From: canadarevenueagency1@yahoo.com   
      
   Time to clean house at the Canada Revenue Agency: CRA SOTW   
      
   By Mitchell Anderson | Nov 30, 2015 8:58 pm |    
      
   It already seems so long since Stephen Harper lorded over our nation. But   
   before memories fade of this awful ordeal, there are some critical   
   house-cleaning items to take care of. Perhaps the most pressing is the need to   
   uncover whether the Canada Revenue    
   Agency was improperly taking political direction from the Prime Minister's   
   Office.   
      
   It's true that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has now directed the new minister   
   of national revenue, Diane Lebouthillier, to cease hounding environmental   
   charities. Specifically, her mandate letter states the CRA should "allow   
   charities to do their work    
   on behalf of Canadians free from political harassment ..."   
      
   That's all well and good, but there's a far larger principle at play. It's not   
   enough that charitable non-profits can expect the executive branch will no   
   longer use the public service as a tool of political intimidation. This must   
   never happen again.   
      
   The only way to fully clean this wound is through a Commission of Inquiry   
   empowered to compel testimony under oath and order the production of   
   documents. Senior CRA bureaucrats must be called to answer for themselves.   
   Former PMO staffers should be    
   ordered to appear -- perhaps before they disappear to Kuwait.   
      
   To understand how egregious this potential abuse of process is (and how meek   
   our response has been) we need to look south of the border. When the Obama   
   administration was accused in 2011 of directing the Internal Revenue Service   
   (IRS) to target charities    
   associated with the Tea Party, the attorney general directed the FBI to   
   conduct a special criminal investigation.   
      
   There also were two congressional committees looking into the allegations, an   
   audit by the treasury inspector general and a public statement of outrage from   
   the president himself. Three senior IRS officials were forced to resign.   
      
   While the FBI found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, the American public   
   remained outraged. Opinion polls showed that three-quarters of American voters   
   and almost two-thirds of Democrats wanted a special prosecutor appointed to   
   further dig into the    
   possibility that the IRS was being used for political purposes.   
      
   Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill summed up the wrath of her colleagues: "We   
   should not only fire the head of the IRS, which has occurred, but we've got to   
   go down the line and find every single person who had anything to do with this   
   and make sure    
   that they are removed from the IRS and the word goes out that this is   
   unacceptable."   
      
   The other side of the aisle was understandably apoplectic. Then Speaker of the   
   House John Boehner demanded penal retribution. "My question isn't about who's   
   going to resign. My question is, who's going to jail over this scandal?"   
   Political staffers (or ministers, for that matter) have no business telling   
   the tax collection arm of government which side of the political spectrum   
   requires special attention.   
      
   So where is our outrage? Arguably the evidence of executive branch   
   interference in our revenue agency is much clearer on this side of the border.   
   The Conservative government somehow found an extra $8 million in their 2012   
   belt-tightening budget    
   specifically earmarked for CRA to investigate "concerns ... raised that some   
   charities may not be respecting the rules regarding political activities" and   
   "the extent to which they may be funded by foreign sources."   
      
   Prime Minister Harper himself alleged that U.S. interests were funding   
   Canadian environmental groups to block the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.   
   Former environment minister Peter Kent claimed that American foundations were   
   engaged in "money    
   laundering" to fund Canadian environmental groups.   
      
   The CRA has conducted extraordinary audits on scores of progressive charities   
   since 2012, many dragging on for years. David Suzuki resigned from his own   
   foundation to help insulate it from this apparent witch hunt.   
      
   CRA spokespeople would occasionally maintain with a straight face that there   
   was no direction from the PMO -- but did anyone believe them? Of course not,   
   and that's the whole point. The unspoken message to civil society was   
   chillingly clear: Do not rely    
   on due process -- self-censor your troublesome messaging, or else.   
      
   Other optics around this are even more outrageous. Apparently many of the   
   complaints filed to CRA about specific groups were from Ethical Oil, a group   
   founded by Alykhan Velshi -- coincidentally, a longtime Conservative staffer   
   who later landed the    
   position of issues management in the PMO. Small world.   
      
   The number of public complaints to the CRA on charities also ballooned sixfold   
   between 2011 and 2013. This was strangely coincident with the government   
   gifting the CRA $13.1 million in additional funding dedicated specifically to   
   charitable audits -- up    
   from the original $8 million in 2012.   
      
   The list of targeted groups reads like a who's-who of prominent left-leaning   
   organizations, including Environmental Defence, the Canadian Centre for Policy   
   Alternatives, Tides Canada and the David Suzuki Foundation.   
      
   Still, CRA spokeswoman Jennifer McCabe blandly assured the nation that "the   
   process for identifying which charities will be audited for any reason is   
   handled by the Charities Directorate of the CRA alone in a fair and consistent   
   way."   
      
   The official in charge of said charities directorate, Cathy Hawara, further   
   intoned that their work is "not subject to political direction." One would   
   hope not. But to suggest the agency has a credibility problem on this file is   
   something of a    
   subterranean understatement.   
      
   Only a fully public and legally mandated inquiry can help clear the air. If   
   warranted, individuals inside or outside the public service must be held   
   accountable to the fullest extent of the law. The CRA, like all government   
   departments, has an obvious    
   obligation to act impartially. Political staffers (or ministers, for that   
   matter) have no business telling the tax collection arm of government which   
   side of the political spectrum requires special attention.   
      
   Incidentally, 10 right-leaning charities -- including the Fraser Institute --   
   seem completely unaffected by the CRA's recent enthusiasm for enforcement and   
   oversight, even though all remarkably report zero per cent of their activities   
   are political.   
      
      
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