It is Brad Lavigne's first day in his new job as national director of the New Democratic Party of Canada and he spent part of it explaining what, on the face of it, might look to be disappointing party fundraising results for the first quarter of 2009. Those numbers, as well as the numbers for every federal party, were released today by Elections Canada.
For the first three months of the year, the federal New Democrats raised $595,611 from about 10,000 contributors.
That compares to $1.75 million raised in the fourth quarter of 2008 and $1.12 million raised in the same quarter a year ago.
“We knew this in advance and this is a short-term phenomenon,” Lavigne told me. “We are on pace to pay off our debt — a small debt fro the election and we are healthy enough to run an election campaign at any given moment.”
The numbers looked soft, Lavigne said, because the federal party stayed on the sidelines for most of the quarter in some of its most important regions of the country.
In B.C. and Nova Scotia, where provincial wings of the party are either fighting or about to fight a provincial election, the federal fundraisers stayed out of the way so that the provincial parties could fill up their war chests. In Ontario and in Saskatchewan, provincial parties were busy choosing a new leader, a process which taxes the financial and volunteer resources for the New Democrat base. Recognizing that, the federal party did not do any aggressive fundraising there.
“Added to all this is a recession,” Lavigne said. “The recession is hurting. There's no doubt about that.”
And, just as the economy is expected to show strong growth towards the back half of this year, Lavigne said he expects his party's fundraising campaign to show some improvement in the third and fourth quarters of 2009.