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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Which Charities are Being Targeted by CRA

July 15, 2014 1 comment Article
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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.

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Targeting Enviros for Audits an ‘Insidious’ Process

July 14, 2014 No comments Article
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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