While most provinces either limit or have entirely banned corporate and union donations to political parties and candidate's election campaigns, Elections NL does not have any limits on these types of donations. Without these restrictions, experts have described these types of donations in the province as "legalized bribery" and are advocating for ban on corporate and union donations similar to the one implemented on the Federal level since 2006.
"What everyone in Newfoundland and Labrador should realize is the system is the scandal, and the system is corrupt" - Duff Conacher, Democracy Watch (CBC News, January 29, 2017)
To better understand the scope of the issue, several activists and I have been working to make political financing records more publicly available and more easily accessible.
Since Elections NL only releases PDF versions of political financing reports, we have worked to convert these PDFs into excel sheets so the information can be analysed more easily. This page will be updated as we convert more of these reports or have updated analyses on the issue.