In January, 2000, I switched to using tab-delimited text files to present donor information. Also, I was forced by Excel's limitations to present the PCs' donation information in two files: one for the 1995-7 period, and one for the 1998-00 period. The four files together cover all reportable donations to major parties from 1995 to 1999, inclusive, with some information from 2000. For a quick guide to what 2000 donation information is available on this site, click here. This includes all donation records from the Nickel Belt by-election on October 1, 1998, which enabled the PC central fund to raise an additional $2.7 million: 32 times what the party spent to fight the campaign. (For a brief explanation of why by-elections create an important loophole in Ontario's campaign finance law, click here.)

In June 2001, I started posting these files in unzipped text format; it cuts out a couple of steps. If this presents problems for you, please e-mail me and complain.

If saved, certain kinds of errors in Excel can ruin your data. These include: sorting one column alone when you meant to sort the whole spreadsheet by one column, and deleting a single cell in a column. I strongly recommend setting these files as read-only immediately after downloading them. That way, the file will snap back to the correct format after you finish working with it.