Key Takeaways:
- A New Brunswick man appears to have made the largest Canadian donation to the crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, thanks to the “Freedom Convoy” demonstration in Ottawa.
- Brad Howland, president of Easy-Kleen Pressure Systems in Sussex, N.B., is the largest donor in Canada with a $75,000 donation.
- Despite threats from law enforcement, the third week of the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa approaches.
With the help of the “Freedom Convoy” demonstration in Ottawa, it appears that a New Brunswick guy has created the biggest Canadian donation to the crowdfunding site GiveSendGo.
GiveSendGo’s main landing page was shortly replaced with a video manifesto against the continuing protest that has shut down bits of downtown Ottawa and several border crossings across the country on Sunday night.
A spreadsheet with the names, postal codes, email addresses, and donation amounts of tens of thousands of donors from Canada, the United States, and a few other countries were included.
With a donation of $75,000, Brad Howland, president of Easy-Kleen Pressure Systems in Sussex, N.B., is the largest donor in Canada.
Also read: As restrictions are set to be eased this week, two more deaths reported in NB
His donation was anonymous, but he uses a company email address in the GiveSendGo records, and he acknowledged being a donor in an email to CTV News.
Howland said in a statement that his company has done business with truckers for over 40 years and that he saw this as an opportunity to help them out.
“We thank them when we can,” Howland explained, “but we rarely get the chance to support them while they’re in need, and they are in need RIGHT NOW.” “We are grateful to be able to support their efforts to do what they must in a peaceful manner until the govt removes the mandates and restores all of our pre-COVID freedoms.”
Howland said he went to the Ottawa protest over the weekend, calling it a “once in a lifetime experience.”
In a statement, he said, “They have a beautiful, legal, peaceful demonstration that has overwhelmed us with emotion.” “This will go down in our country’s history books.”
The Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy, a federal govt program that provides money to businesses during pandemics, lists Easy-Kleen as a beneficiary. Howland has yet to respond to queries about whether govt funds may have been donated.
Following the cancellation of a $10 million fundraiser on GoFundMe, which stated it would refund donors, supporters of the “Freedom Convoy” movement turned to GiveSendGo, a crowdfunding platform based in the United States.
According to organizers, the GiveSendGo fundraiser raised nearly $9 million.
Canadians contributed 51% of all donations in the dataset, while Americans contributed 43%. The majority of support in Canada comes from British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Southern Ontario, according to maps.
The leak comes as the third week of the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa approaches, despite threats from law enforcement. Last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford proclaimed a state of emergency, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made history by invoking the federal Emergencies Act to end the protests on Monday.
Source: Global News
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