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

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

July 26, 2014 No comments Article
FacebookTwitterGoogle+TumblrRedditLinkedInEmailPrint

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 colum­nist call­ing for audit­ing of right-leaning char­i­ties to even the score.

It’s great to see a national con­ver­sa­tion about the politi­ciza­tion of the CRA’s audit­ing. But if I may, I’d like to take a dif­fer­ent tack on this. The real issue that most char­ity lead­ers and some experts I inter­viewed for my the­sis is not with CRA staff. They acknowl­edged that those work­ing at CRA are decent, pro­fes­sional, ded­i­cated employ­ees doing their best to keep focused on their respon­si­bil­i­ties. (There are some related issues with CRA that emerged in my research, but more about that in a future blog.) And not one char­ity leader spoke against the need for audit­ing char­i­ties, rec­og­niz­ing the prin­ci­ple that the tax ben­e­fits they receive cre­ate an oblig­a­tion to society.

So it’s wrong-headed to focus on CRA itself in the mat­ter of stepped-up ‘polit­i­cal activ­i­ties’ audits and the three cat­e­gories of charities—all of them rel­a­tively ‘progressive’—being tar­geted: envi­ron­men­tal, development/human rights, and those with sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing from labour unions.

The issues for the lead­ers are: who is get­ting audited, why, why this tim­ing, what are the effects and impli­ca­tions for char­i­ties and society?

Atten­tion needs to be on the gov­ern­ment, not the tax man. The gov­ern­ment has cre­ated a fun­nel that leads CRA staff to focus their atten­tion on cer­tain sec­tors. By allo­cat­ing addi­tional audit funds to CRA while other gov­ern­ment depart­ments saw cut­backs, by des­ig­nat­ing those funds for ‘polit­i­cal activ­i­ties,’ by speak­ing pub­licly about the need for CRA to respond to pub­lic com­plaints, the gov­ern­ment cre­ated a fun­nel that led CRA audi­tors to char­i­ties with rel­a­tively higher self-reported ‘polit­i­cal activ­i­ties’ (which are per­fectly allow­able up to 10% of the organization’s resources when done prop­erly) and char­i­ties with com­plaints in their files.

These will very strongly tend be orga­ni­za­tions with dif­fer­ent pub­lic pol­icy per­spec­tives than that of the government.

Now add to the mix the real­ity that the com­plaints, which CRA has acknowl­edged play a role in who is selected for audit­ing, include a sub­stan­tial num­ber from Eth­i­cal Oil in the case of envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions and oth­ers deal­ing with envi­ron­men­tal pol­icy options. In fact, in the spirit of open­ness, Eth­i­cal Oil has his­tor­i­cally sent copies of its CRA com­plaints to the orga­ni­za­tion it is com­plain­ing about. Eth­i­cal Oil was started by a for­mer staffer of cab­i­net min­is­ter Jason Ken­ney who left briefly to set up the orga­ni­za­tion and then returned to the fold with a new assign­ment to the Prime Minister’s Office.

Given that CRA does not pub­licly release com­plaints, we don’t know how many com­plaints are on file against orga­ni­za­tions in sec­tors not deal­ing with energy-related pol­icy. But one of the lead­ers I inter­viewed from a non-environmental char­ity, had been told by CRA staff of mul­ti­ple com­plaints in the organization’s file.

Of course it is pos­si­ble that the fun­nel con­struc­tion is a series of indi­vid­ual acts that coin­ci­den­tally lead to con­cen­trated atten­tion on orga­ni­za­tions with dif­fer­ent pol­icy pref­er­ences than the government’s, and par­tic­u­larly in the envi­ron­men­tal sec­tor. And it’s pos­si­ble that a min­is­ter gave an order to a deputy min­is­ter and on down the line—but that would be a major vio­la­tion of bound­aries that surely no min­is­ter, or senior man­darin, would con­sider. In any case, nobody’s had their photo taken hold­ing a smok­ing gun. Most char­ity lead­ers and experts I inter­viewed see a series of steps, which I call a fun­nel, that leads CRA right to where the gov­ern­ment wants them to end up—indirect, but politi­ciza­tion just the same. One leader who took pains to speak of high regard for the CRA staff char­ac­ter­ized it as an “insid­i­ous” process.

