Catholic Church petition: Charitable Status complaint filed

After a year since this petition was launched, a year of seeking input from legal and charitable experts, the formal Catholic Church charitable status complaint was finally submitted to the CRA. What happens with the complaint is very hard to know as the CRA makes it clear they do not reply to or comment on complaints they receive. In addition to the complaint, a request asking for a formal review and investigation, and the petition, was sent to the Minister of National Revenue (Honourable Diane Lebouthillier), the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada (Honourable David Lametti) and the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations (Honourable Marc Miller).

Unfortunately, and perhaps not surprisingly, a number of legal experts have told us over the past year that challenging the charitable status of the Catholic Church is very difficult. This is partly because religious organizations have been granted very broad and generous definitions of ‘charitable activity’. But more disturbing is the Catholic Church has gone to great lengths over the past decades to effectively insulate their vast wealth against legal challenges, cynically spending millions of dollars, all subsidized by taxpayers, on lawyers and ‘corporate restructuring’ – money that should have been given to Residential School survivors. And as has been widely reported, the Church has pleaded poverty by vastly understating the true value of their massive real estate holdings.

Last summer, after revelations (for most Canadians) about mass graves of Indigenous children, the Church promised to raise $30M over the next five years – the same amount they had promised to pay 20 years ago but used highly questionable if not illegal means to avoid paying. Now, a year later, a fraction of those funds have been raised while the Church continues to easily find millions for fancy upgrades to their churches and lawyers fees.

The formal complaint asks the CRA to formally investigate potential violations of charitable status related to:

1. Misuse of charitable monies;
2. The 2015 Residential Schools Settlement made under false pretenses of RCC ‘poverty’;
3. Misrepresentation of assets, and intentional shielding of assets;
4. Reporting that does not meet charitable or transparency requirements.

The complaint echoes what many legal and charity experts have said: that the Catholic Church has used highly questionable and immoral, if not fraudulent or criminal, legal and accounting means to avoid accountability, minimize financial payouts, and to hide assets. These behaviors do not meet the standard for maintaining charitable status.

The complaint also says what many of you have expressed in your comments: that Canadians are appalled their taxpayer dollars are subsidizing the RCC’s egregious behavior. They are appalled that the RCC continues to raise and spend tens of millions of charitable dollars on fancy new churches and expensive lawyers while at the same time doing everything they can to avoid paying relatively small amounts to Residential School survivors, given they are a fabulously wealthy organization.

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church did not use the opportunity of the Pope’s recent visit and apology to address the core issues. As reported by the National Observer, “In his apology, the pontiff requested forgiveness "for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples." Murray Sinclair, who served as the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, said the Pope's apology "left a deep hole" by failing to recognize the role the church itself played in the residential school system and instead "placing blame on individual members. It was more than the work of a few bad actors — this was a concerted institutional effort to remove children from their families and cultures, all in the name of Christian supremacy," Sinclair said in a statement.”

And from the CBC: “For Chief Robert Joseph, with Reconciliation Canada, the lack of an action plan to repair the harms of residential schools in the Pope's apology was notable and disappointing. "The Pope would have been a lot more forceful if he said we have a plan to implement reconciliation," said Joseph, the hereditary chief of the Gwawaenuk First Nation. He said it was the hope of many in the Indigenous community that the Pontiff would rescind the centuries-old policy known as the Doctrine of Discovery, which gave the Catholic Church's blessing to proselytization and the acquisition of Indigenous lands in North America. Nor did the Pope agree to demands to release church-held records from the schools.”

Your involvement with the petition, plus your outreach to government, has increased attention on the issue and put pressure on the Catholic Church to act responsibly. Thank you so much.

The fight is not over. It’s clear it is going to be a long campaign by First Nations and non-Indigenous Canadians to hold the Church accountable. Please continue your pressure on politicians and the Church and do whatever you can personally to advance Indigenous Reconciliation.

Sincerely, David Thomson