Evidence of meeting #18 for Declaration of Emergency in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was list.
A video is available from Parliament.
General Counsel, GoFundMe
When we refunded all of the donors, we gave them back all of their tips and all of the transaction fees. With the $1 million that had already been distributed, GoFundMe was out that money, as well as all of the transaction fees associated with the other $9-million-plus and any tips that we would have made.
We also had a number of groups not wanting to use our platform because of the convoy fundraiser.
Senator, Ontario, PSG
I believe you indicated that 86% of the funding raised was from Canadian sources.
Can I assume that the other 14% came from the United States, or were there other countries involved, and if so, which countries were they?
General Counsel, GoFundMe
There were other countries involved. I don't have that information directly in front of me, but we can provide that.
General Counsel, GoFundMe
I do not believe that Russia made any donations to this campaign.
Senator, Ontario, PSG
I'd be interested in the distribution. Thank you.
Are you comfortable with the enhanced obligation to report transactions to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre that was initiated as a result of the experience that you had, as well as those who funded through GoFundMe?
General Counsel, GoFundMe
Yes. In fact, we pre-registered immediately when it was required and have since continued the registration process working with Stripe, which was the processor on this account. Stripe is the one that has most of the information that's required, but we're currently working with FINTRAC right now to determine how to get them the information that they're most focused on, in partnership with Stripe.
Senator, Ontario, PSG
Can you confirm that you believe that's entirely appropriate?
General Counsel, GoFundMe
Yes. We need to comply with the laws in every jurisdiction where we operate, so we will do our best to always do that.
NDP
The Joint Chair NDP Matthew Green
We will now go to Senator Boniface.
Senator Boniface, you have the floor for five minutes.
The Joint Chair Hon. Gwen Boniface (Senator, Ontario, ISG)
Thank you very much.
Thank you to the witness for being here, and our apologies for being otherwise tied up with the vote.
You probably answered this question. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to watch this while I was voting. What processes do you have in place to ensure that your fundraiser isn't being used inappropriately?
I note that in the prohibited activities in the campaign section of your terms and conditions, it includes items that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity and items that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance. I'm interested to know whether you've had an opportunity to review that in light of this experience, and how you see that going forward.
General Counsel, GoFundMe
When this fundraiser was created on January 14, it was within our terms of service. The donation velocity caused our teams to look at it very quickly, get eyes on it and initiate direct contact at that time with Ms. Lich, who was the fundraiser organizer.
As the situation quickly evolved, we then started to get information from people on the ground in Ottawa. We were also having trouble connecting with Ms. Lich and getting answers from her, and we were concerned about how she was going to distribute the funds and ensure that it ended up in hands of people who were peacefully protesting and not part of any of the situation that was occurring on the ground.
We do our best to ensure that all fundraisers on the platform comply with our terms. The one you called out is one of the reasons we removed this from the platform. It was suddenly in support of hate, violence and intolerance, and that's not acceptable to us, so we removed it from the platform at that time.
The Joint Chair Hon. Gwen Boniface
The provisions that Senator Harder spoke about around FINTRAC, do you see that as being helpful in terms of going forward?
General Counsel, GoFundMe
I think regulation is very helpful. I also think it's important to recognize that there are a lot of regulations already in place, everything from the financial regulations and the aspects that you're talking about to consumer protection laws and privacy laws. There's a lot there, and a lot of other jurisdictions have things like voluntary codes of conduct, things we already do when we're reviewing our campaigns.
Transparency is key. We work to ensure that what the campaign organizers put in their statements about how they're going to use the funds can be perfected. That was part of the issue here with Ms. Lich and why we got the letter of attestation from her before we distributed any amounts. It was to ensure what her plan was for getting the funds out into the hands of the right people.
NDP
The Joint Chair NDP Matthew Green
I want to take a minute to note that we are joined, although at the tail end of this meeting, by, I believe, the co-founder of GiveSendGo, Mr. Jacob Wells.
We still have a senator round. At the appropriate time, I will put to this committee how you would like me to proceed with our guest, who was unable to attend the first section. There may be an opportunity or space to have him provide testimony in the second session, if it's the will of this committee, or we can deal with it as a committee at the appropriate time.
I want to make sure that Senator Patterson has the opportunity to provide any remarks that he wishes to make prior to doing that.
Dennis Glen Patterson Senator, Nunavut, CSG
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to defer my time to Mr. Brock. I don't have any questions.
NDP
The Joint Chair NDP Matthew Green
If you don't have any questions, what I would like to do is get a consensus from this committee.
How would you like me to administrate the fact that we have had Mr. Wells join us with about 10 or 15 minutes left in this meeting?
Go ahead, Mr. Motz.
Conservative
Glen Motz Conservative Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB
Thank you, Chair.
First of all, I think we need to know why he was late and didn't see fit to join us as previously indicated.
Also, there is another panel starting, and we have to give them an equal amount of time, so we shouldn't be able to go past that, whatever we decide to do with this witness.
Liberal
Arif Virani Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON
If Mr. Wells is going to make some sort of presentation, we'd want the ability to ask questions of him.
NDP
The Joint Chair NDP Matthew Green
I'll take the discretion as the chair.
Mr. Wells, I'll share with you that I was disappointed when I found out that you were not able to attend at the appropriate time. This is a very serious committee of the House of Commons and the Senate here in Canada dealing with a very serious topic, sir.
I will allow you an intervention that will give you the opportunity to explain yourself in terms of why you're only joining the meeting now. What I will ask, though, is that you not enter into your opening remarks, because it would be at the discretion of this committee to either invite you back formally, and we do have processes for that, or to find another allotment of time, because this is a process that requires us to be able to have interventions to ultimately get to the bottom of what happened here, sir.
I'm going to give you about three minutes to five minutes here to figure out the reason for the late appearance at this very official committee meeting.