So, it can be argued that CRA employ­ees are caught up in some­thing not of their mak­ing. And if the gov­ern­ment PR staff can focus media atten­tion on CRA and away from the PMO and cab­i­net, with the gov­ern­ment offi­cially back­ing up their tax authority’s inde­pen­dence, well that would be a very bright media strat­egy, wouldn’t it?

The CBC report quoted Chris­t­ian Char­i­ties Asso­ci­a­tion CEO Rev. John Pel­lowe say­ing, “CRA has the right to inves­ti­gate char­i­ties to deter­mine if you’re fol­low­ing the rules.” Pel­lowe went fur­ther, “You can do polit­i­cal engage­ment, but you can­not engage in par­ti­san pol­i­tics, and in the cases I’ve heard about, that’s exactly what they’re doing—they’ve crossed the line.” His mem­bers haven’t expressed any con­cerns about polit­i­cal activ­i­ties audits.

As I pre­vi­ously noted, none of the char­ity lead­ers I inter­viewed had any prob­lem with CA inves­ti­gat­ing char­i­ties to ensure they were fol­low­ing the rules. It’s a mat­ter of ensur­ing a fair process, with­out gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence. It’s about the gov­ern­ment not using the tax man to fight its pol­icy bat­tles by instill­ing fear, muf­fling, and divert­ing char­i­ties from their missions—and at the very time that key pol­icy issues are work­ing through the sys­tem and Cana­di­ans need vig­or­ous pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions about them.

I’m intrigued by Pellowe’s judg­ment that “in the cases [he’s] heard about” the char­i­ties are par­tic­i­pat­ing in for­bid­den par­ti­san activ­i­ties rather than accept­able polit­i­cal activ­i­ties. Which char­i­ties, exactly? What par­ti­san activ­i­ties, exactly? Churches and reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions have often taken strong stands on issues such as abor­tion, same-sex mar­riage, divorce, and birth con­trol. Reli­gious char­i­ties are par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­a­ble if a future gov­ern­ment heeds the call of activists who claim some cross the line into par­ti­san activ­i­ties and so the sec­tor should lose their char­i­ta­ble sta­tus en mass. With an eye to the future, some might have expected a char­ity umbrella orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions to speak up for the widest pos­si­ble pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions in society.

Heather Mallick’s spicy take on the issue in her Toronto Star col­umn sug­gests that audits should be extended to right-leaning orga­ni­za­tions. “Groups that help cre­ate a bet­ter world for bitu­men extrac­tion or urge preg­nant teenagers not to have abor­tions, in other words, groups that don’t scrape at Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harper’s rage gland, are not audited in a sud­den blitz. They should be. Let’s be fair.”

Play­ful, but not where the char­ity lead­ers I spoke to are com­ing from. Many of them did note that their track­ing sug­gests that only “pro­gres­sive” char­i­ties (and that’s a wide swath of polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion, isn’t it?) are get­ting audited. But only one leader thought that the way to deal with that is to even the score by audit­ing more con­ser­v­a­tive and right-leaning char­i­ties. Almost uni­ver­sally, they thought that any sort of polit­i­cal tar­get­ing is wrong. That soci­ety needs char­i­ties of all ori­en­ta­tions and mis­sions to be given the space to con­tribute to society’s pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions. with­out harass­ment That polit­i­cal audits should be ran­dom or respond­ing to obvi­ous prob­lems, not the ide­ol­ogy of, and mis­use of power by, what­ever gov­ern­ment hap­pens to be in power.

Mean­while, please check out my Master’s the­sis and feel free to for­ward and tweet it. And you can fol­low me on Twit­ter: @garethkirkby

 

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.

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: audits, charities, Christian, complaints, ethical, funnel, Harper, interference, Mallick, oil, politicization, right-leaning

Will All Parties Support Probe Into Politicization of CRA Charity Audits?

