Residents donated to convoy protest
Prince George area residents donated $17,050 to support the so-called Freedom Convoy through the Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo, according to a list distributed by the online transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets.
The list includes 133 donations, ranging from $1,000 to $5, attributed to names and emails from the four Prince George postal code areas: V2K, V2L, V2M and V2N.
The average value of alleged donations from Prince George was $128.20, with the majority of donations ranging from $50 to $100.
The Citizen reached out to three Prince George residents whose names and personal information are included in the list, but all three declined to comment.
The Citizen has not been able to independently verify the accuracy of the leaked information and is therefore not publishing the names and amounts they gave of any of the alleged donors.
Among the alleged local donations, several of the email addresses are associated with local businesses and one was from a local public institution.
Many of the alleged donations included comments posted on GiveSendGo’s website.
“This movement is the People’s last hope from being driven into complete servitude to corrupt governments,” commented one of three local people who donated $1,000 to the convoy.
“I should not need a government barcode to take my child swimming or eat at a restaurant. This is dehumanizing. The only person causing hate and division is the Prime Minister,” said one Prince George person who donated $50.
The list, which Distributed Denial of Secrets says was obtained by hackers who disrupted the crowdfunding organization’s website, contains a total of 92,000 individual donations.
According to analysis done by The Canadian Press, 39 per cent of the donors came from Canada, 56 per cent came from the United States, two per cent came from the United Kingdom and three per cent came from more than 100 other countries.
Canadians donated $4.31 million US, Americans $3.62 million US and British donors gave $77,000 US, The Canadian Press also reported.
Our story about the 133 donations, totalling $17,050, from local residents in support of the convoy protesters in Ottawa and elsewhere, through a crowdfunding website begs the obvious question: where are the names? As the story states, we reached out to three Prince George residents whose names and contact information are on the list. All three declined to comment and we have not been able to independently verify that the information in that document, which was obtained illegally by someone hacking the crowdfunding website, is correct.
The people whose information has been hacked are the victims of a crime, so if you made a donation you might want to contact GiveSendGo to find out if your personal information has been compromised. Legal or not, this information is out in the public domain now and there are people who may be far less conscientious about how they use it than we have chosen to be.
If any of the three donors we contacted had confirmed in an on-the-record interview that they had made a donation (and in the amount stated), we would not only have included their name but the reasons why they donated. One would think someone willing to put their money behind a worthy cause would be willing to tell others about it, particularly if they’ve already publicly shared their views on the vaccine mandates through social media.
Some readers might feel we’d then be giving space for individuals to justify their support for the illegal activity and the people conducting them. Fair enough but we have always --- and will continue to --- publish views and opinions respectfully stated, whether they agree with us or not. And fair is fair - if we had received a similar document regarding donations made by local residents to support the Coastal GasLink protests, and you can bet there are some, we would have handled that story (and the publishing of names) in the exact same way.
Frankly, the lack of support from local residents, both in numbers and in dollar amounts, speaks volumes. Talk is cheap and slapping a sign on one’s vehicle and honking the horn against vaccine mandates (the handful that remain) is free but putting your money where your mouth is comes with a cost. Clearly, only a handful of area people cared enough about these protesters to back the cause with cash.