Follow the Money: Investigating Political Donations in Canada

We leverage a new, original dataset containing all recorded political donations made in all 14 Canadian jurisdictions since 1993 to map patterns in political donations and to measure the effects of donations laws. We ask: which types of individuals are more likely to make donations? What can the recipients and the timing of donations tell us about donors’ motivations? And do donation laws that regulate who can donate, how much they can donate, and at what threshold donations must be publicly disclosed, have their intended effects? This research program has two interrelated objectives: first, to generate new knowledge about the role of money in Canadian politics, and second, to disseminate that knowledge to citizens, and in doing so, to improve transparency, democratic accountability, and governance in Canada. This project is a partnership between academics at the University of Toronto and Ryerson University, and the not-for-profit Investigative Journalism Foundation, which will benefit from this project in the form of increased readership.

Faculty Supervisor:

Christopher Cochrane;Rohan Alexander;April Lindgren

Student:

Partner:

Investigative Journalism Foundation

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Public Service, Policy, and Governance; New and Digital Media; Information and Communications Technology

University:

University of Toronto

Program: