Birders’ charitable group is threatened with audit

A small group of nature watchers is the latest group to worry that its charitable status may be revoked because of political activity.

Tax laws in Canada say that a charity can spend no more than 10 per cent of its resources on political activities and none to partisan activities. If charitable status were to be revoked for a particular group, it would lose several tax advantages including the right to issue tax receipts to contributors which, in turn, give them a tax advantage.

Crackdown started on environment groups

It was in 2012-13 that a special squad of 15 auditors started to enforce this tax rule on charities, starting with a number of environment groups. It went on to target some 52 charities like social justice and poverty groups, many of them critical of Conservative government policies.

No group has been deregistered, but the audits have been expensive and disruptive for many of them which operate on a shoestring.

Tax department denies it is influenced

The government’s tax department, the Canada Revenue Agency, denies targeting any groups in particular or being mandated to do so by any government department.

The Kitchener-Waterloo Field Naturalists in the province of Ontario is the latest group to have been warned about political activity. Tax auditors warned in a letter obtained by CBC that it must refrain “from undertaking any partisan activities,” and warns “this letter does not preclude any future audits.”

The letter came just days after the environment minister responded the group’s March 14 complaint that government-approved chemicals are damaging bee colonies. The group, with annual revenues of just $16,000, has also had a guest speaker to talk about the oil sands developments in western Canada, and has publicly defended the Endangered Species Act from being watered down.

‘They’ve put a gag on us’

The naturalists are not officially commenting on the letter from the tax department, but one of its long-time members is. “Effectively, they’ve put a gag on us,” said Roger Suffling, an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo. “You can piece together the timing…The two things are very concurrent.”

Suffling told CBC that if government is using the tax agency as a “pit bull to stifle dissent, then there’s something very wrong.”