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 groups a safe venue to speak out with­out appear­ing to pro­voke the tax agency.”

Said Rankin in a direct quote: “It wouldn’t be as if they’ve gone to the press and spilled the beans. … We can’t let this fes­ter much longer. We’ve got to clear the air. It’s bad for the rep­u­ta­tion of the CRA and it’s bad for the envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions and other char­i­ties that are some­how under a shadow.”

Rankin has a point and I hope that other polit­i­cal par­ties are lis­ten­ing. In my MA the­sis research, I inter­viewed 16 char­ity lead­ers (in five provinces and five dif­fer­ent char­ity sectors—environment being only one) and five charity-sector experts (lawyers, for­mer bureau­crats, umbrella orga­ni­za­tion staff, aca­d­e­mics, fundrais­ing experts).

The large major­ity, includ­ing to my sur­prise three of five experts, required com­plete con­fi­den­tial­ity in order to speak to me. That’s because they are afraid that if their name, or that of their orga­ni­za­tion, can be deduced they risk draw­ing the ire of the tax­man or the gov­ern­ment. In my the­sis analy­sis using grounded the­ory, and in inter­views with media and my own pub­lic writ­ings, I have done my best to rep­re­sent their expe­ri­ences, shared facts, emo­tions, and opinions.

It also bears not­ing that some inter­view par­tic­i­pants were very happy to be directly iden­ti­fied or deducible to some­one who knows their orga­ni­za­tions very well, because they con­sider the rhetoric and actions of the cur­rent fed­eral gov­ern­ment extreme and bad for Cana­dian policy-making and the vigor of democ­racy itself. In any case, it was dif­fi­cult find­ing 16 char­ity lead­ers will­ing to take a chance on a Master’s stu­dent pro­tect­ing their orga­ni­za­tions, and hence their mem­bers, sup­port­ers, donors and, most impor­tantly, Missions.

Appear­ing before a Par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee to share their organization’s sto­ries could be just the ticket to ensure pub­lic pro­tec­tion. Yes, they would be putting it on the line and very pub­licly. But also, yes, the pub­lic and politi­cians would know who they are and, I sus­pect, sur­round them in a pro­tec­tive blan­ket for years, per­haps decades, into the future regard­less of which party is in power. Of course, that’s easy for me to say and hard for them to do.

But orga­ni­za­tions that step for­ward might per­haps become de-facto untouch­able after tes­ti­fy­ing before a Par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee. Woe to the audi­tor or politi­cian who strays over the line and tar­gets them in rhetoric or deed, or tries to re-interpret def­i­n­i­tions and reg­u­la­tions in order to threaten their char­i­ta­ble sta­tus, or to “muf­fle” and “dis­tract” them as my research dis­cov­ered is now happening.

In any case, it’s good to see the NDP take this on. Rankin had already called sev­eral weeks ago for an inde­pen­dent spe­cial inves­ti­ga­tion into politi­ciza­tion of the audit process, headed by a retired judge or sim­i­lar per­son of expe­ri­ence and stature.

I’m won­der­ing where the Lib­er­als are in all this? And the Bloc Que­be­cois? The Greens? Inde­pen­dents and the Inde­pen­dent Conservative?

For that mat­ter, where are the back-bench Con­ser­v­a­tives? The role of char­i­ties in soci­ety as providers of socially needed ser­vices, and as inde­pen­dent experts on pub­lic pol­icy, fits very tightly with tra­di­tional con­ser­v­a­tive thought and values.

It’s sum­mer, of course, and even politi­cians need a break, and we a break from them. But read­ing the com­ments from read­ers to news sto­ries tells me that Cana­di­ans care about how their char­i­ties are treated by gov­ern­ment, and about the government’s politi­ciza­tion of the nation’s admin­is­tra­tive arms to fight oppo­nents of its policies.

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.

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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.

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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 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

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, “If there is a groundswell, with the Lib­er­als, the provin­cial pre­miers and a few influ­en­tial phil­an­thropists demand­ing answers, the Tories may be shamed into sus­pend­ing their ill-conceived crackdown.”

Well said. As I wrote in my last post, “will all par­ties sup­port probe into politi­ciza­tion of CRA char­ity audits,” all par­ties (and I would add at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment) have a vested inter­est in pre­serv­ing broad par­tic­i­pa­tion in impor­tant pol­icy dis­cus­sion, keep­ing sep­a­rate the admin­is­tra­tive and polit­i­cal arms of gov­ern­ment, and enhanc­ing rela­tion­ships between civil soci­ety and government.

I’m par­tic­u­larly enam­ored of the sug­ges­tion that a few influ­en­tial phil­an­thropists could help per­suade the gov­ern­ment to change its course. Cana­dian fam­i­lies such as the Aspers, and Bronf­mans, McCains and West­ons have a his­tory of phil­an­thropy. Some (includ­ing the first three named above, plus cor­po­rate names such as Bom­bardier) have estab­lished foun­da­tions bear­ing their names and these foun­da­tions make grants to charities.

Phil­an­thropic Foun­da­tions Canada (PFC), the largest umbrella orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing foun­da­tions, ques­tioned the government’s 2012 rhetoric, increased reg­u­la­tion of char­i­ties, and pro­gram of increased audit­ing of the per­fectly legal “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” of charities.

The rules around “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” are clear and don’t need fur­ther atten­tion, the group told Cana­dian Press in 2012.

J.W. McConnell Fam­ily Foun­da­tion, Canada’s sec­ond old­est fam­ily foun­da­tion, talked to Cana­dian Press. “I think what we have to be con­cerned about is the fear that peo­ple have to speak up or take a posi­tion on an issue of pub­lic impor­tance,” foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Stephen Hud­dart said. “The reg­u­la­tions are clearly laid out so peo­ple feel that they’re able to do so, and in many cases have a respon­si­bil­ity to do so, to speak up on behalf of under­priv­i­leged or dis­pos­sessed or vul­ner­a­ble populations.

“There’s a need for informed debate, a diver­sity of views, on these kinds of issues, and this sec­tor is good at doing that.”

Talk about pre­scient! I dis­cov­ered that the fog of fear has now set­tled upon some char­i­ties in my research. And Hud­dart makes that vital point, more rel­e­vant today than ever, that it is the job of char­i­ties to speak up about issues about which they are expert.

Another impor­tant player is Imag­ine Canada, the umbrella orga­ni­za­tion of the char­i­ties them­selves. My par­tic­i­pants are count­ing on Imag­ine Canada to go to bat for them, to spear­head a major nar­ra­tive cam­paign that touts the “good news” about the con­tri­bu­tion char­i­ties have made and con­tinue to make to Cana­dian soci­ety and pub­lic pol­icy. Like national and provin­cial parks. Or the seat­belt, drunk-driving, and smok­ing reg­u­la­tions that have saved thou­sands of lives.

As The Star edi­to­r­ial rec­om­mends, this is the time for them to step up and divert this gov­ern­ment from a course of action that is clearly hurt­ing soci­ety, includ­ing the very char­i­ties that the foun­da­tions are fund­ing and Imag­ine Canada is representing.

Mean­while, 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

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

July 19, 2014 No comments Article
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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.

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