Confused by multiple spellings of a company name in Lobbying Registrations? Wondering why you can’t see a donation you contributed in our Political Donors database?
This page provides answers to some of the most frequently asked questions regarding our nine databases: Political Donors, Charity Tax Returns, Charity Staff Compensation, Gifts Received by Charities, Lobbying Registrations, Government Funding, Lobbying Communications, Revolving Door and Open By Default.
Topics covered on this page range from how to use the databases, what data we display, differences between paid and free versions of the databases and various inconsistencies seen in the data.
If you have any questions about our databases not covered on this page, please don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected].
All databases
What do paying subscribers get access to that free users do not?
Paying subscribers get access to keyword alerts. As our databases are updated in real-time, subscribers can choose to receive emails alerting them when new data is collected that matches words or names of their choosing. For example, subscribers can set up an alert to learn every time Justin Trudeau meets with a lobbyist; or when someone has registered to meet with a politician to discuss climate change, inflation, or the war in Ukraine.
Keyword alerts are available across all eight of our databases. In addition, subscribers get access to more data parameters for each database, whether that be detailed location data for donors or historical data for gifts received by charities. More details on what subscribers get for each database are included below.
What should I do if I see a name that’s misspelt or a similar typo?
All the data we collect is from government agencies but a lot of their data originally comes from people who, just like anyone else, make typos. We clean up major errors like when political parties misspell the name of their own party. However we generally defer to the government agency we get our data from as the arbiter of what is and is not correct.
If you see a typo in our donations database, you can check the source data held by government election agencies. For charities data, please check the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) website. Lobbying data is from the federal and provincial lobbying registries.
Regardless, we’re always happy to hear from readers. If you see something that looks off and want to talk about it please don’t hesitate to send us a note at [email protected].
Has the data in these databases been altered in any way?
All of our databases are made up of data collected from various government sources (elections agencies, lobbying registries, and the CRA). For the most part, data was accessed via web or screen “scraping”, i.e. the writing of computer programs that routinely parse, collect and organize data viewable on websites. In other cases, we received data or downloaded data files directly from a government agency. It is not uncommon for misspellings or typos to occur in the government data, which the IJF does not correct in most cases.
The IJF vetted and performed minor cleaning on our data to remove errors and standardize styling (capitalization, names of parties, etc) where such changes would make the databases more useful and legible to users. For a complete overview of our data cleaning process for each database, please see our methodologies:
Political Donors
What years does this database cover?
The Political Donors database contains data from 1993 to present day. For details on the years available for each region’s data, please see our methodology.
What information do paying subscribers get access to beyond what's available in the free version of the database?
Paying subscribers of the Political Donors database get access to every data parameter collected per donation in our full database. For example, free users can see the source, recipient and total amount for an individual donation. Subscribers on the other hand have access to more precise data, like the donor’s location, the date the donation was made, and how much was donated in cash vs. in-kind. To learn more about our paid database subscriptions, please check out our subscriptions page.
Why are certain columns blank for certain donations?
Some regions collect less data on their donors than others. For example, some regions’ do not have a “donor type” or “political entity'' column in their original datasets. Where a column was empty and the Investigative Journalism Foundation team could populate it with the correct data, we added values into the column. For example, we set the “donor type” for Quebec donations to “individual”, as Quebec only allows individuals to donate.
See our methodology for more details on decisions we made with the Political Donors database.
Why can’t I find a donation I made?
Rules regarding the disclosure of donor names vary by region. Many regions do not publish donor names for contributions under a certain amount.
At the federal level, donations over $200 to candidates, nomination contestants, leadership contestants, electoral district associations and parties must be disclosed. All other donations are anonymous and are amalgamated together (e.g. All contributions to the Conservative Party under $200 are added together and appear in the donations database as “Contributions of $200 or less/Contributions de 200 $ ou moins”).
In Yukon, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island, donor names must be disclosed for contributions above either $249.99 or $250. Contributions under this amount do not require disclosure.
In Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador, the disclosure threshold is $100. In Nova Scotia, it is $199.99.
Quebec discloses the names of all political donors.
Why am I getting so many results for one name?
There are many shared names among donors throughout this database, such as common names like “David Peters.” The only way to distinguish between donors with the same name is to look at the donor’s location – which subscribers can do by using the premium version of the donations database. Of course, it is still possible that donors with the same name live in the same postal code area.
A search for “David Peters” may also return multiple variations of the same name depending on how the donor inputted their name for different donations, for instance if they included their middle initials (David A. Peters) or used only their initials (D. A. Peters). All names have been entered as collected by elections officials.
Charities
Charity Tax Returns
What years does this database cover?
The Charity Tax Returns database contains data from 1990 to present day.
What information do paying subscribers get access to beyond what's available in the free version of the database?
Paying subscribers of the Charity Tax Returns database can see records older than five years. To learn more about our paid database subscriptions, check out our subscriptions page.
Why am I getting multiple results for one charity name?
Most charities have an official name that they use on their returns every year. Some large organizations, like Amnesty International or the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), have multiple chapters or regional subdivisions. In cases like that, each chapter/subdivision is registered separately with the CRA.
Why are the names of the fields different across years?
The official charity information tax return form, called the T3010, has changed multiple times since 1990, which means the fields that appear under certain financial headings (e.g. “Revenue”; “Expenditures”) have also changed.
The exact wording of certain fields has also changed, even though they mean the same thing. For example, since 2013, line 4575 of the form has been labelled “Total non tax-receipted revenue from all sources outside of Canada”, but from 2009 to 2012, the same line was labelled “Total revenue received from all sources outside Canada.”
For more information on differences between fields across years, please see our methodology.
Why can’t I see this charity’s tax return for the most recent year?
The Charity Tax Returns database contains all tax returns up to the charity’s most recent filing. If the charity doesn’t have a return for a year you’re expecting it may simply not have filed it yet or it could also be late in filing. Charity’s have six months after the end of their fiscal year to file their returns. You may also not be able to find a charity’s recent filings if the charity has had its status revoked or annulled by the CRA.
Why am I seeing strange numbers in some charities’ tax returns?
Charities are responsible for filing correct information in their tax returns. It’s possible some charities submitted a wrong number by mistake, or wrote a number on the wrong line of the T3010 form, or added an extra zero by accident. Not all tax returns are audited and validated by the CRA, meaning most of these numbers were submitted – and collected by us – as-is.
Gifts Received by Charities
What information do paying subscribers get access to beyond what's available in the free version of the database?
Paying subscribers of the Gifts Received by Charities database can see records dating from before 2015. To learn more about our paid database subscriptions, check out our subscriptions page.
Why are the recipient names in all lowercase/messy/inconsistent?
The Gifts Received by Charities database shows data of charities’ donations to qualified donees, as disclosed in their Form T1236, Qualified donees worksheet / Amounts provided to other organizations. The charity is responsible for inputting the names of the donees on their forms and not all charities spell the names of their donees correctly.
What is a qualified donee?
A qualified donee is an organization that can issue official tax receipts for gifts they receive. The list of types of organizations that can be a qualified donee is found here.
Can I sort this database?
You can sort each column by clicking on the bold column headings to switch between ascending and descending order of values.
Charity Staff Compensation
What information do paying subscribers get access to beyond what's available in the free version of the database?
Paying subscribers of the Charity Staff Compensation database can see records dating from before 2015. To learn more about our paid database subscriptions, check out our subscriptions page.
Why can’t I see exact compensation amounts?
This database shows data from the compensation section of the T3010 form. The section details the compensation amount ranges of the 10 most highly-compensated staff at the charity (see caption). The T3010 form does not ask for exact compensation amounts.
For more information about the compensation section of the form, please see our methodology.
