New Brunswick man made $75,000 donation to Freedom Convoy

Brad Howland, the president of Easy-Kleen Pressure Systems in Sussex, N.B., is listed as the largest donor in Canada, at US$75,000. (Carl Bradley Howland/Facebook)

It appears a New Brunswick man has made the largest Canadian donation to the crowdfunding site GiveSendGo in support of the "Freedom Convoy" protest in Ottawa.

On Sunday night, GiveSendGo's main landing page was briefly replaced with a video manifesto against the ongoing protest that has shut down parts of downtown Ottawa, as well as several border crossings elsewhere in the country.

It also included a spreadsheet with names, postal codes, email addresses, and donation amounts for tens of thousands of donors from Canada, the U.S. and a handful of other countries.

Brad Howland, the president of Easy-Kleen Pressure Systems in Sussex, N.B., is listed as the largest donor in Canada, at US$75,000.

His donation was anonymous, but in the GiveSendGo records he uses a company email address and he acknowledged in an email to CTV News that he was a donor.

In a statement, Howland said his company has done business with truckers for more than 40 years and he saw this as an opportunity to support them.

“We thank them when we can, but we rarely get the opportunity to support them when they are in need, and they are in need right NOW,” said Howland. “We are thankful to be blessed enough to support their efforts to do what they have to do in a peaceful way until the government removes the mandates to restore all our freedom as pre-COVID.”

Howland said he attended the protest in Ottawa on the weekend, calling it the “experience of a lifetime.”

“They have a beautiful, legal, peaceful protest that overwhelmed us with emotion,” he said in the statement. “This will go down in the history books of our nation.”

Easy-Kleen is listed as a beneficiary of the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy, a federal government program that provides money to businesses during the pandemic. Howland has not yet responded to questions about whether it is possible that government funds were donated.

The U.S.-based GiveSendGo became the crowdfunding platform of choice for supporters of the "Freedom Convoy" movement following the cancellation of a $10-million fundraiser on GoFundMe, which said it would refund donors.

The GiveSendGo fundraiser managed to generate almost $9 million, according to organizers.

Of all donations in the dataset, Canadians provided 51 per cent, while Americans provided 43 per cent. Maps indicate most of the support in Canada comes from B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Southern Ontario.

The leak comes as the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa enters its third week, despite threats of consequences from law enforcement. Ontario Premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency last week, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made history on Monday when he invoked the federal Emergencies Act to try to bring an end to the protests.

With files from CTV Toronto's Jon Woodward and CTV Ottawa's Ted Raymond