July 19, 2014 No comments Article
FacebookTwitterGoogle+TumblrRedditLinkedInEmailPrint

Sorry for the inter­rup­tion in blog post­ings; I’ve been trav­el­ling these past two days, largely out of wifi range and not in con­trol of my sched­ule. Bad timing.

Before board­ing the plane, I got the news that a fed­eral party had asked ques­tions in Par­lia­ment directly related to the find­ings in my the­sis.

NDP rev­enue critic Mur­ray Rankin and envi­ron­ment critic Megan Leslie called for an inde­pen­dent probe into the Canada Rev­enue Agency’s audit­ing of char­i­ties for their polit­i­cal activities.

In a July 16 let­ter to gov­ern­ment Rev­enue Min­is­ter Kerry-Lynne Find­lay Rankin and Leslie write that they “fear that the evi­dence strongly sug­gests that the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment has been mis­us­ing the CRA to tar­get its polit­i­cal oppo­nents.” Cana­dian Press reports that Findlay’s office re-released a state­ment deny­ing any polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence with CRA.

My the­sis find­ings, which were widely pub­lished in Cana­dian media in two reports writ­ten by Cana­dian Press deputy-bureau chief Dean Beeby, found that the tar­get­ing by CRA has extended beyond envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ties to also include inter­na­tional development/human rights orga­ni­za­tions and char­i­ties receiv­ing sig­nif­i­cant funds from labour unions. Beeby’s own leg­work found that anti-poverty orga­ni­za­tions are also being caught up in the audits.

The audit­ing, in short, seems to tar­get char­i­ties of a “pro­gres­sive” nature that have dif­fer­ent ideas about the best pub­lic poli­cies for Canada than does the cur­rent fed­eral cabinet.

Pre­vi­ous researchers have warned that politi­ciza­tion of the CRA is under­way and that this is not in line with West­ern demo­c­ra­tic val­ues and will dam­age our inter­na­tional rep­u­ta­tion. My the­sis pointed to a “fun­nel” cre­ated by the gov­ern­ment that more or less pushes CRA toward audit­ing cer­tain charities.

That fun­nel includes increased fund­ing for audit­ing of char­i­ties’ “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” (which, though seem­ingly almost uni­ver­sally below the 10% of a charity’s resources that the cur­rent reg­u­la­tions allowed, tend to be higher in some char­ity sec­tors than oth­ers), and the pres­ence of com­plaint let­ters from Eth­i­cal Oil in the CRA files of char­i­ties that are directly or indi­rectly involved in issues of cli­mate change, oil­sands expan­sion, pipelines, tankers, and ecosys­tem impacts of those indus­trial activities).

Also impor­tant is that Eth­i­cal Oil, an aggres­sive pri­vate activist orga­ni­za­tions, was founded by a staffer of min­is­ter Jason Ken­ney who left to set up the orga­ni­za­tion and then returned to serve the party in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Any gov­ern­ment has a vari­ety of state tools at its dis­posal that can, but should not, be used to short-circuit debate and cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion in order to force through its own pol­icy agenda. Those include the army, police, secu­rity appa­ra­tus, and tax author­ity. Even use of access to the media that gov­ern­ment min­is­ters enjoy to a level far above that of oth­ers should not be used to let loose with rhetoric that, for exam­ple, con­flates char­i­ties, money-laundering, crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions and ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions as has hap­pened repeat­edly since 2012.

The audits and asso­ci­ated rhetoric on the part of the cur­rent fed­eral gov­ern­ment is hav­ing an impact on the abil­ity of char­i­ties to carry out their Mis­sions. It is affect­ing some organization’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion about issues that Cana­di­ans very much needs to dis­cuss widely and deeply, and so is nar­row­ing society’s con­ver­sa­tions. And in cre­at­ing the fun­nel and dis­tract­ing char­i­ties from their impor­tant social pur­pose as civil-society par­tic­i­pants, idea gen­er­a­tors, alter­na­tive voices, the government’s actions are reduc­ing the vigor of our democracy.

