Revenue Canada targets birdwatchers for political activity
2014/10/18 1 Comment
This may be the over-reach that helps clarify the issues – targeting birdwatchers (see earlier Canadian charities in limbo as tax audits widen to new groups – Politics – CBC News):
But longtime member Roger Suffling is speaking up, saying the issue is about democratic freedom and not about arcane tax rules.
“Effectively, they’ve put a gag on us,” he said in an interview, noting that the letter arrived just after the club had written directly to two federal cabinet ministers to complain about government-approved chemicals that damage bee colonies.
“You can piece together the timing,” said Suffling, an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo. “The two things are very concurrent.”
Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq responded to the group’s complaint in a March 14 letter — or just days after the Canada Revenue Agency letter arrived — and Suffling is convinced the two events are linked. Aglukkaqs office denies there’s any link, saying the agency operates independently.
Suffling said that if government is using the tax agency as a “pit bull to stifle dissent, then there’s something very wrong.”
Revenue Canada targets birdwatchers for political activity – Politics – CBC News.
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
It is interesting that Mr. Harper’s CRA has declared war on the birds and the bees. Perhaps somebody should tell them. Birds & Bees are essential to reproduction. [In fact, they are] More seriously, the creeping authoritarian nature of the present government and its subversion of the institutions of democracy – Parliament, Parliamentary Committees, the watchdogs, the Civil Service, the independence of scientists, the gagging of scientists and of scientific opinion, the attacks on the Judiciary – is very ominous; even more ominous perhaps is the supine passivity of public opinion and of most of the media most of the time. If any opinion about anything by any organization is considered a taxable ‘political activity’ then society will be starved of expertise about almost all issues and will be flying blind – or subservient to whatever interests are allowed to manipulate opinion – and will therefore cease to be a democracy and cease to be safe for those multiple disasters that come from – wilful – ignorance.