XPost: can.politics, ont.politics, sk.politics   
   XPost: man.politics, mtl.general   
   From: puela@nyet.ca   
      
   This, Canadian voters, is how a dictatorship advances its own fundamentalist   
   agenda - and destroys any opposition to it.   
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   CBC News Posted: Jan 20, 2015   
      
   Dying With Dignity loses charitable status after political-activity probe   
      
   Group says conversion to non-profit status will allow it to conduct political   
   advocacy without constraints   
      
      
   Dying With Dignity Canada is losing its coveted charitable status, the first   
   such group to be deregistered since the Canada Revenue Agency launched a series   
   of controversial   
   political-activity audits almost three years ago.   
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   The small Toronto-based group said it received the bad news Friday in a letter   
   from the CRA that said government officials made mistakes in 1982 and 2011 when   
   they formally conferred and confirmed charitable status.   
      
   Dying With Dignity Canada bills itself as a health and education charity that,   
   among other things, lobbies for terminally ill patients to have a choice about   
   physician-assisted dying.   
      
   The Stephen Harper government began its special audits of charities' political   
   activities in 2012, under an $8-million program that initially targeted   
   environmental groups,   
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   then expanded to human rights, poverty, religious and other charities.  Some 60   
   such groups are to be audited by 2017.   
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   So far, only one other charity is known to be under imminent threat of losing   
   its charitable registration.   
      
   Montreal-based Alternatives, which funds Third World health and education   
   projects, was told in August that officials also made an error with its initial   
   charitable registration years ago. However, Alternatives spokesman Michel   
   Lambert said his group is now in discussions with the CRA about ways to retain   
   its status, allowing it to continue to issue tax receipts to donors for the   
   time being.   
      
   Wanda Morris, CEO of Dying With Dignity, said the group accepts it will lose   
   its charitable status and is converting to non-profit status after about Feb.   
   15, when the CRA ruling takes effect.   
      
   The agency's letter said the group does not conduct "any activities advancing   
   education in the charitable sense."   
      
   Morris said the conversion to non-profit status will free it from the tangle of   
   rules on political activities, allowing Dying With Dignity Canada "to focus on   
   political advocacy without constraints."   
      
   The charity received about $300,000 in donations in 2013, and says it spent   
   about $35,000 on political activities, an amount representing about nine per   
   cent of all spending.   
   Charities are not permitted to spend more than 10 per cent of their resources   
   of political activities, but definitions are often unclear.   
      
      
   Environmental Defence also under threat   
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   Another charity, Toronto-based Environmental Defence, is also under threat of   
   losing its charitable status, but is currently in a formal appeal process with   
   the CRA.   
      
   Critics have charged that the political-activities audits are politically   
   motivated, with the Harper government especially targeting charities that   
   oppose its energy and pipeline policies.   
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   Some have said the audits are creating a so-called advocacy chill, as some   
   charities self-censor so as not to provoke the auditors.   
      
   But Revenue Minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay said the agency works at arm's length   
   from the government, making its own decisions about what groups to audit   
   without political direction.   
      
   New Democrat MP Murray Rankin, the party's critic for the Canada Revenue   
   Agency, called the stripping of Dying With Dignity's charitable status an   
   "outrage."   
      
   "I think this is just part of a pattern where the Conservatives have been   
   targeting groups who they don't agree with," he said from Victoria.   
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   "It's chosen birdwatchers in the past.  It's chosen those of us fighting   
   pipelines.  The latest casualty is now Dying With Dignity, whose apparent views   
   are different than those of the Conservatives."   
      
   Conservative MP Steven Fletcher, who supports the group's goals, said the   
   decision to deregister was not political.   
   He added that the organization's changed status will likely not hurt donations.   
      
   "I think this issue is so personal and such a unique area of public policy that   
   when people are dealing with life and death issues, they're not thinking about   
   their tax receipt," he said in an interview.              <<==== Harper flunky   
      
      
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            Loyalty to the country always.   Loyalty to the government when it   
   deserves it.    ~   Mark Twain   
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