Democratic deficit: The legacy of Stephen Harper’s government

November 8, 2015 1 comment Article
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Note: A shorter ver­sion of this blog ran in Huff­in­g­ton Post Octo­ber 15, four days before the national vote that turfed Stephen Harper’s Con­ser­v­a­tives. I claim no impact on the vot­ing results. For­get the elec­tion debate over bud­get deficits and tol­er­ance of the veil. We have another deficit in Canada and it is nei­ther looming

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Abuse by Conservatives on Finance Committee Verify Thesis Findings

October 29, 2014 No comments Article
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Prior to my tes­ti­fy­ing at the Stand­ing Finance Com­mit­tee in Ottawa on Octo­ber 27 about my the­sis find­ings, the peo­ple I sur­veyed sug­gested that one of two things would hap­pen. Option one, the Lib­er­als and New Democ­rats would be friendly and ask ques­tions that elab­o­rated on my tes­ti­mony, but the Con­ser­v­a­tive major­ity on the committee

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Gareth Kirkby’s Thesis Testimony to Canada’s Finance Committee

October 27, 2014 No comments Article
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I tes­ti­fied before the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee of Finance in Par­lia­ment Octo­ber 27, 2014 about the find­ings of my Master’s the­sis, Unchar­i­ta­ble Chill. Below is my tes­ti­mony. I’m here today to share with you the impli­ca­tions of the find­ings of my Master’s the­sis. I inter­viewed 16 lead­ers of char­i­ties of var­i­ous sizes, in five sec­tors, and

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Is CRA Avoiding Audits of Right-leaning Charities Filing Inaccurate Returns?

October 22, 2014 No comments Article
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The Broad­bent Insti­tute is call­ing for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into CRA audit­ing choices after a study by the left-leaning non­profit (but not char­ity) found strange incon­sis­ten­cies. The study con­clu­sions sug­gest that pro­gres­sive crit­ics of the Harper government’s pub­lic poli­cies are being tar­geted by CRA while right-leaning char­i­ties are get­ting spe­cial treat­ment despite seem­ingly inac­cu­rate annual

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Smoking Gun Not Needed to Find Abuse of Power

October 19, 2014 No comments Article
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Have the bird­watch­ers in Water­loo county found a smok­ing gun prov­ing direct gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence in Canada Rev­enue Agency’s audits of the “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” of char­i­ties? I don’t think so, but it’s sure start­ing to add weight to those who claim so. The char­ity lead­ers and experts I inter­viewed for my the­sis were divided about whether the

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Jim Deva: How Yoda Defeated the Emperor

October 13, 2014 No comments Article
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Note: I wrote a ver­sion of this blog to com­mem­o­rate my friend, Jim Deva, a Van­cou­ver GLBT and anti-censorship activist and co-owner of Lit­tle Sister’s book­store. It was writ­ten for Xtra Van­cou­ver in print and can be found online at daily.xtra.ca. Jim Deva faced the world with mis­chief writ large. His Yoda face—pointy ears, intense

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Honored Bodies Dead or Gasping Along Harper’s Defunding Highway

October 4, 2014 No comments Article
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The recent clo­sure announce­ment of the inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized Cana­dian devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion, The North-South Insti­tute, is sadly just the lat­est in a series of civil soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions that have been hurt or wiped out by fund­ing cuts of the Harper gov­ern­ment. My the­sis details some of the pre­vi­ous actions that had the effect of nar­row­ing Canada’s

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Left-leaning Think-tank Deserves More Respect from CRA

September 17, 2014 No comments Article
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It’s been par­tic­u­larly sad to read that the Cana­dian Cen­tre for Pol­icy Alter­na­tives has been under­go­ing an audit since last year and that, as exec­u­tive direc­tor Bruce Camp­bell recently told Anna Maria Tremonti on The Cur­rent, it was a tough audit. The Cen­tre has an excel­lent rep­u­ta­tion for its research, includ­ing being among the few think

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Charitable Donations Have Benefited Rightwing Ideas More Than Leftwing

September 16, 2014 No comments Article
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Highly prin­ci­pled libertarian-right colum­nist Andrew Coyne recently sug­gested a novel solu­tion in the con­tro­versy over the cur­rent fed­eral gov­ern­ment politi­ciz­ing CRA audits of the “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” of char­i­ties: elim­i­nate the tax ben­e­fits that donors get from con­tribut­ing to char­i­ties. Elim­i­nate this receipt­ing priv­i­lege from all char­i­ties, wrote Coyne in an August 27, 2014 Post Media

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This is What “Chill” Looks Like as Charities Muffled and Silenced

August 26, 2014 No comments Article
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The gov­ern­ment is suc­ceed­ing in muz­zling the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of some char­i­ties that advo­cate on pub­lic pol­icy issues. These char­i­ties are chang­ing their com­mu­ni­ca­tion under the cur­rent fed­eral polit­i­cal cli­mate. The com­bi­na­tion of extreme rhetoric by gov­ern­ment min­is­ters (con­flat­ing char­i­ties with money-launderers, crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions and ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions) and the fear, prepa­ra­tion for, and after­math of, political

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