HOW WE DID IT

All political parties are required by law to submit records of donations.

How often these records must be disclosed varies. Some jurisdictions mandate only annual reports, others also require reports for byelections, general elections, leadership and candidate nomination campaigns.

Contributions may be directed to parties, leadership contestants, riding associations or candidates in a particular riding. These may be collected in one report, or many.

Election officials are legally required to maintain donation records and make them available to the public. The federal government and four provinces have created searchable online archives. In nine regions, however, records are still available only in PDFs or spreadsheets, separated by year and party.

Here is an overview of records collected for each region: British Columbia: 2005-2017 Alberta: 2004-2016 Saskatchewan: 2006-2016 (Party donations only) Manitoba: 2005-2016 (Party donations only) Ontario: 2007-2017 Quebec: 2000-2017 New Brunswick: 2003-2016 (Party donations only) Nova Scotia: 2010-2016 (Party/constituency donations only) Newfoundland and Labrador: 1996-2016 (Party donations only) P.E.I.: 2007-2016 (Party donations only) Yukon: 2006-2016 (Party donations only) NWT: 2007, 2011, 2015 Nunavut: 2008-2016 Elections Canada: 1993-2017

A detailed methodology is available at nationalpost.com/ followthemoney