So, it’s good to see a polit­i­cal party weigh into the debate. It’s a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of democ­racy that politi­cians do not cor­rupt the neu­tral­ity of the admin­is­tra­tive func­tions and indi­vid­ual bureau­crats through politi­ciza­tion. I would think that all polit­i­cal par­ties have a long-term invest­ment in that, includ­ing the party now in power.

Mean­while, check out my Master’s the­sis and feel free to for­ward and tweet it.

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.

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: agenda, audits, CRA, investigation, Leslie, misusing, muffling, NDP, opponents, policy, politicization, probe, Rankin, silencing, target, targeting

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 of the trig­gers of selec­tion when he noted that CRA used “all sorts of infor­ma­tion from all sorts of Cana­di­ans” when choosing.

In my last blog I noted what most char­ity lead­ers I inter­viewed con­sider the most likely process: CRA staff try not to hear the gov­ern­ment loudly denounc­ing envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions, look for which groups tend to declare more “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” than other groups, and then look for com­plaints on file against those char­i­ties. And, lo and behold, many groups, par­tic­u­larly but not exclu­sively envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions, that oppose the government’s petroleum-friendly eco­nomic strat­egy just hap­pen to have com­plaints in their files from Eth­i­cal Oil, an aggres­sively pro-petroleum pri­vate non­profit organization.

So you may not be sur­prised to learn that my data sug­gests that it is a par­tic­u­lar sec­tor of envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ties that are mainly audited: those deal­ing with petro­leum issues. More specif­i­cally, it is groups that focus on or have projects related to cli­mate change, oil sands devel­op­ment, pipeline trans­port, tanker export, and on pro­tect­ing the species and habi­tats of the Alberta and B.C. inte­rior rivers, forests, and coast­lines that would be most affected by the oil sands, pipelines, tankers, and ports.

But it is not only envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ties being audited. My data shows that two other cat­e­gories of char­i­ties dis­pro­por­tion­ately have their oper­a­tions under the micro­scope: development/human rights groups, and those receiv­ing sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing from labour unions.

While the Eth­i­cal Oil com­plaints seem rel­e­vant in direct­ing CRA staff to par­tic­u­lar envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ties, it’s less clear how they are led to the other two cat­e­gories. Are there com­plaints on file against these orga­ni­za­tions? CRA doesn’t make com­plaints pub­lic; we know of the Eth­i­cal Oil com­plaints because the com­plainant sent copies to the groups they com­plained about and some­times posted them pub­licly includ­ing on the Eth­i­cal Oil web­site. Could it have any­thing to do with some devel­op­ment char­i­ties ques­tion­ing the behav­iour of Cana­dian min­ing com­pa­nies in the devel­op­ing world, where they are seem­ingly increas­ingly con­tro­ver­sial? Could selec­tion of the other two sec­tors be coin­ci­dence, I won­dered? I think not based on my inter­view data.

There is one other group being sin­gled out, it seems: those that have had some rela­tion­ship with Tides Canada Foun­da­tion over the past few years. When CRA audits a char­ity, it some­times fol­lows the money trail to recip­i­ents. Tides Canada has been under per­pet­ual audit since 2012 and drawn the per­sonal inter­est of fed­eral cab­i­net min­is­ters and some of their grant recip­i­ents are now of high inter­est, too.

A Cana­dian Press report recently noted char­i­ties in other sec­tors, includ­ing those address­ing poverty, are being audited, too, but not seem­ingly so sys­tem­at­i­cally as the three I iden­ti­fied. But what almost all char­i­ties under­go­ing these “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” audits have in com­mon is that they are from the “pro­gres­sive” end of the socio-political spectrum.

