Where the money comes from

Dear Editor,

Your paper’s recent article about the mayor and councillor’s election campaign spending was good as far as it went.

But missing was any reporting on all the massive donations those elected to Oshawa council accepted for their campaigns. It is a real eye opener to note how much came from contributions and who the contributors were.

The fact is the majority of those elected to council accepted contributions ranging between 50 to 98 per cent of their spending(info available from Oshawa website). This means they spent very little of their own money on their campaigns.

Most interesting is the significant portion of donations that came from developers and builders. Donations that comply with the contribution amount limits are entirely legal. However the optics are poor considering the way the municipal election process allows this powerful segment of our economy, the building industry, to make such weighty contributions to an elected council which oversees development.

In terms of potential for conflict of interest, it is very concerning.

Greg Milosh