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 gov­ern­ment, though it has been esca­lated into a whole new cat­e­gory, both qual­i­ta­tively and quantitatively.

Here’s how we got here:

  • In the post-war years, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment began to acknowl­edge a role for civil-society orga­ni­za­tions to help develop new pol­icy ini­tia­tives and began ten­ta­tively to reach out;
  • In the 1970s, the Trudeau gov­ern­ment markedly expanded the process, reach­ing out for pol­icy input to orga­ni­za­tions that could claim to rep­re­sent groups of peo­ple with­out much power or influ­ence, includ­ing minor­ity groups. In par­tic­u­lar, the Trudeau gov­ern­ment wel­comed input from women’s orga­ni­za­tions, lin­guis­tic minori­ties (par­tic­u­larly Franco-Canadian), abo­rig­i­nals, and ethno-cultural groups. The gov­ern­ment con­tributed sub­stan­tial fund­ing to these orga­ni­za­tions and invited them to make direct input to social policy;
  • This input was rolled back to some extent in the lat­ter years of the Trudeau gov­ern­ment, as it chose to pare back social-justice pro­grams in a declin­ing econ­omy and shift its pol­icy focus;
  • In the 1980s, with groups oppos­ing mul­ti­ple pol­icy ini­tia­tives of the Mul­roney government—a neo-liberal shift, free trade, dereg­u­la­tion, reduced gov­ern­ment sup­port for social programs—core fund­ing was pared back, but project fund­ing con­tin­ued for groups. Groups were still viewed as rep­re­sen­ta­tive, but the idea was being challenged;
  • In the 1990s, the Chre­tien gov­ern­ment moved toward reduced recog­ni­tion of the role of civil-society in policy-making. Fund­ing of orga­ni­za­tions con­tin­ued to atro­phy in the Chre­tien years, but they were still often con­sulted, par­tic­u­larly at the final stage of pol­icy for­ma­tion rather than in the early stages as was more com­mon in the Trudeau years. The gov­ern­ment was influ­enced by the “new-right” Reform Party stance that civil soci­ety groups were “vested inter­ests” rather than rep­re­sen­ta­tive, a dis­tinc­tion it did not make for busi­nesses and their rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tions. Polit­i­cal sci­en­tist David Lay­cock saw this as “the pol­i­tics of resentment”;
  • Unlike in the United States, national Cana­dian orga­ni­za­tions were not eas­ily retooled from a rep­re­sen­ta­tive policy-input func­tion to deliv­er­ing gov­ern­ment pro­grams at lower cost than could gov­ern­ment employ­ees. This has, how­ever, hap­pened much more at the provin­cial level;
  • When the cur­rent gov­ern­ment came to power in 2006, they quickly moved to shut down some orga­ni­za­tions, defund oth­ers, and make other changes that hurt rep­re­sen­ta­tive groups. A 2012 study of 26 national vol­un­tary orga­ni­za­tions by aca­d­e­mic Rachel Lafor­est found six had to shut down oper­a­tions com­pletely and 14 expe­ri­enced fed­eral fund­ing cuts. Some highly acclaimed orga­ni­za­tions were par­tic­u­larly hard-hit: The Cana­dian Coun­cil for Social Devel­op­ment (CCSD) lost all fund­ing despite its national lead­er­ship for 90 years on social pol­icy. The Cana­dian Coun­cil for Inter­na­tional Co-Operation lost 70 per­cent of fed­eral fund­ing despite a 40-year part­ner­ship with gov­ern­ment; it sur­vives as a shadow of its for­mer self;
  • The women’s health and child-care move­ments have been par­tic­u­larly hard-hit by the government’s fund slash­ing and pol­icy shifts. The Mar­tin Lib­eral gov­ern­ment was in the process of imple­ment­ing a new national social pro­gram, a com­pre­hen­sive national child-care strat­egy, at the time that it called an elec­tion that the Con­ser­v­a­tives won. The new gov­ern­ment killed those plans and the move­ment pretty much shut­tered the shop in Ottawa, lay­ing of paid staff, and return­ing to grass­roots activism. The Mar­tin government’s Kelowna Accord, with provin­cial buy-in for a major step for­ward in address­ing First Nations self-government and social-justice, was also killed in 2006 by the Harper gov­ern­ment. One result of that is an increas­ingly alien­ated First Nations grass-roots, espe­cially among youth;
  • With sharp fund­ing reduc­tions to many national move­ment head­quar­ters, provin­cial and local orga­ni­za­tions have had to try to take up the slack, but they have lacked the resources. The result has been dev­as­tat­ing to some legit­i­mate and impor­tant issues and causes, while oth­ers have adapted and are shift­ing to a provin­cial focus with some suc­cess. Some aca­d­e­mics argue that the Harper gov­ern­ment is delib­er­ately sac­ri­fic­ing a half-century of increased federal-government involve­ment in social and health issues due to an ide­o­log­i­cal bent to leav­ing these issues to the provinces. Cer­tainly, our Con­sti­tu­tion des­ig­nates these as provin­cial jurisdiction;
  • With the elec­tion of the Harper gov­ern­ment, many organizations—including charities—that had a his­tory of being invited in to dis­cuss pub­lic pol­icy options found them­selves shut out. Invi­ta­tions vir­tu­ally stopped, requests for meet­ings got fewer responses, and phone calls were much less often returned;
  • My research found that, due to the above trend, some char­i­ties have aban­doned their lob­by­ing reg­is­tra­tions. Oth­ers have shifted their com­mu­ni­ca­tions away from tar­get­ing gov­ern­ment to moti­vat­ing mem­bers, sup­port­ers, and aver­age Cana­di­ans through web and social media. Some have shifted from try­ing to influ­ence fed­eral pol­icy to influ­enc­ing cor­po­rate actions. There are dis­turb­ing indi­ca­tions that this gov­ern­ment sees itself as the only essen­tial source of input on pol­icy devel­op­ment. It’s drink­ing its own bath­wa­ter rather than con­sult­ing widely and deeply about impor­tant pol­icy options;
  • Lafor­est and fel­low aca­d­e­mic Susan D Phillips argue that Canada’s fed­eral gov­ern­ment, along with most in the West­ern world, largely reject claims of “legit­i­macy” com­ing from the rep­re­sen­ta­tive nature of many civil-society orga­ni­za­tions. In par­al­lel with this, at least in Canada, many orga­ni­za­tions have inter­nal­ized the demo­c­ra­t­i­cally dan­ger­ous idea that “advo­cacy” on pub­lic pol­icy issues is no longer the val­ued thing it was in the 1960s to 1980s, but is some­how an unac­cept­able, indeed “wrong,” activ­ity. I see these shifts as a pro­found threat to the notion that gen­uine democ­racy requires an under­stand­ing that elected gov­ern­ments are NOT the only legit­i­mate par­tic­i­pants in demo­c­ra­tic decision-making (and I will write about this in more detail in an upcom­ing post);
  • We’re now at the stage where the gov­ern­ment is treat­ing those with dif­fer­ent pol­icy ideas than its own as ene­mies of the gov­ern­ment and of the nation. Wit­ness the shut­ting down of huge swaths of our sci­en­tific com­mu­nity. Wit­ness the rhetoric con­flat­ing char­i­ties and civil-society orga­ni­za­tions with money-launderers, crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions, and ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, and list­ing envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions in our offi­cial ter­ror­ism plan as poten­tial threats to the nation’s secu­rity. Wit­ness the fun­nel they cre­ated to drive Canada Rev­enue Agency toward political-activity audits of orga­ni­za­tions that dif­fer with them on key policies.

