Would You Mistake a Charity for Radical Extremists?

July 16, 2014 No comments Article
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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 aca­d­e­mic sci­en­tists to advo­cate to soci­ety and gov­ern­ment evidence-based pol­icy options. (With recent fed­eral gov­ern­ment lay­offs of a large num­ber of sci­en­tists includ­ing world-famous author­i­ties, our coun­try lost our early-warning envi­ron­men­tal radar systems—see Chris Turner’s excel­lent book, The War on Sci­ence, for more information.)

Envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ties tend to edu­cate the pub­lic and the pow­er­ful about what we can do. They show us how our per­sonal choices can reduce our car­bon foot­print, and reduce toxic chem­i­cals and trou­ble­some addi­tives in our food and cos­met­ics, for example—hardly the stuff of “rad­i­cal extrem­ist groups” referred to in Joe Oliver’s open let­ter in the Globe and Mail.

The same sort of prac­ti­cal spirit per­vades char­i­ties in other sec­tors, whether inter­na­tional devel­op­ment, human rights, emer­gency aid, poverty, hous­ing, social ser­vices, HIV pre­ven­tion, women’s health, can­cer research, hos­pi­tals, uni­ver­si­ties, or research institutes.

This is surely not a new notion for the cur­rent fed­eral gov­ern­ment? I bet some cab­i­net min­is­ters have donated to char­i­ties over the years—perhaps even to some of the very pop­u­lar ones now under­go­ing audits thanks to their own actions.

In the case of envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ties, their work on issues that might upset the petro­leum indus­try and its spin-offs are pretty pre­dictable. Char­i­ties know they can’t be directly con­fronta­tional or their sta­tus can be revoked. So they edu­cate, par­tic­i­pate in pub­lic processes, speak through the media, teach us how to reduce our per­sonal car­bon use, advo­cate for spe­cific poli­cies that would reduce car­bon emis­sions. And sue the gov­ern­ment if it ignores due process, as the gov­ern­ment has a demon­stra­ble record of doing.

Using pub­lic edu­ca­tion, build­ing pub­lic opin­ion, using the courts when the gov­ern­ment, reg­u­la­tors, or the petro­leum indus­try breaks the law: all of these are mod­er­ate actions. They involve “work­ing within the sys­tem.” Most of them qual­ify as “char­i­ta­ble activ­i­ties” and the rest are allow­able “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” that are allowed up to 10 per­cent of a charity’s resources. There’s noth­ing unprece­dented or inher­ently par­ti­san in any of this list. They are actions that I dare say most Cana­di­ans would want from char­i­ties that advo­cate on pub­lic pol­icy options.

To get char­ity sta­tus, with its atten­dant tax breaks, involves con­scious con­sent to wear a straight-jacket. You can speak up for the best poli­cies within a lim­ited range. They must con­nect to your “pur­pose,” one of four rea­sons for exis­tence that a new char­ity chooses and Indus­try Canada and Canada Rev­enue Agency affirms. They can either be “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” (e.g., “please call your MP to ask them to put this pol­icy in place”) up to 10 per­cent of resources, “char­i­ta­ble activ­i­ties” that build on spe­cific knowledge—for exam­ple, speak­ing in favour of a con­clud­ing rec­om­men­da­tion found in a research report that your orga­ni­za­tion commissioned.

The more con­fronta­tional lan­guage, the peace­ful direct action, the sug­ges­tion that a new party should be elected, those sorts of things: they’re not what char­i­ties do. They’re what grass­roots and com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions do (and they also are rarely “extrem­ist” by any rea­son­able def­i­n­i­tion of the word.) And the char­i­ties I inter­viewed knew the difference.

Surely the cab­i­net does too? So, why would they call char­i­ties “extrem­ist” and audit them for “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties?” That’s for another blog entry.

Mean­while, check out my Master’s the­sis.

I am a for­mer jour­nal­ist and media man­ager who recently com­pleted my Master’s the­sis for Royal Roads Uni­ver­sity and now work as a com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sional. I have earned a Web­ster Award of Dis­tinc­tion, among other awards, for my report­ing. Fol­low me on Twit­ter: @garethkirkby

Categories: Uncategorized

Government Rhetoric Frames Charities as Criminals — and Worse

July 11, 2014 No comments Article
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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 that 37 per­cent of char­i­ties actu­ally par­tic­i­pated in some form of “polit­i­cal activ­ity,” com­pared to the one per­cent of orga­ni­za­tions that actu­ally declared in their tax returns that they had done so, as found in a 2012 study by Cana­dian Press.

