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Toronto, Mayoral candidate John Tory has raised $2.48 million from more than 5,000 donors, his campaign has announced.
Tory released his full list of donors on Saturday morning after rival candidate Olivia Chow criticized him for failing to publish the information in a reasonable period of time after promising to do so last weekend.
Doug Ford now remains as the only candidate who hasn’t released the list, though he did tell reporters on Saturday that he would release the information “very shortly” now that Tory has.
We raised the money we needed to finance the campaign, we will probably have a surplus in fact, and I am very gratified by that,” Tory said at a press conference in North York “The rest of it is there for people to see, comment on and ask questions if they wish.”
Tory’s donors contributed an average of more than $500 to his campaign. The maximum donation allowed to a mayoral campaign is $2,500.
Some of the more prominent donors listed include Thomson Reuters Chairman David Thomson, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Chairman Larry Tannenbaum, grocery store tycoon W. Galen Weston, Maple Leaf Foods President and CEO Michael H. McCain, Bell Canada President and CEO George Cope and several members of the Rogers family, including Deputy Chairman Edward Rogers.
The Municipal Elections Act only requires that candidates submit their donor list to the city by March 27, but in recent years candidates have voluntarily released the information ahead of time
Last weekend after facing criticism from Chow over his silence on whether or not he would release the information ahead of the election, Tory said he would in an effort to provide a “faster kind of transparency and accountability.” Ford then promised to do the same in an interview with CP24.
Speaking with reporters on Saturday morning, Chow slammed both Tory and Ford for waiting until the last minute to release their list of donors.
“An excel spread sheet doesn’t take that long to put together. They could have just hired a young person who could have got it out in probably an hour,” Chow said. “What do John Tory and Doug Ford have to hide? Why are they afraid of releasing the donor list? I don’t understand it.”
A former NDP Member of Parliament, Chow released her donor list on Wednesday, revealing that she has collected $1,759,622 from 6,848 people since the campaign began.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail today, Tory is continuing his final push for votes by canvassing in North York while Ford will be going door-to-door in Etobicoke and attending a Halloween Walk in support of the Canadian Forces near Islington Avenue and Lake Shore Boulevard.
