Leaked data from the Christian crowdfunding site Givesendgo shows that Waterloo Region residents donated $76,053 USD to the “Freedom Convoy” that shut down Ottawa for three weeks. Information was obtained through a hack by Distributed Denial of Secrets which included donors’ names, postal codes, and donation amounts.
2021 Statistics Canada data was used to compare census divisions/subdivisions similar in size to Waterloo Region. Census divisions/subdivisions were of “similar size” if they had a population 15% smaller or larger than Waterloo Region (pop. 587,765).
The final list of divisions/subdivisions used for comparison consists of the City of Quebec (pop. 549,459), the City of Surrey (pop. 568,322), the City of Hamilton (pop. 569,353), the City of Brampton (pop. 656,480), and the City of Vancouver (pop. 662,248).
The location of donations were mapped using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, and postal codes were transformed into latitude and longitude coordinates using a geocoding service.
insideWaterloo's investigation also revealed 10 donors whose names matched those on the 2020 Sunshine List, an annual tally of publicly paid workers who earn $100,000 or more.
Half were employees from the Waterloo Region District School Board, the rest were from the Waterloo Catholic District School Board (2), the Regional Municipality Of Waterloo (2), and the University Of Waterloo (1).