The Imag­ine Canada study has cred­i­bil­ity because it asked char­i­ties to report their var­i­ous kinds of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and then the researcher sorted through them to dis­cover which met the government’s def­i­n­i­tion of “polit­i­cal activities.”

That’s a mas­sive dis­crep­ancy. And prob­a­bly the result of con­fu­sion in the char­ity sec­tor about what kinds of com­mu­ni­ca­tions are con­sid­ered accept­able. That con­fu­sion may be exac­er­bated, at least in the pub­lic mind, by fed­eral cab­i­net min­is­ters as far back as 2012 fram­ing polit­i­cal activ­i­ties as some­thing unde­sir­able, and inap­pro­pri­ate for orga­ni­za­tions that can offer donors a receipt allow­ing a tax deduc­tion. The rhetoric ramp­ing up to the audits of “polit­i­cal activ­ity” spoke of crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions, ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, money laun­der­ing, and rad­i­cal ide­o­log­i­cal agendas.

The pub­lic, and by exten­sion char­ity lead­ers, can be excused for think­ing that “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” occur when you rec­om­mend that cit­i­zens vote for a spe­cific party or can­di­date in an elec­tion, or inap­pro­pri­ately par­tic­i­pate in a polit­i­cal party’s event, or get really per­sonal in crit­i­ciz­ing a gov­ern­ing party or oppo­si­tion politi­cian. If that’s what was going on, who wouldn’t want char­i­ties audited, caught, and spanked?

But that’s not Canada Rev­enue Agency’s def­i­n­i­tion of “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties.” Under the reg­u­la­tions, an orga­ni­za­tion can seek to pres­sure the gov­ern­ment about an issue cen­tral to the charity’s offi­cial pur­pose (Canada’s four allow­able char­i­ta­ble pur­poses are alle­vi­at­ing poverty, advanc­ing edu­ca­tion or reli­gion, or other pur­posed ben­e­fi­cial to the com­mu­nity). Pres­sur­ing gov­ern­ment is fine so long as the char­i­ties do not get par­ti­san or exceed 10 per­cent of their resources. So, yeah, they can advo­cate for their point of view as experts in an area, and should pre­sum­ably be able to do so with­out harass­ment. And if the char­ity con­ducts a study, and then speaks of the rec­om­men­da­tions of the study, that’s not even con­sid­ered polit­i­cal activ­ity under the reg­u­la­tions, but rather “char­i­ta­ble activ­ity” and so they can do it with­out limit. Or at least these are what the char­ity “experts” I spoke to see as the dif­fer­ence between char­i­ta­ble, polit­i­cal, and par­ti­san activities.

Clear? Well, there are indeed grey areas and one of my research find­ings is that, despite mak­ing some progress on this front, CRA needs to fur­ther clar­ify these. Instead, some lead­ers say the CRA is inter­pret­ing more strictly. Whether the inter­pre­ta­tions are in flux will become clear as the audits now under­way come to fruition.

In any case, as a researcher the ques­tions that I find most inter­est­ing include why the gov­ern­ment rhetoric seemed cal­i­brated to cause con­fu­sion, to frame as crim­i­nal or un-Canadian some orga­ni­za­tions that were work­ing within the rules as they know them. Why were mil­lions of dol­lars sud­denly needed for audit­ing char­i­ties? What char­i­ties are being audited? What’s the affect on char­i­ties that advo­cate on pub­lic pol­icy issues? Most impor­tantly: what’s in it for the gov­ern­ment, why this, why now, and what does it tell us about the vital­ity of our democracy?

But more on that next posting.

Check out my Master’s the­sis.

I am a for­mer jour­nal­ist and media man­ager who recently com­pleted my Master’s the­sis for Royal Roads Uni­ver­sity and now works as a com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sional. I have been awarded a Web­ster Award of Dis­tinc­tion, among other awards, for my reporting.

Categories: Uncategorized