The American Dialect Society crowned "truthiness" the Word of the Year in 2005, a mere 10 weeks after Stephen Colbert first used the term on his show. The term was first coined on The Colbert Report's pilot episode in October 2005. Colbert defined truthiness as “what you want the facts to be, as opposed to what the facts are.”
The term quickly caught on with the general public and intelligent observers of society. Even Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman encapsulated the concept of truthiness in his bestseller, Thinking Fast and Slow. To him, truthiness is a reflexive thinking pattern that is obvious, compelling, and wrong. The truthiness error is a creature of the logical fallacy "WYSIATI": what you see is all there is.
Truthiness describes the work of Vivian Krause, an engaging public figure now widely celebrated for her research into foreign donations to the Canadian conservation sector. Krause in many respects is scrupulously transparent, for instance in linking both positive and negative commentary of her research on her blog, and in detailing her now very lucrative speaking engagements for the petroleum industry and other business interests (now pacing at $10,000 per appearance).
Yet truthiness is her stock in trade: the easy leap to the wrong conclusion.
Here she is questioning the propriety of conservation organizations receiving charitable status for their activities. In particular, she objects to charitable status for initiatives stimulating consumer preference for environmentally sustainable products.
“Charity is about reducing poverty. Its [sic] about advancing education and …its [sic] about advancing religion,” she wrote on her blog.
On the surface, this statement appears pretty benign and spot on, except that it’s false. And something else is going on. Krause’s real point is that political advocacy is illegitimate for Canadian charitable organizations.
As a factual statement, that’s flat wrong. As an opinion, it’s a dangerous fiction that should set off alarm bells, because this is precisely how to silence dissent.
Had this theory prevailed, the Canadian Cancer Society would have been blocked from issuing its searing indictment of the Canadian government’s support of asbestos producers at the expense of human health. The Stephen Lewis Foundation would have been prevented from applying public pressure on the government to override pharmaceutical patents for HIV/AIDS treatment in Africa -- an effort that has saved millions of lives.
Then there is the Canadian Bar Association, which made submissions to government on the long-gun registry, human trafficking legislation, technology and privacy, and a host of other matters of serious concern to the public. The list is literally endless.
Canada’s finest tradition and our highest purpose is in our steadfast commitment to public service. This is who we are and what we stand for. The ability of charities to fully and freely advocate in the public realm without fear of retribution goes to the heart of freedom of expression.
And it is not only progressive causes that suffer when freedom of expression is suppressed. Canadian religious leaders who have strongly and vehemently opposed gay marriage and abortion rights would also be silenced.
Should the Canada Revenue Agency investigate the Archbishop of Ottawa, who threatened to withhold communion from Catholic elected representatives who do not support Church doctrine on homosexuality, abortion rights and stem-cell research? What about the Fraser Institute and its activism in support of conservative causes?
The hard bedrock of democracy is freedom of dissent, and it protects us all, irrespective of our views.
Canadian charities are more than "alms to the poor"
In reality, the Dickensian “alms for the poor” approach to charity bears almost no resemblance to modern Canadian institutions operating within a highly developed and regulated tax framework, one informed by decades of policy development and jurisprudence. “Alms for the poor” is to Canada’s charitable tax policy what chimpanzees are to humans.
We have 85,000 registered charities serving Canadians and the world in multiple key areas including poverty alleviation, education and health, but also religion, professional associations, housing and development, sports and recreation, arts and culture, immigrant services, international initiatives, social inclusion, philanthropic development, scientific research, and many others.
They cover everything from the Catholic Church and McGill University to the Elizabeth Fry Society, Toronto’s Sick Kids Hospital, the Hockey Hall of Fame and the Horsefly Volunteer Fire Department.
This is to say nothing of the Fraser Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation.
Together, these thousands of organizations form the backbone of a non-profit sector generating over $106 billion in revenue, or some 7.1 per cent of the Canadian GDP and employing more than 1.2 million Canadians (who all pay income tax). And it doesn’t stop there. These organizations leverage the volunteer support of some 19 million Canadians; the equivalent of another one million full-time jobs or $14 billion in-kind.
On a per capita basis, Canada is second in the world -- behind the Netherlands -- in its charitable and volunteer activity.
No small potatoes, you might say.
And while it’s true that charities attract revenue from foreign sources -- about $830 million annually, almost all of this revenue goes to aid, educational and religious causes.
Apart from Ducks Unlimited Canada, which drew a remarkable $33 million from foreign sources for wetlands preservation for hunters in 2010, Canadian environmental conservation charities as a whole garnered a mere 1.5 per cent of total foreign contributions to charities.
If this looks a lot more like a molehill than a mountain, never you mind. It’s still political gold to purveyors of inflammatory rhetoric.
Canadian charities have the legal right to political advocacy
While charities are barred from partisan political activity, their ability to advocate in the public square is explicitly recognized and, until now, protected by our government. In September 2003, following years of consultation and review, the government and voluntary sector crystallized an agreement respecting permitted political advocacy by the charitable sector.
