End Taxpayer-Funding Of Political Groups Like We
Sign the petition to end taxpayer-funding of political groups like WE
5,055 signatures
Goal: 5,000 Signatures
A lot has been written in recent weeks about the WE Charity scandal engulfing Ottawa.
The focus has been on who knew what, who's connected to whom, who's getting jobs and kickbacks, and other insider government machinations.
While the entire saga is certainly concerning, as a non-profit organization, we at the Alberta Institute have a vastly different perspective on what happened - a perspective that should receive more attention.
The WE Charity is a highly political organization that receives huge amounts of taxpayer funding to advocate for highly political ideas.
They promote a very specific ideology to children and adults alike, and they lobby the government for more money - your money - to do more political advocacy.
Does that sound like a charity to you?
We remember when the role of a charity was to deliver vital services to people in need.
Now, many charities seem to think that the work of a charity is simply to lobby the government to increase your taxes so that the government can take over the role of charities and provide all of those services instead.
If you think we're exaggerating, this isn't just our view, that was literally the justification given by the federal government when they made major changes to charitable rules last year.
The ending of CRA audits into charities received most of the media attention, but one thing that most people missed was that the government also changed the definition of a charity to explicitly include political advocacy and remove the restrictions they had faced, all because the heads of many political charities in Canada asked for that change.
That's right, instead of punishing charities that were breaking the rules and engaging in political activity, they just changed the laws to retroactively legalize the kind of lobbying that their favoured charities had been doing anyway.
At the Alberta Institute, we have been calling for years for provincial and federal governments – of all political stripes – to stop giving taxpayer money to groups that participate in political activities and/or lobby the government.
Charities and non-profits that participate in political activities should be funded by voluntary donations from Canadians, not by taxpayers' money.
Will you help us by signing our petition to end all taxpayer funding of political charities and non-profits?
End Taxpayer-Funding Of Political Groups Like We
Sign the petition to end taxpayer-funding of political groups like WE
5,055 signatures
Goal: 5,000 Signatures
A lot has been written in recent weeks about the WE Charity scandal engulfing Ottawa.
The focus has been on who knew what, who's connected to whom, who's getting jobs and kickbacks, and other insider government machinations.
While the entire saga is certainly concerning, as a non-profit organization, we at the Alberta Institute have a vastly different perspective on what happened - a perspective that should receive more attention.
The WE Charity is a highly political organization that receives huge amounts of taxpayer funding to advocate for highly political ideas.
They promote a very specific ideology to children and adults alike, and they lobby the government for more money - your money - to do more political advocacy.
Does that sound like a charity to you?
We remember when the role of a charity was to deliver vital services to people in need.
Now, many charities seem to think that the work of a charity is simply to lobby the government to increase your taxes so that the government can take over the role of charities and provide all of those services instead.
If you think we're exaggerating, this isn't just our view, that was literally the justification given by the federal government when they made major changes to charitable rules last year.
The ending of CRA audits into charities received most of the media attention, but one thing that most people missed was that the government also changed the definition of a charity to explicitly include political advocacy and remove the restrictions they had faced, all because the heads of many political charities in Canada asked for that change.
That's right, instead of punishing charities that were breaking the rules and engaging in political activity, they just changed the laws to retroactively legalize the kind of lobbying that their favoured charities had been doing anyway.
At the Alberta Institute, we have been calling for years for provincial and federal governments – of all political stripes – to stop giving taxpayer money to groups that participate in political activities and/or lobby the government.
Charities and non-profits that participate in political activities should be funded by voluntary donations from Canadians, not by taxpayers' money.
Will you help us by signing our petition to end all taxpayer funding of political charities and non-profits?