Canada’s national security committee grills crowdfunders and payment processors over Freedom Convoy fundraisers
Why It Matters
Canada has promised to tighten crowdfunding regulations amid worries white nationalists used them during the Freedom Convoy to raise money. Whatever the Standing Committee recommends could have implications for social movements and fundraisers.
Crowdfunding platforms GoFundMe and GiveSendGo, as well as payment processors Stripe and PayPal, faced tough questions from Canadian politicians on March 3 about the role their companies played in facilitating Canada’s recent Freedom Convoy movement.
Convoy organizers hosted a fundraiser on GoFundMe that raised $10 million from Jan. 14 until Feb. 4, when the platform shut it down following reports of illegal activity by participants. Undeterred, organizers moved to another platform, GiveSendGo, that raised $9.7 million U.S as of March 3, although proceeds have since been frozen.
During a tense two-hour long meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, several politicians asked executives why they’d still failed to cut off the Convoy’s fundraising campaigns long after mainstream news reports began circulating of the hateful rhetoric o
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