Liberals shrink fundraising gap with Conservatives to closest since Poilievre became Tory leader

OTTAWA — New fundraising figures show the Liberal Party of Canada has shrunk its fundraising gap with the Conservative Party of Canada, lagging by just $1.4 million in the last quarter. That’s the closest the two parties have been since Pierre Poilievre became Conservative leader.

Second-quarter fundraising reports filed with Elections Canada show Poilievre’s Conservatives raked in $9 million, while Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals raised $7.6 million during the same period. The period, from April to June, includes most of the federal election campaign that ran from March 23 to April 28, with the Liberals eventually winning a minority government.

“Grassroots Liberals’ record-breaking support this year helped deliver our largest vote share since 1980 in the last election, with Mark Carney and our new Liberal government earning a strong mandate to unite, secure, protect, and build our country,” wrote Liberal party spokesman Matteo Rossi.

“The Liberal Party of Canada is in one of the strongest positions for fundraising and grassroots organizing in the party’s history, achieving our best-ever first and second quarters for fundraising this year, with more donors chipping in Q1 alone than in any single year in our history.”

The Conservative party has not yet responded to a request for comment.

The gap of $1.4 million is the closest the Liberals have been to their Conservative rivals since September 2022, when Poilievre became Conservative leader . Fundraising reports back then show the Conservatives had brought in around $730,000 more in contributions than the Liberals for the quarter.

The gap quickly widened, with the Conservatives out-fundraising all other federal parties by millions , particularly throughout 2024, where the party celebrated smashing the previous fundraising records for all political parties by raking in a total of $41.7 million, up from the $35.2 million it raised during Poilievre’s first full year as leader.

For the first three months of 2025, the Tories raked in $28 million from roughly 149,000 donors. The Liberals, by comparison, raised around $13 million during the first quarter from around 156,000 donors.

The latest second-quarter fundraising data, published by Elections Canada on Wednesday evening, shows the Liberals continued to see an uptick in individual donors contributing to the party.

Figures posted for June 2025 show the Liberals had around 116,000 donors, while the Tories received donations from roughly 83,000 donors.

That represents a massive spike for the Liberals, who closed the fourth quarter of 2024 with around 34,000 donors contributing to it during that period, while the Conservatives saw roughly 62,000 donors send money into its coffers.

The Liberals have also seen a jump in the number of contributors donating $200 or less. Filings show that of the 116,00 donors who contributed in the second quarter of this year, almost 110,000 gave under $200.

Of the 156,000 contributors during the first quarter of this year, coinciding with the Liberals’ leadership race, almost 145,000 gave the same.

That reflects how, during the leadership race that ran from January to early March, more than two-thirds of the donations to now Prime Minister Mark Carney’s campaign for leader were less than $100, according to some of the filings at the time.

Carney was elected Liberal leader in March, replacing former prime minister Justin Trudeau, who had become deeply unpopular, including among many Liberals.

According to Elections Canada filings, the federal New Democrats raised around $1.9 million during the second quarter of 2025, from around 38,000 donors. The Bloc Québécois raised almost 675,000 from roughly 4,500 donors.

National Post

staylor@postmedia.com

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