That’s a broad catch­ment, for sure, but there are many char­i­ties on the con­ser­v­a­tive end, includ­ing most of the nation’s think thanks such as the Fraser Insti­tute and it’s hard to find any being audited. And of course local churches make up approx­i­mately half of the 85,000 reg­is­tered char­i­ties in Canada and many of the rest are schools, hos­pi­tals, and health-related charities—and they don’t seem to be get­ting many audits above the 800–900 yearly “ran­dom” audits con­ducted by CRA. Yet many of them also advo­cate on public-policy changes and employ “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties.” Can­cer and drink­ing char­i­ties, for exam­ple, pres­sured the gov­ern­ment to bring in increas­ingly strict cig­a­rette reg­u­la­tions and mas­sively stepped up drunk-driving enforce­ment. That’s “polit­i­cal activity.”

So, who is tar­geted for “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” audits, of which 60 will be per­formed in 2013–2015? Pri­mar­ily three sec­tors: envi­ron­men­tal groups that chal­lenge the government’s petroleum-based eco­nomic strat­egy and/or draw the atten­tion of Eth­i­cal Oil, development/human rights orga­ni­za­tions, and char­i­ties receiv­ing monies from trade unions. And a sprin­kling of oth­ers. Almost all of which are “pro­gres­sive” in ori­en­ta­tion. And there’s your answer.

But why? What’s the point of audit­ing these orga­ni­za­tions? What does it accom­plish for gov­ern­ment, for the petro­leum indus­try, and for pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions on impor­tant issues? Those are for upcom­ing blog postings.

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.

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: audits, charities, complaints, CRA, development, ethical, human, industry, labour, oil, pipelines, progressive, rights, targeting, unions

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 petro­leum industry.

It’s a ques­tion very much on the minds of the char­ity lead­ers and experts that I spoke to anony­mously in research­ing my the­sis, which asked what is the effect on char­i­ties of the denun­ca­tory rhetoric and audit­ing actions taken by the cur­rent fed­eral government.

Some char­ity lead­ers think that a cab­i­net min­is­ter sim­ply told senior CRA staff to audit cer­tain char­ity sec­tors, par­tic­u­larly envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions and oth­ers doing energy-policy research and advo­cacy. Since then, I’ve found that other sec­tors have been tar­geted by CRA for inves­ti­ga­tion or audits, the sub­ject of my next post.

But the gov­ern­ment does not need to whis­per in anyone’s ear to get heard at CRA, and to point them in the desired direc­tion. First, remem­ber that in the 2012 fed­eral bud­get, while other min­istries had their fund­ing cut back, CRA was given an addi­tional $8 mil­lion over two years to, among other things, audit char­i­ties for “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties.” Mean­while, CRA has received many for­mal, lawyer signed, com­plaints against orga­ni­za­tions work­ing on energy-related issues, from Eth­i­cal Oil. That’s an activist orga­ni­za­tion that Green­peace has sug­gested is tied to Big Oil and was founded by a for­mer polit­i­cal staffer of cab­i­net min­is­ter Jason Ken­ney who was later hired into the Prime Minister’s Office.

So the money was there, and the direc­tive to step up audit­ing, and com­plaints were in the files of many, mainly envi­ron­men­tal, orga­ni­za­tions. And I was told by my par­tic­i­pants that envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions tend to have more resources devoted to “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” than some other sec­tors (they are per­mit­ted up to 10 per­cent of their resources to be used to pres­sure gov­ern­ment to change or keep poli­cies but few I inter­viewed said that they came any­where near that figure).

So, per­haps the min­is­ter spoke to a senior CRA man­ager who spoke to, a super­vi­sor, who spoke to a junior, and so on down the line. But many of the par­tic­i­pants agreed that a more “insid­i­ous” process, as one char­ity leader put it, could achieve the same result. After all, CRA staff can hear the gov­ern­ment rail­ing against envi­ron­men­tal­ists as clearly as any of us. And then

if the CRA takes their polit­i­cal direc­tion, which is to look at the “polit­i­cal activ­ity” of orga­ni­za­tions, and here are some resources to do that, and then they go and see what are the com­plaints against “polit­i­cal activ­ity,” then they can draw the con­clu­sion that that’s how they arrived at this par­tic­u­lar sector.

