Convoy Finance: Getting Real About Money

Part 9(!!) of the convoy finance series

Hello everyone, and a warm welcome to our new subscribers. As most of you know, I’ve been following Ottawa’s convoy / occupation closely, with a particular eye to the financial component. In this newsletter, I look at what we know in terms of money raised by the convoy, what’s currently frozen / in escrow, how many accounts were affected, and more. I take close look at what we know, and what we don’t know. While this remains an evolving space, I think we’ve hit some stability with these numbers, but expect them to be updated over time as I get better data.

Need more background on convoy finance? Here’s the series:

1. Convoy Finance: Funding Protest

2. Convoy Finance: Sharing the Wealth

3. Convoy Finance: Digging in and diversifying away from GoFundMe

4. Convoy Finance: Creating Corporate Structures

5. Convoy Finance: Foreign Funding and Influence

6. Convoy Finance: Countering the Financing of Mischief

7. Convoy Finance: Emergencies Act Edition

8. A convoy finance timeline

What was raised

There’s a lot of talk about the money raised for the convoy. As I’ve pointed out in many different fora, most of the crowdfunding money was not actually provided to the convoy – it’s best to think about that money as pledges by potential donors. Certainly, had that money been disseminated, we’d be having a different conversation. There were other more important sources of funds for the operational needs of the convoy, including email money transfers and cash donations, as I outline below.