[1] The scandal "tainted" the reputation of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, although it was not discovered until the year after he had lost the election.

[6][7] The donations were split between the Liberals' federal and Quebec provincial parties and were allegedly to secure the right to divert the St. Lawrence River 30 kilometres west of Montreal, to generate hydroelectricity.

[10] Discovered in 1931, two years after the event, the scandal occurred during one of the brief periods between the wars when King was not Prime Minister; he noted that it cast his party into "the valley of humiliation", and suggested he might resign from politics over the affair.

No major changes occurred in the laws surrounding financing until three decades later,[12] although the National Liberal Federation was created in 1932 to provide distance between party leadership and campaign fundraising.

Although the scandal did not topple the provincial government of Louis-Alexandre Taschereau, who was re-elected for a third term in the Quebec general election of 1931, the economic historian Albert Faucher wrote that it focused the public's attention on "the issue of electricity", which led a decade later to the nationalization of MLH & P and the establishment of Hydro-Québec.