And that’s how the envi­ron­men­tal sec­tor may have been tar­geted for audits. And though I found that other sec­tors are also being tar­geted, the main focus is def­i­nitely on envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions and oth­ers advo­cat­ing energy poli­cies that dif­fer from the cur­rent government’s stated goal of mak­ing Canada an energy super­power. A pol­icy that no doubt makes the petro­leum indus­try and its spin-offs very happy.

So, a cab­i­net min­is­ter does not have to directly instruct CRA harass­ment of any one sec­tor. The process could be politi­cized by con­struct­ing a fun­nel that points CRA in the direc­tion that the gov­ern­ment wants them to go. But politi­cized it clearly is.

But that just leads to more ques­tions for future blogs. What other sec­tors are tar­geted? Is CRA defin­ing “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” dif­fer­ently than before, now view­ing any­thing that chal­lenges gov­ern­ment pol­icy as being “par­ti­san?” What is Eth­i­cal Oil and why are they lay­ing com­plaints against char­ity orga­ni­za­tions? Is there a strong con­nec­tion between Eth­i­cal Oil, the oil indus­try, the cur­rent fed­eral gov­ern­ment, and the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party of Canada?

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.

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: 10 percent, audits, Big Oil, Canada Revenue Agency, complaints, Conservative Party of Canada, Ethical Oil, Greenpeace, insidious, oil industry, political interference, resources, targeting

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 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

Tags: audit, audits, charitable activities, confusion, CRA, grey areas, Imagine Canada, partisan activities, political activities, rhetoric, survey

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 the stepped up audits of the “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” of these charities.

I won­dered: Is the gov­ern­ment action caus­ing a chill among char­i­ties, divert­ing them from speak­ing out about the issues they know so well, effec­tively muf­fling their voices at a time when we most need to hear from them?

And I looked at whether some kinds of char­i­ties are being tar­geted for atten­tion, and what that really means. I exam­ined why this is hap­pen­ing, and hap­pen­ing now, and what the impli­ca­tions of putting char­i­ties under the micro­scope are for pub­lic dis­cus­sions about the choices we have in our eco­nomic, devel­op­ment, human rights, and envi­ron­men­tal policies.

Most of us have our favourite char­i­ties that we donate to and wish the best for. Per­haps you view char­i­ties as experts—not the only experts, but experts just the same—in the issues con­nected to their Mis­sion? And per­haps you believe that we need the best minds, from a cross-section of soci­ety includ­ing char­i­ties and research insti­tutes and non­profit orga­ni­za­tions, to par­tic­i­pate in the big debates about impor­tant issues? Their par­tic­i­pa­tion, and that of civil soci­ety gen­er­ally, ensures that the best ideas rise to the top so that we as a soci­ety make the best all-around decisions.

My the­sis explores issues like these, based on 21 inter­views I con­ducted with lead­ers of some of Canada’s best-known and some­times less-known char­i­ties, and with other experts on char­i­ties, law, gov­ern­ment admin­is­tra­tion, and secu­rity and policing.

In a series of blog post­ings, I’ll share with you what I learned, explor­ing the issues raised in the the­sis, and also includ­ing insights from my data that never made it into the the­sis but should be dis­cussed in pub­lic. And I’ll com­ment on cur­rent events through the prism of my research and inter­ests in pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions, civil soci­ety, and social movements.

Oh, and yes, I did find out that there is indeed an “advo­cacy chill,” that affects dif­fer­ent char­i­ties to var­i­ous extents. We are not fully get­ting the inclu­sive pub­lic dis­cus­sion about top­i­cal and often con­tro­ver­sial issues that we ought to have, that we as Cana­di­ans need to have if our democ­racy is going to be vig­or­ous, and pol­icy deci­sions the best available.

But more on that in the next posting.

Check out my the­sis: www.garethkirkby.ca

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 been awarded a Web­ster Award of Dis­tinc­tion, among other awards, for my reporting.

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: audits, charitable status, charities, civil society, enforcement, muffling, rhetoric, social movements, voices

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