My above analy­sis owes much to the wide and deep jour­nal and book research on civil soci­ety and vol­un­teer orga­ni­za­tions by pro­fes­sors Rachel Lafor­est and Susan D. Phillips, and other resources. I apol­o­gize to them for any over-generalizations and shifted nuances in inter­pre­ta­tions aris­ing from my adapt­ing their research to my research needs and par­tic­u­larly for this blog post­ing. For those inter­ested in more details on the his­tor­i­cal rela­tion­ship of rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tions and gov­ern­ments regard­ing pol­icy for­ma­tion, I sug­gest a close read­ing of the works of pro­fes­sors Lafor­est and Phillips as did I.

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 been awarded the Jack Web­ster Award of Dis­tinc­tion, among oth­ers, for my report­ing and editing.

 

Fur­ther Resources

Lafor­est, R. (Ed.). (2009). The new fed­eral pol­icy agenda and the vol­un­tary sec­tor: On the cut­ting edge. Kingston, ON: School of Pol­icy Stud­ies, Queen’s University.

Lafor­est, R. (2011). Vol­un­tary sec­tor orga­ni­za­tions and the state: Build­ing new rela­tion­ships. Van­cou­ver, BC: UBC Press.

Lafor­est, R. (2012). Rerout­ing polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion: Is Canada’s social infra­struc­ture in cri­sis? British Jour­nal of Cana­dian Stud­ies, 25(2), 181–197. doi:10.3828/bjcs.2012.10

Lafor­est, R. (2013a). Shift­ing scales of gov­er­nance and civil soci­ety par­tic­i­pa­tion in Canada and the Euro­pean Union. Cana­dian Pub­lic Admin­is­tra­tion, 56(2), 235–251. doi:10.1111/capa.12016

Lafor­est, R. (2013b). Dig­ging wells or build­ing fences: Ana­lyz­ing fed­eral gov­ern­ment dynam­ics. The Phil­an­thropist, 25(1), 33–36. Retrieved from http://thephilanthropist.ca

Lafor­est, R., & Phillips, S. (2013). Input and out­put legit­i­macy in gov­er­nance regimes. Paper pre­sented at the Cana­dian Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Asso­ci­a­tion Con­fer­ence, Vic­to­ria, Canada. Retrieved from http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/past-conference.shtml

Lay­cock, D. (2002). The new right and democ­racy in Canada: Under­stand­ing Reform and the Cana­dian Alliance. Don Mills, ON: Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press.

Phillips, S.D. (2010). Canada: Civic soci­ety under neglect. The Phil­an­thropist 23(1), 65–73. Retrieved from http://thephilanthropist.ca

Phillips, S.D. (2013). Shin­ing light on char­i­ties or look­ing in the wrong place? Regulation-by-transparency in Canada. Vol­un­tas, 24(3), 881–905. doi:10.1007/s11266-013‑9374-5

Phillips, S., Lafor­est, R., & Gra­ham, A. (2010). From shop­ping to social inno­va­tion: Get­ting pub­lic financ­ing right in Canada. Pol­icy and Soci­ety 29(3), 189–199. doi:10.1016/j.polsoc.2010.06.001

Pub­lic Safety Canada. (2013). Build­ing resilience against ter­ror­ism: Canada’s counter-terrorism strat­egy. Gov­ern­ment of Canada Queen’s Printer. Retrieved from http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/rslnc-gnst-trrrsm/index-eng.aspx

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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 to a freedom-of-information request by Pen Canada that explained to its audi­tors how to eval­u­ate a charity’s “polit­i­cal activities.”

“Pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion about how we con­duct our gen­eral audit review could hin­der or impede our abil­ity to effec­tively carry out future audits,” CRA spokesper­son Philippe Brideau told Globe and Mail reporter Kathryn Blaze Carl­son., before claim­ing that the CRA web­site con­tains expla­na­tions of char­i­ta­ble, polit­i­cal, and par­ti­san activities.

Pen Canada exec­u­tive direc­tor Tasleem Thawar sug­gested to Blaze Carl­son that CRA should be less inter­ested in catch­ing char­i­ties break­ing the rules than in help­ing them under­stand what activ­i­ties are unac­cept­able so that they can fol­low the rules.

I think Cana­di­ans would expect that the CRA would pre­fer to share their advice to audi­tors if it helps char­i­ties stay within the roles. Seems com­mon sense to me.