Organizations issuing charitable tax receipts are permitted to commit 10 per cent of their resources to political activities, per rules clearly articulated in CRA’s 2003 Policy Statement. The essence of the non-profit accord is to enable charities to advocate freely while safeguarding the charitable tax purpose from exploitation for purely partisan political motives.
Of course, this stands in stark contrast to the undisputed and uncontroversial 100 per cent tax write-off available to all corporations, whether domestic or foreign-owned, for unlimited publicity, marketing, lobbying and public awareness campaigns undertaken in their business interest.
If profit is your motive, you have a free pass. If your motive is the public good, however, the Canadian government's got its eye on you.
With tight CRA monitoring, any charitable organization with competent board oversight and professional staff adheres strictly to established guidelines, though you’d never guess it from the hue and cry in Ottawa.
Turning against Tides: what happens to inconvenient charities
Charities have come under unprecedented attack by the Conservative government, and no organization is more affected by the hype than Tides Canada. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver directly smeared Tides as a radical organization. And there is no mistaking the target or agenda when Environment Minister Peter Kent warned Canadians about charities laundering foreign money, or when Public Safety Minister Vic Toews put environmentalists on Canada’s terrorist watch.
It was the same in the Senate, when Conservative senators rose and denounced Tides by name as a bad, ugly and anti-Canadian charity. Everyone’s running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
With our government so upset, it might not be a bad idea to look at the Tides leadership and see who these dangerous anti-Canadian radicals are. Supporting CEO Ross McMillan is Jodi White, Chair of the Board. White is former chief of staff to Conservative Prime Minister Kim Campbell, and former CEO of the Public Policy Forum, Canada’s leading centre promoting dialogue between the public, private, and voluntary sectors. Tides’ CFO Jeff Garrad was previously CFO to the BC Olympic Secretariat -- the government agency overseeing the 2010 Olympic Games. VP Sarah Goodman comes from the resource industry, having served in senior executive and VP roles in both Tech and Weyerhaeuser Canada.
Imagine Canada, a national umbrella organization fostering good practices in the charitable sector recently recognized Tides Canada as one of Canada’s 17 pre-eminent charities in terms of transparency, governance and good management.
Now it’s possible that this is all an elaborate plot, and that leaders like McMillan, White, Garrad and Goodman are exactly the kind of folks who’d never let principles get in the way of their subversive and dangerously radical anti-corporate agenda. Possible -- in the sense that it’s not impossible.
Nobody likes throwing cold water on a good conspiracy theory, but sometimes a fire extinguisher wouldn’t hurt. Looking at the leadership of Tides, knowing that it partners directly with the federal and provincial governments, industry leaders, and some of the most celebrated and reputable international foundations in the world, and that it passed a CRA audit within the last three years, isn’t it a lot more reasonable (not to mention sane) to conclude that things are in all probability fairly normal in this organization?
Yet no amount of common sense has stemmed the near hysteria emanating from Ottawa. You’d think Saddam Hussein was holed up under Ross McMillan’s desk, the way everybody’s carrying on. And the CRA has been sent back in to audit them again. It seems they didn’t come back with the right answer the first time.
The government of Canada clearly wants our environmental conservation sector to shut the heck up, and they’re letting everyone know just exactly what happens to bad charities.
Harper's message to charities: don't be inconvenient, and master "truthiness"
Let’s call this exactly what it is: a set-up.
A key piece in the puzzle here is that Tides Canada was the architect in the Great Bear Rainforest initiative, a multi-party agreement involving the federal and provincial governments to protect the forests and coastal waters of BC’s northern coast. As it turns out, the Great Bear Rainforest -- so enthusiastically embraced by the Harper government in 2006 -- lies directly in the path of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline. A pipeline opposed by the environmental conservation movement.
What a coincidence that Tides is now being vilified, pilloried and publicly humiliated. The federal government has pulled out all the stops in its efforts to discredit it.
Tides Canada will be very fortunate to escape its new tax audit unscathed. There’s every sign of political interference in the operations of Canada Revenue Agency, which should drive the icy dagger of fear into all Canadians. In a move that could not have been better calibrated for sheer intimidation, a new $8 million has just been found for the express purpose of scrutinizing charities (though of course nothing is available for a Coast Guard unit to protect lives in Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet).
The message to charities couldn’t be clearer: don’t be inconvenient.
If you’re a charity in the cancer game, you might want to think twice about ever mentioning asbestos again. Better that you host an Enbridge Ride to Conquer Cancer, like the BC Cancer Agency did. If you’re on the board of any charity with leaders who might say something displeasing to government, maybe it’s time for a change of leadership. If you’re Stephen Lewis, just forget it.
Work harder at learning how to be good. Better yet -- master truthiness, and everything will turn out fine.
Editor's note: This is the second part in a series, which begins here. The author wishes to state that she has no relationship with Tides Canada or its principals and is not formally a member of the environmental movement.