, I wonder if a lot of those donations might be coming from US based evangelical churches, the ones that are so determined to stop the spread of Darwinism? And which, by the way are also allied with the oil companies in the USA in support of the Republican party.