As in the previous installments, this post examines the Harper regime's unrelenting attacks on nonprofits that in any way oppose or criticize its agenda. The latest target is CoDevelopment Canada (CoDev), whose website lists the following as its mission:
CoDevelopment Canada is a B.C.-based NGO that works for social change and global education in the Americas. Founded in 1985 by a group of activists who wanted to go beyond financial aid, CoDev builds partnerships between like-minded organizations in Canada and Latin America to foster learning, social change, and community empowerment. These partnerships educate Canadians about Latin America and allow them to directly support the region. Such connections build solidarity, mutual understanding and ultimately improve prospects for a fairer global order.
For most people, those would seem to be commendable and progressive goals. For Stephen Harper and his cabal, they are reflective of a subversive organization that needs to be frightened into silence.
As reported in today's Star, CoDev has passed its two recent CRA audits, one in 2009, its first in 25 years and one last year, the latter conducted by three auditors — two of them political-activity specialists. Both appear to be part of the pattern discussed in previous posts:
Many of the charities under audit have been critics of government policy, including CoDev, a trade union-funded group that has raised questions about Canada's free-trade deal with Colombia, among other issues.
Indeed, on its website, CoDev offers a trenchant critique of Canada's free-trade deal with both Honduras and Colombia entitled Honduras deal: Another example of Canada’s poor record on trade and human rights
So is CoDev in the clear, after passing two audits? Not at all. Here is the latest cudgel from the Harper toolbox of intimidation as it continues its direction of the CRA investigations:
[CoDev] faces the crippling prospect of translating every scrap of paper it receives from 17 partners in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and elsewhere from Spanish into either English or French.
The demand, set out in a January compliance letter from the CRA, will start to bite this fall as the tiny four-person shop begins to receive banker's boxes full of Spanish-language documents from its Latin American projects, including taxi chits and bus fare receipts.
The group's executive director, Barbara Wood, says the newly imposed requirement will drain away scarce resources, yet must be carried out or CoDev risks losing its charitable status.
The CRA demands suggest the vexatious nature of the persecution:
Among CRA's new demands: the official CoDev mission statement had to be rewritten to cite each human rights law in all 11 Latin American countries that CoDev's partners try to uphold. That meant a lengthy four-page annex to the statement, in English translation.
But the most onerous condition, Wood said, is the major translation project ahead, which involves thousands of receipts.
“The amount of work is unbelievable,” she said. “The rules seem to have been applied differently in 2009 than they were now . . . We're a really small team and this is a huge amount of work.”
Typically, the CRA has turned aside inquiries, citing the confidentiality provisions of the Income Tax Act.
For anyone following the Harper pattern of harassment and intimidation, no further explanation is needed.
