The platform that agreed to fund the Freedom Convoy would have equally agreed to raise funds for the notoriously racist organization Ku Klux Klan “if it were legal”, according to its co-founder.
“If the fundraising activity was legal, legally allowed to happen, we would allow it,” said Jacob Wells, who started the Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo with a family member. The site has raised millions of dollars to date on behalf of the Freedom Convoy, a long-running, outlawed protest that paralyzed Ottawa for more than three weeks in February.
Wells was responding to Liberal MP Pam Damoff at a parliamentary committee on public safety and national security in Ottawa on Thursday. Ms. Damoff asked him if he would accept that his site host a fundraising activity for the Ku Klux Klan, a famous white supremacist organization in the United States.
“We believe deep down that the danger of suppressing [de la liberté] speech is more dangerous than the speeches themselves,” he concluded, after confirming that he would fund this organization if permitted by law.
His website agreed to collect donations from the public to fund the Freedom Convoy, after an initial campaign that raised nearly $10 million was banned from GoFundMe, on the recommendation of the Ottawa police.
The second fundraising campaign, on the American site GiveSendGo, raised even more money in a few days. This campaign was temporarily suspended after a computer attack on the website and provisions of the Emergencies Act that prevented the transfer of funds. However, the fundraising campaign continues to solicit donations.
12.3 million Canadian dollars have been raised so far, and the platform still does not know if it will have to reimburse its contributors. GiveSendGo would also be used to finance far-right groups such as the Proud Boys, international media have revealed.
United States funding
The GiveSendGo co-founder contradicted the information published by The duty, and based on leaked data that the majority of Freedom Convoy donations come from overseas. According to its own data, it is rather 60% of the funds that come from Canada, and 37% from the United States.
“There are fringe elements of all organizations, and the media tries to polarize the fringe,” he said, stressing the right to protest against health measures.
GoFundMe President Juan Benitez also appeared before federal lawmakers on Thursday. He said he was not aware of the extremist speeches made by the organizers of the Freedom Convoy, at first. The duty had yet reported even before their arrival in the Canadian capital their intention to blockade Ottawa “several weeks”, speaking of their movement as a “revolution”.
This platform paid a million dollars from the pot raised to the organizers of the convoy, before changing its mind and reimbursing all the donors. About 86% of the donations raised on this first fundraising campaign came from Canada, according to its president. Over a million dollars raised had been donated by Americans.