Lobbying
Lobbying Registrations
What information do paying subscribers get access to beyond what's available in the free version of the database?
Paying subscribers of the Lobbying Registrations database can see past versions of lobbyist registrations. To learn more about our paid database subscriptions, check out our subscriptions page.
Why are there so many results for the same organization?
Organizations must file new registrations for each jurisdiction they lobby in, be it at the federal or provincial level. But even within a sole jurisdiction, there might be multiple registrations for the same organization.
For example, at the federal level, the way it usually works is that an organization will have a single registration for its “in-house corporation” lobbyists, i.e. employees of the company who lobby on behalf of the company. However it is common for organizations to hire outside consultants employed by a public relations firm who lobby on their behalf.
Those consultants are responsible for registering themselves and their lobbying instances for the companies they represent, not the organization itself. This results in consultant registrations being logged under a unique registration number different from that of an official in-house corporation registration. Consultant lobbying may even be logged under a slightly different organization name than that of the in-house registration. For example, the Mining Association of Canada’s official organization name includes its official acronym in its in-house corporation name. One outside consultant registering their lobbying on behalf of the company chose not to include those acronyms in the organization name.
In creating our database, the IJF generally chose not to alter the data as it appears in lobbying registries.
Please see our methodology for more information on how the lobbyist registry is organized.
Lobbying Communication Reports
What information do paying subscribers get access to beyond what's available in the free version of the database?
Paying subscribers of the Lobbying Communication Reports database can see details on what was discussed from each report, as well as records filed before 2010. To learn more about our paid database subscriptions, check out our subscriptions page.
Why can’t I find communication reports for (province/territory)?
Communication Reports data is only available from the Federal and British Columbia lobbyist registries.
Revolving Door
What information do paying subscribers get access to beyond what's available in the free version of the database?
Paying subscribers of the Revolving Door database can see records dating from before 2010. To learn more about our paid database subscriptions, check out our subscriptions page.
What does revolving door mean?
In politics, the revolving door is when a public official goes from working for the government to working as a lobbyist who wants something from the government. Our Revolving Door database records lobbyists who formerly held government positions and have transitioned into lobbying.
What type of former government positions are disclosed?
The Revolving Door database only includes designated public office positions, which are defined by the respective jurisdiction’s lobbying laws. What a province designates as a position that requires disclosure varies from province to province, so our database may not capture all the government positions that a lobbyist previously worked at.
For more details about disclosure of government positions, please see our methodology.
Why are there multiple results of the same position for certain lobbyists?
If a lobbyist is representing multiple clients they need to disclose each individual past position they’ve held in government for each client.
Which regions have revolving door data?
Federal, Saskatchewan, Ontario and British Columbia are in our database. We are working on adding data for Quebec and Alberta. No other provinces or territories record revolving door data.
Government Funding
What information do paying subscribers get access to beyond what's available in the free version of the database?
Paying subscribers of the Government Funding database can see records dating from before 2010. To learn more about our paid database subscriptions, check out our subscriptions page.
Why are there multiple results for the same company in the same year?
Since lobbyists submit the data themselves there is the potential for an in-house lobbyist to report one amount while a consultant lobbyist for the same company reports a different amount.
This problem is especially prominent in the federal registry, where some organizations update their information multiple times a year, giving private corporations the opportunity to update the amounts they receive as their budgets change, something they might not necessarily communicate to an outside consultant. No distinction is made at the end of a given financial year to clarify what is the final figure for a funding line item.
Where the IJF could guarantee the existence of an exact duplicate, where two or more funding instances had the exact same source, amount and year, the IJF deleted all duplicate values and kept the funding instance belonging to the most recent registration version. Because of the aforementioned issue regarding discrepancies between in-house lobbyists disclosures and outside consultant disclosures, the IJF did not deduplicate if any of those parameters differed even slightly, so as to allow for the discrepancies to be viewable by the public.
For more information about our process of deleting duplicates in the government funding database, please see our methodology.