In any case, the rev­e­la­tion is sadly con­sis­tent with what I found in my Master’s the­sis inter­views with 16 char­ity lead­ers and five experts. What the data sug­gests is that lead­ers are con­fused about the reg­u­la­tions and that this con­fu­sion has been going on for years. There are grey areas between char­i­ta­ble activ­i­ties and allow­able polit­i­cal activ­i­ties. And between polit­i­cal activ­i­ties and for­bid­den par­ti­san activ­i­ties. Lead­ers repeat­edly told me that they have tried using the infor­ma­tion on the web­site for guid­ance but the exam­ples that are used are “naïve” and con­fus­ing. And lead­ers told me that they have had no responses to the ques­tions they left in the sec­tion of the web­site where char­i­ties are encour­aged to ask CRA for just that.

Vet­eran lead­ers and some char­ity experts (lawyers, aca­d­e­mics, for­mer bureau­crats in the know) give kudos to CRA for hav­ing made much progress in com­mu­ni­cat­ing some reg­u­la­tions and expec­ta­tions through the web­site and in bul­letins and other exter­nal mes­sag­ing. Things were much worse before the $95 mil­lion Vol­un­teer Sec­tor Ini­tia­tive con­sul­ta­tions between the non­profit and char­ity sec­tor and var­i­ous gov­ern­ment depart­ments, includ­ing CRA. Dur­ing those con­sul­ta­tions, CRA lib­er­al­ized some of its approach to reg­u­la­tions, loos­en­ing their choke-hold on polit­i­cal activ­i­ties in 2003, for exam­ple, and nego­ti­at­ing inter­pre­ta­tions of regulations.

So, CRA has improved its com­mu­ni­ca­tions and there were signs that inter­pre­ta­tions were becom­ing more con­sis­tent. But that was before 2012 and the cur­rent round of political-activities audits, politi­cized by the cur­rent fed­eral gov­ern­ment, and the belief that new, stricter inter­pre­ta­tions of the reg­u­la­tions are emerg­ing dur­ing this targeting.

And mean­while, the grey areas remain and attempts by char­i­ties to address them with the CRA, by use of freedom-of-information requests if nec­es­sary, are not work­ing. And char­i­ties are forced to seek advice from lawyers and accoun­tants at sub­stan­tial cost, with the accom­pa­ny­ing diver­sion from their Mis­sion activ­i­ties of money and human resources. Inter­est­ingly, I found that dif­fer­ent char­i­ties were get­ting slightly dif­fer­ent advice from their lawyers about those grey areas, so clearly there is no com­plete con­sen­sus out there. And it is, of course, CRA’s job to make sure that their inter­nal under­stand­ing of the reg­u­la­tions is everyone’s under­stand­ing. Mean­while, Imag­ine Canada, the umbrella orga­ni­za­tion of Cana­dian char­i­ties, has cre­ated a use­ful infor­ma­tion sheet address­ing some of the reg­u­la­tions; but grey areas remain.

My study found a high level of con­fu­sion among char­ity lead­ers and to a lesser extent among some experts. They are con­fused about var­i­ous reg­u­la­tions, they are con­fused about the grey areas regard­ing the var­i­ous activ­i­ties. They are con­fused, anx­ious and annoyed by the tar­geted audits and the attempt to muf­fle and dis­tract them from their socially ben­e­fi­cial Missions.

They are con­fused and angry at being labelled “money-launderers,” “crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions,” and “ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions” by gov­ern­ment min­is­ters who ought to know better—and they’re almost uni­formly smart enough to know not to pub­licly make the denial because then they fall into the trap sim­i­lar to an inno­cent insist­ing, “I do not beat my part­ner.” They have to count on Cana­di­ans know­ing that they are none of crim­i­nals, ter­ror­ists or trai­tors, and hope that peo­ple blame the gov­ern­ment for its “smear cam­paign,” as sev­eral of them labelled it.

In any case, all this con­fu­sion, mixed with fear in vary­ing doses from leader to leader, pro­foundly points to the gov­ern­ment and its tax author­ity improp­erly using its power. In the case of the tax­man, the abuse is to allow the con­fu­sion over reg­u­la­tions to con­tinue, to allow grey areas to fes­ter, to not directly address the belief among char­ity lead­ers that the inter­pre­ta­tions are shift­ing dur­ing the cur­rent stepped-up audit­ing process.

