The Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns on Thursday delivered a massive report that is guaranteed to reignite debate and conflict, denial, and dismissal. (bold added)
However, the inquiry’s commissioner, Steve Allan, provides all the evidence needed to conclude there is something disastrously wrong with Canada’s charitable system.
Premier Jason Kenney set the fire in 2019 when he framed the inquiry as a search for evidence that Alberta’s fossil fuel economy was under deliberate attack from hostile environmental forces inside and outside of Canada.
“They often say that sunlight is the best disinfectant. This public inquiry will be sunlight on the activities of this campaign.” The inquiry, he said, “will investigate all of the national and international connections, follow the money trail and expose all of the interests involved.”
After more than two years on the money trails, tracking billions of dollars moving through Canadian and U.S. foundations and charities to support the activities of environmental activists, the inquiry report delivers most of what Canadians need to know.
We have some sunlight. The numbers are large, their power to shape policy and opinion substantial. But there is more to be done, a bigger question to answer: Why do we give tax-free charitable status to people and organizations that seek to undermine the lives and economic actions of others?
With more than 640 pages, plus hundreds more in appendix documents, the Allan report has opened the curtains on what is essentially a vast underground network of tax-free cash.
The inquiry’s report is a blockbuster storehouse of details on how the charitable tax system in the United States and Canada is used to fund the economic agendas of hundreds of activist organizations, environmental groups, political campaigns, and other activities aimed not just at the Alberta fossil fuel industry.
There is also clearly more to learn. Many areas of evidence and data have been redacted, with names and numbers blanked out. The inquiry should be seen as just the beginning.
The report is also a major vindication of the pioneering research conducted by Vivian Krause, the Vancouver journalist who has been documenting the scale and scope of the green funding machine for more than a decade.
Much of her original research was published on these FP Comment pages beginning back in 2011. Krause was, as I have put it, “ The Girl Who Played with Tax Data: And uncovered the foreign funding of Canadian green groups .”
Krause’s in-depth original research into the Canadian charitable schemes of giant U.S. foundations was attacked by environmental groups or dismissed as irrelevant.
“The mistake Vivian Krause and Premier Kenney make is thinking that it’s one campaign. It’s not,” said veteran B.C. activist Tzeporah Berman. “It’s dozens of campaigns. If it’s anything, it’s a movement or movements.”
Berman got that right. The summary dollar numbers run to the billions; the list of foundations, green charities, activist groups, and Indigenous organizations covers all the major players operating to shut down the oilsands, forestry industries, and other Canadian resource sectors.
The first stories on the inquiry’s report tended to play down the volumes of data and information that raise crucial questions about the operations of charities, foreign and domestic, in the Canadian economy.
“Alberta inquiry finds no wrongdoing in anti-oilsands campaign,” said The Canadian Press — as if there was nothing in the report to warrant further attention.
The inquiry was not set up to track down illegal activity or wrongdoing. Kenney talked about getting sunlight into the darker recesses of the multibillion-dollar cash machines that are hiding under the secrecy of charitable tax regulations.
The fact that there was nothing illegal in the tax and charity activities is beside the point.
The real question that needs to be addressed is why and how the charitable tax system in the United States and Canada is used to fund the economic agendas of hundreds of activist organizations, environmental groups, political campaigns, and other activities aimed not just at the Alberta fossil fuel industry.
Exactly what “charitable” activity is being performed by a group that aims to shut down a fossil fuel plant, block a forest development, or champion windmills?
What justifies giving tax-free operating rights to foundations that have become massive political machines with agendas that have no relation to the original charities’ concepts?
Granting preferential tax treatment to individual giving first emerged in the United States in 1917 as part of the country’s first income tax law. Canada’s early rules came more than a decade later.
The initial objective was to allow individuals to donate to organizations that have a “socially beneficial characteristic and for which the donor is not motivated by direct benefit when making the contribution.”
The idea evolved in the U.S. and Canada to allow tax deductions for individuals and corporations funding “religious, charitable, scientific, literary, or educational purposes.” The tax deduction in effect attaches a government subsidy to the charitable gift.
In the case of the billions flowing into green activism in Canada and the U.S., the charitable regimes are providing government subsidies to individuals and organizations that operate in areas that, by any stretch, cannot be categorized as charities providing aid to the needy.
The case against charities operating as economic and political entities applies across the ideological spectrum.
Major billionaire foundations from history (Rockefeller) and today (Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg) sit on billions that for questionable reasons exist in tax-free enclaves.
These foundations, as the Alberta inquiry outlines, distribute billions to causes that are far from the original definitions of charities.
This is where Steve Allan falls short in his assessment. He has six recommendations, the first being a call for more transparency:
“The charitable/not-for-profit sector is significant within the Canadian economy and society. It attracts large donations, domestic and foreign, from public and private foundations, governments, and individuals that can influence public policy. Regulatory and governance oversight of the sector must be enhanced to ensure full and open disclosure that informs and protects Canadians.”
That’s a start. It was beyond the inquiry’s mandate to take a critical look at the whole structure of the multibillion-dollar charitable machine that uses tax subsidies to engage in activities that should be seen as beyond any meaningful definition of charitable.
Read rest at Financial Post
The article said that there was nothing illegal. That is not true. I assume in Canada it is illegal for a tax exempt organization to fund political activities, especially political candidates. To use money collected for one stated purpose and use it for another is fraud. Steve Allan’s report was what is happening in Canada. You can bet the same is doing on the United States and Europe.
These so called Charaties who fiance radical causes should lose their tax exempt status and we can start with PETA and all those Eco-Freak groups