Gareth KirkbyCommunication teacher, professional communication, strategy
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Thesis
    • Thesis Intro: Click
    • My Master’s Thesis: Uncharitable Chill
    • Media
  • Strategic Communications
  • Journalism
  • Photography
  • Resume

Political Activities by Charities Legal and Good For Society

July 17, 2014 No comments Article
FacebookTwitterGoogle+TumblrRedditLinkedInEmailPrint

I’ve been watch­ing the com­ments sec­tions of news reports and columns run­ning on some of the larger media web­sites. And I notice a con­sis­tent piece of mis­in­for­ma­tion creep­ing in: that char­i­ties are not allowed to engage in polit­i­cal activ­i­ties. That’s sim­ply not true. One con­trib­u­tor below Carol Goar’s excel­lent col­umn (and I say excel­lent not just

Read More

Would You Mistake a Charity for Radical Extremists?

July 16, 2014 No comments Article
FacebookTwitterGoogle+TumblrRedditLinkedInEmailPrint

But why would any­one want to tar­get char­i­ties? After all, char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions are among the most mod­er­ate civil soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions. They are not nor­mally drawn to highly con­tentious actions. They tend to do research and speak about pol­icy based on that research. Envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ties, for exam­ple, have his­tor­i­cally drawn on the research of gov­ern­ment and

Read More

Which Charities are Being Targeted by CRA

July 15, 2014 1 comment Article
FacebookTwitterGoogle+TumblrRedditLinkedInEmailPrint

Three kinds of char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions are dis­pro­por­tion­ately under­go­ing audits by Canada Rev­enue Agency. You may recall the Feb­ru­ary 2014 CBC news report announc­ing that seven envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ties face CRA audits. The report quoted an Alberta Con­ser­v­a­tive deny­ing that the gov­ern­ment tar­gets any one sec­tor or any one char­ity, but tellingly the MP hinted at one

Read More

Targeting Enviros for Audits an ‘Insidious’ Process

July 14, 2014 No comments Article
FacebookTwitterGoogle+TumblrRedditLinkedInEmailPrint

Has the fed­eral gov­ern­ment directly inter­fered in the oper­a­tions of Canada Rev­enue Agency (CRA), telling them which char­i­ties to audit for “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties”? Or is there some other way that the gov­ern­ment ensures the tax man tar­gets tthose char­i­ties advo­cat­ing for dif­fer­ent pub­lic poli­cies than those pur­sued by the cab­i­net? Espe­cially envi­ron­men­tal issues con­cern­ing the

Read More

Government Rhetoric Frames Charities as Criminals — and Worse

July 11, 2014 No comments Article
FacebookTwitterGoogle+TumblrRedditLinkedInEmailPrint

Up to 10 per­cent of the resources—money, peo­ple, time—of a Cana­dian char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion can be devoted to what reg­u­la­tions call “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties.” Repeated stud­ies show that the aver­age is far below this, and that many char­i­ties do not par­tic­i­pate in polit­i­cal activ­i­ties. But a 2010 sur­vey by Imag­ine Canada, the umbrella orga­ni­za­tion of char­i­ties, found

Read More

Charities Muffled & Distracted by Government Actions: Chill

July 11, 2014 No comments Article
FacebookTwitterGoogle+TumblrRedditLinkedInEmailPrint

Check out my newly com­pleted the­sis, now posted to www.garethkirkby.ca. I looked at how char­i­ties are affected by fed­eral Cana­dian cab­i­net min­is­ters seem­ingly sug­gest­ing that they are crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions and ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions and work­ing against the inter­ests of their coun­try. And how they are being affected by the fed­eral government’s new reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing char­i­ties and

Read More

RCMP Complaint Commissioner Investigating Spying on Groups

April 4, 2014 No comments Article
FacebookTwitterGoogle+TumblrRedditLinkedInEmailPrint

Why are the RCMP and CSIS spy­ing on per­fectly peace­ful orga­ni­za­tions whose mem­bers are not only exer­cis­ing their Char­ter rights to free­dom of speech and assem­bly, but also simul­ta­ne­ously doing their duty as active cit­i­zens in a democ­racy? And why have these agen­cies infil­trated First Nations and pos­si­bly envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions with spies while simul­ta­ne­ously conceding

Read More

00

Government Action, Not Consumer Guilt, is Solution to Climate Threat

March 30, 2014 No comments Article
FacebookTwitterGoogle+TumblrRedditLinkedInEmailPrint

“Don’t you have a car?” a friend was asked by a co-worker after shar­ing an opin­ion against approv­ing any new oil pipelines. “Isn’t it hyp­o­crit­i­cal to oppose pipelines when you drive, too?” Ouch! The ques­tion seems rea­son­able on the sur­face — and I bet lots of peo­ple get asked that by co-workers and friends. After all,

Read More

« 1 2 3

Archived Posts

  • November 2015
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014

Tags

abuse active citizens alternative energy audit audits BCCLA bullying carbon economy carbon taxes charitable charities civil society complaints confusion CRA democracy enemies energy regulations enforcement environmentalists ethical funnel greenwash Imagine Canada interpretation investigation muffling NDP oil partisan PEN petroleum pipeline opposition policy political activities politicization power public Rankin RCMP rhetoric silencing spying targeting voices

All contents by Gareth Kirkby | Theme by Theme in Progress | Proudly powered by WordPress

facebook twitter linkedin Rss