Record donations pour into federal party coffers
OTTAWA — All federal political parties ended 2013 with a bang in terms of fundraising, but none more so than the Bloc Québécois.
During the final three months of the year, the party raised more than four times as much money as it had the previous quarter.
While nowhere close to the Conservative party — the top fundraiser, pulling in $9.6 million through the final quarter compared with the Bloc’s $321,570 — it was by far the largest quarter-overquarter gain.
It also comes at an interesting time for the party. Not only did leader Daniel Paille quit the Bloc in December, but the Parti Québécois — the Bloc’s provincial sister — was enjoying a surge in popularity in rural Quebec over its values charter banning public servants from donning religious symbols.
Meanwhile, the three main political parties are reporting record earnings. The Liberal party pulled in $4.8 million during the final quarter of 2013, twice as much as the previous quarter and 1-1/2 times more than the same quarter last year before the party elected Justin Trudeau as its new leader.
“This is our best quarter ever. We’re really happy about that,” spokeswoman Andree-Lyne Halle said.
“Having a leader since April, it has shown a lot of changes. People are interested, they’re wanting to get engaged with him and they’re looking for a change and he represents that change to them.”
The Conservative party raised nearly three times as much through the last quarter of 2013 as it did the previous quarter and nearly twice as much as the same quarter a year earlier.
The NDP raised $3.7 million in the final quarter of last year, more than twice as much as the previous quarter and $1.2 million more than the party earned during the same span in 2012.
NDP spokesman Nathan Rotman called it the “best fourth quarter outside an election year” and attributed a chunk of the gains to online fundraising.