The far more trou­bling abuse of power involves a gov­ern­ment that uses fierce rhetoric that treats cit­i­zen groups as ene­mies, and uti­lizes an arm of the admin­is­tra­tive func­tions to fight its pol­icy dis­agree­ments through the threat and real­ity of CRA audits. This bul­ly­ing in the form of rhetoric and audits muf­fles and dis­tracts the char­i­ties while the gov­ern­ment pushes through major poli­cies and pro­grams with­out proper pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions. And the lack of full pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in debates, includ­ing the input of the char­i­ties that are experts in their Mis­sion top­ics, dulls the very vigor of our democ­racy as well as risk­ing our future through poten­tially poor pol­icy choices.

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.

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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 names, includ­ing actor Paul New­man, but was later expanded to hun­dreds on a “mas­ter list.” The orig­i­nal list had lead­ers of non-profit orga­ni­za­tions and unions, human rights sup­port­ers, mem­bers of the media, and oppo­si­tion politi­cians and their mon­eyed supporters.

Here’s how Dean explained the list to the committee:

This mem­o­ran­dum addresses the mat­ter of how we can max­i­mize the fact of our incum­bency in deal­ing with per­sons known to be active in their oppo­si­tion to our Admin­is­tra­tion; stated a bit more bluntly—how we can use the avail­able fed­eral machin­ery to screw our polit­i­cal enemies.

Wikipedia notes that the com­mis­sioner in charge of tax­a­tion, refused to audit the peo­ple on the list.

The reader’s note reminded me of a cou­ple of news reports from 2013 about the “enemy” list given new cab­i­net min­is­ters in the cur­rent fed­eral gov­ern­ment. A senior PMO staffer directed staffers about what to include in tran­si­tion book­lets given to new min­is­ters. Items include: “Who to engage or avoid: friend and enemy stake­hold­ers” and “Who to avoid: bureau­crats that can’t take no (or yes) for an answer.” The gov­ern­ment later con­firmed that the Prime Minister’s Office had pre­vi­ously sent an email to Con­ser­v­a­tive min­is­te­r­ial aids ask­ing for “enemy” lists.

Crit­ics, includ­ing 200 public-interest and aid orga­ni­za­tions for­mally asked Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harper to reveal who was con­sid­ered an “enemy” on the list.

The National Post reported for­mer Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Peter Kent’s con­cerns with the “juve­nile” lan­guage of the lists and its obvi­ous res­o­nance with the Nixon list.

Inter­est­ingly, the National Post piece also quoted resigned Con­ser­v­a­tive MP Brent Rathge­ber, who found the lan­guage “very, very trou­bling. We can have respect­ful dis­cus­sions and dis­agree with each other with­out resort­ing to name-calling or vil­i­fi­ca­tion by refer­ring to some­body as an ‘enemy.’”

And the Post quoted Coun­cil of Cana­di­ans exec­u­tive direc­tor Garry Neil:

They don’t view us as cit­i­zens with strongly held opin­ions that come from places of prin­ci­ple. They view us as eco-terrorists. They see us stand­ing with the child pornog­ra­phers. I mean that’s the way they view politics.

Neil expected the Coun­cil to be on an ene­mies list because of its vocal crit­i­cism of pub­lic poli­cies pur­sued by the government.

Now, I’m not sug­gest­ing a direct com­par­i­son between Stephen Harper and his PMO on the one hand and the deeply para­noid psy­chosis that gripped Richard Nixon and his inner circle.

But my research did find that the gov­ern­ment is abus­ing its author­ity and oper­at­ing out­side of tra­di­tional Cana­dian polit­i­cal bound­aries. It is doing so by using admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies, in par­tic­u­lar Canada Rev­enue Agency, to muf­fle and dis­tract its crit­ics in the form of char­i­ties that have dif­fer­ent pub­lic pol­icy pref­er­ences to those of the cab­i­net. This politi­ciza­tion of the bureau­cracy is a cor­rup­tion of Cana­dian democracy.

It may not be Water­gate, but it’s beyond tra­di­tional bound­aries of accept­able polit­i­cal behav­iour. I won­der if it passes the “smell test” among citizens.

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