The federal Green party accidentally kept donations that were meant to support the leadership campaign of Glen Murray, it said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.
Contributions meant for the former Winnipeg mayor and Ontario Liberal cabinet minister were incorrectly treated as general donations and kept in party coffers rather than being passed on.
Donations to the Green leadership candidates have been routed through the party, which processed them and passed 75 per cent of each contribution on to the campaign that raised the money.
Murray said in an interview that his campaign discovered proof of the problem last week, after spotting that donations his team received and passed on to the party office never came back for the campaign to use.
Story continues below advertisement
“We know it’s a very significant proportion of the funding we raised,” he said, likely tens of thousands of dollars.
2:33 Elizabeth May says throne speech needs to include climate action or Greens won’t vote confidence
Elizabeth May says throne speech needs to include climate action or Greens won’t vote confidence
Officially, the Murray campaign’s last fundraising report said it had brought in $59,650.20, making a discrepancy on that scale very significant.
Besides making his fundraising look weaker than it was, the mistake meant Murray couldn’t afford to do all the campaigning he would have liked.
“It really gummed up our planning,” he said.
The Greens’ interim leader Jo-Ann Roberts said that the party is still determining just how much money was improperly withheld. But it would make the top fundraisers’ tallies “much closer.”
The party also said restitution to the Murray campaign will be made “as quickly as possible.”
Voting for the party leadership has been underway since Saturday, with the winner to be announced Oct. 3.
This week, Murray said, his volunteers are torn between trying to track down misdirected contributions and doing what a campaign normally does in the final phase of a race: contacting supporters to make sure they’ve voted.
Murray said he doesn’t know whether the situation can be put right this late in the game.
“Heartbreakingly, I don’t know what they can do now,” he said.
TORONTO – Strength in the base metal and technology sectors helped Canada’s main stock index gain almost 100 points on Friday, while U.S. stock markets also climbed higher.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 93.51 points at 23,568.65.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 297.01 points at 41,393.78. The S&P 500 index was up 30.26 points at 5,626.02, while the Nasdaq composite was up 114.30 points at 17,683.98.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.61 cents US compared with 73.58 cents US on Thursday.
The October crude oil contract was down 32 cents at US$68.65 per barrel and the October natural gas contract was down five cents at US$2.31 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$30.10 at US$2,610.70 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents US$4.24 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says wholesale sales, excluding petroleum, petroleum products, and other hydrocarbons and excluding oilseed and grain, rose 0.4 per cent to $82.7 billion in July.
The increase came as sales in the miscellaneous subsector gained three per cent to reach $10.5 billion in July, helped by strength in the agriculture supplies industry group, which rose 9.2 per cent.
The food, beverage and tobacco subsector added 1.7 per cent to total $15 billion in July.
The personal and household goods subsector fell 2.5 per cent to $12.1 billion.
In volume terms, overall wholesale sales rose 0.5 per cent in July.
Statistics Canada started including oilseed and grain as well as the petroleum and petroleum products subsector as part of wholesale trade last year, but is excluding the data from monthly analysis until there is enough historical data.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 150 points in late-morning trading, helped by strength in the base metal and energy sectors, while U.S. stock markets were mixed.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 172.18 points at 23,383.35.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 34.99 points at 40,826.72. The S&P 500 index was up 10.56 points at 5,564.69, while the Nasdaq composite was up 74.84 points at 17,470.37.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.55 cents US compared with 73.59 cents US on Wednesday.
The October crude oil contract was up $2.00 at US$69.31 per barrel and the October natural gas contract was up five cents at US$2.32 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$40.00 at US$2,582.40 an ounce and the December copper contract was up six cents at US$4.20 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
