Shutting Alternative Ideas Out of Discussions

August 11, 2014 1 comment Article
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My last blog post­ing reviewed the his­tory since the 1950s of the rise and fall of rela­tions between the fed­eral gov­ern­ment and civil soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing char­i­ties. Let’s look at how input to pub­lic pol­icy options has changed in recent years. In the 1970s, some orga­ni­za­tions were funded for core costs by the fed­eral government

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Thirty Years of Declining Influence by Civil Society

August 9, 2014 No comments Article
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My Master’s the­sis found, among other things, that the cur­rent fed­eral gov­ern­ment has abused its power by treat­ing char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions as ene­mies of Canada and of the gov­ern­ment and this threat­ens the vigor of our democ­racy. But it didn’t start with the rhetoric and politi­cized audits now tar­get­ing char­i­ties. It didn’t even begin with this

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Will All Parties Support Finance Committee Hearings on Audits?

August 7, 2014 No comments Article
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Cana­dian Press and the Toronto Star yes­ter­day ran reports that the fed­eral NDP wants to recall Parliament’s finance com­mit­tee this sum­mer to dis­cuss politi­ciza­tion of the ‘polit­i­cal activ­i­ties’ audits of char­i­ties by Canada Rev­enue Agency. The CP report para­phrased NDP finance critic Mur­ray Rankin say­ing pub­lic hear­ings before the finance com­mit­tee “would give besieged charitable

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Charity Confusion a Sign of Abuse of Power

August 5, 2014 No comments Article
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The last sev­eral days have seen mul­ti­ple news reports and edi­to­ri­als in which CRA offi­cials made claims, and later revised them, about how char­i­ties are selected for polit­i­cal audits (see my post­ing on the fun­nel that the gov­ern­ment con­structed that tar­gets cer­tain char­i­ties). And then we learned that CRA blacked out key details in response

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Charity Leaders See Need for Fair Audits, but That’s Not What They See Happening

July 31, 2014 No comments Article
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In his col­umn July 28 in the Finan­cial Post, Ter­ence Cor­co­ran let fly spit­balls at Mar­garet Atwood, PEN Canada, and “left­wing” jour­nal­ists and writ­ers over their con­cerns about the politi­ciza­tion of Canada Rev­enue Agency by the cur­rent fed­eral gov­ern­ment. Corcoran’s always been a fun read and he has the integrity as a com­men­ta­tor to make

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‘Enemy’ Lists, Tax Audits, and Acceptable Government Actions

July 29, 2014 No comments Article
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I was reminded recently by a reader of Richard Nixon’s “Ene­mies List” that freaked out a gen­er­a­tion of US cit­i­zens who expected their politi­cians to play by the rules. The list came to light when John Dean, the for­mer White House Coun­sel for Nixon, tes­ti­fied before the Sen­ate Water­gate Com­mit­tee. The orig­i­nal list had 20

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Blame Harper, not CRA, for Audits but Don’t Target Rightwing Charities

July 26, 2014 No comments Article
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Sorry for the blog length, but I think you’ll find this one inter­est­ing and thought-provoking. In rapid suc­ces­sion we’ve heard from Chris­t­ian char­i­ties announc­ing that their sat­is­fac­tion with the fed­eral government’s audit pro­ce­dure, Canada Rev­enue Agency deny­ing that it is being used by the cur­rent gov­ern­ment to tar­get char­i­ties crit­i­cal of gov­ern­ment poli­cies, and a

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How Government Created a ‘Funnel’ to Target

July 24, 2014 No comments Article
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The ques­tion I’m most asked about the audits of char­i­ties for their ‘polit­i­cal activ­i­ties’ con­cerns how Canada Rev­enue Agency could end up sin­gling out char­i­ties from the “pro­gres­sive” end of the polit­i­cal spec­trum, par­tic­u­larly envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ties work­ing on issues around var­i­ous aspects of energy pol­icy. How is it that the process has been politi­cized? People

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Philanthropic and Charity Umbrellas Could Pressure Feds

July 22, 2014 No comments Article
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Monday’s Toronto Star edi­to­r­ial exam­ines the NDP’s recent call for an inde­pen­dent inquiry into politi­ciza­tion of the CRA audits of reg­is­tered char­i­ties. The NDP let­ter call­ing for the inquiry “will sig­nal to Canada’s embat­tled char­i­ties that they have a cham­pion in Par­lia­ment,” says the edi­to­r­ial. Mildly goad­ing oth­ers to join the NDP, the edi­to­r­ial says,

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