Hey, if your Chinese and want to move to Canada, See Jason Kenny or Chris Alexander, just for starters

For someone like Jason Kenney, is it the portfolio or the politician that brings in donation cash?

There was a time when Jason Kenney’s Calgary Southeast riding association could rake in $20,000 in donations in a single night on the Toronto political fundraising circuit.

Specifically, that time was between 2007 and 2013.

It began shortly after he landed his first cabinet gig as junior minister for Multiculturalism, and continued throughout his five years at Citizenship and Immigration, which coincided with his party-assigned efforts to inveigle new and first-generation Canadians into the big blue tent. His efforts resulted in a sizeable chunk of cash flowing back into the local party coffers in Alberta from the Toronto-area Chinese and South Asian communities.

When he was finally shuffled out of that portfolio in mid-2013 — first to Employment, then Defence — those out-of-town contributions effectively dried up, with his riding association reporting just $67,149 in contributions for the year — a drop of more than $128,000 from the previous year.

Although the final reports for the now-defunct Calgary Southeast association won’t be filed until later this year, his newly redistricted riding has posted similarly modest returns — enough to maintain an entirely respectable spot midway down the list of the 20 highest-earning riding associations in the country, but he’s no longer vying for the top slot.

Meanwhile, over in the riding formerly known as Ajax — Pickering, Chris Alexander, the former diplomat turned politico who succeeded him at Citizenship and Immigration, has seen his local Conservative association nearly double its intake from 2013 to 2014 — from $39,560 to $67,225 in individual contributions.

Even in 2013, it wasn’t until after he moved to Citizenship that donations really took off.

The number of named Chinese and South Asian donors giving money to the association has also grown significantly over the last two years — from a handful of listed supporters to more than half of the donor base.

Of course, unlike Kenney, Alexander’s electoral turf is well within the 905 heartland, which makes it less noteworthy that he’d be attracting money from the area, although he does manage to pull support from outside the riding.

Still, it seems safe to tentatively say that — aside from the occasional burst of one-time generosity directed at a transport, industry or Canadian Heritage minister —  Citizenship and Immigration seems to be one of just two cabinet posts that brings good fortune to the local riding association of the minister who holds it, at least during his or her tenure therein.

Perhaps less surprisingly, the other is Finance, which is ground zero for the most critical decisions on how the government intends to spend its money — and, for that matter, intends to find the money to spend, whether through taxes or budget cuts.

Between 2007 and 2012, local Conservatives in the late Jim Flaherty’s riding of Whitby — Oshawa reported average annual revenue of $95,000 — with the high-water mark just under $120,000 in 2010, and the low point in 2009, when the EDA claimed just slightly over $55,000 in contributions.

After Flaherty handed over the fiscal torch to Joe Oliver in 2014, the new minister’s Eglinton Lawrence riding association saw its yearly intake jump from $49,231 to $115,797.

As for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Calgary Southwest riding association, it chugs along just fine, regularly taking in between $80,000 and $100,000 over the course of the year.

Measured against his fellow party leaders, that puts him at the front of the pack — far ahead of his rivals in Outremont, Papineau and Saanich — Gulf Islands, respectively.

Also on the opposition front, there appears to be little correlation between shadow cabinet posts and drawing power, with the notable exception of now former Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis’ riding of Scarborough – Agincourt, which reported record-breaking numbers throughout the years that he served as critic for Immigration and Multiculturalism.

(Like Kenney, Karygiannis was also a key player in his party’s ongoing ethnic and cultural outreach campaigns.)

It is, alas, methodologically impossible to apply the same test to the local fundraising prowess of previous ministers, as riding associations only began filing annual returns in 2004, while the cap on individual donations didn’t fully kick in until 2007, making it difficult to do a straight by-the-numbers comparison.

But if we go by the available data, it would appear the clampdown on political contributions that began under outgoing Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien and continued under Harper, may have achieved its ultimate goal of limiting, if not eliminating entirely, the influence of money not just at the national, but the local level.

By and large, being a cabinet minister — or even the leader of your party — doesn’t automatically lead those with particularly keen interests in the direction of your policy to beat a path to your local riding association’s door.

Even if it does — or, at least, appears to — there’s also no guarantee that those supporters will follow you to your next cabinet gig, so there’s little reason to go out of your way to court such fair-weather friends.

Finally — if perhaps paradoxically — it’s also good news for the riding associations themselves — particularly those without a minister-in-residence. After all, every dollar a Torontonian gives to an Alberta riding association is one fewer loonie that he or she can toss into the bucket at the local EDA.

The $1,500 limit applies to all donations to the riding associations, nomination contestants and candidates of a given party in one calendar year.

For his part, while he may no longer head back to his riding with thousands of dollars from Toronto-area donors in his carry-on luggage, Kenney isn’t entirely out of the out-of-town fundraising game. While the bulk of the money raised by his riding association came from the Calgary area last year, there were a few exceptions to that rule.

Last November, Kenney  tweeted a picture of himself at a Toronto fundraiser “for [Conservative[ outreach efforts hosted by my friend Dr. Benson Lau.”

According to its latest filings with Elections Canada, on that very same day, the Calgary Midnapore riding association reported receiving $1,000 donations from both Benson Lau, who ran for the Conservatives in Scarborough- Agincourt, of all places, in 2008, and his daughter, Jacqueline, as well as two other Toronto-area Chinese-Canadian supporters.