Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. This is the Red Eye Podcast. You can hear our live broadcast on Saturday mornings from 10 till noon at 100.5 FM in the Lower Mainland.
Speaker: Coming up in this episode, Stephen Joe of the National Council of Muslims joins me to talk about why Canada's national security watchdog is raising concerns about the auditing of Muslim charities.
Speaker: A newly released report from a national security watchdog confirms what Muslim charities and civil liberties advocates have long argued, that the Canada Revenue's approach to countering terrorist financing is deeply flawed.
Speaker: The report from the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency was triggered by years of allegations that the CRA's Review and Analysis Division unfairly targets Muslim charities due to bias and Islamophobia.
Speaker: Stephen Joe is Media and Communication Lead with the National Council of Canadian Muslims, and he joins me today from Toronto. Hello, Stephen. Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker: It's great to have you on the show. First of all, what is the Review and Analysis Division of the CRA? The Review Analysis Division, or RAD, is a specific division inside of the Canadian Revenue Agency that specifically targets parts of Canada's charity sector to weed out and eliminate any abuse in terms of terrorism.
Speaker: So if they see a terrorist threat or a national security threat being conducted in this area, it's their job to point it out and to have it excised, basically.
Speaker: And the idea is that charities may not know that they're being exploited by terrorist actors. Is that the case? Yes, I think practically the RAD does not really distinguish between whether you know it or you don't.
Speaker: It's practically for them the same thing and it's their job to look at it and to place it and to remove it. The watchdog that I referred to in my introduction, that's the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency.
Speaker: What was the scope of their investigation? The scope was quite comprehensive. The review agency, you know which is a watchdog that ideally holds these other agencies accountable, looked at dozens and dozens of audit files, basically processes, evidence, reports of exactly how the RAD actually conducts its audits against targeted charities that it has suspicions against.
Speaker: And there were dozens of these assessments and the scope was basically whether or not the RAD conducted a robust enough evidence-based investigation that was fair and unbiased.
Speaker: And what kind of information does does the RAD consider when it's trying to determine if a charity is at risk of either terrorist abuse or directly funding terrorism? What is it looking at?
Speaker: So I think broadly, it has a very dated list of what are called risk factors. or just suspicious signs that it looks at when it comes to the conduct and the makeup of a charity in Canada.
Speaker: These things may be, you know, liaising with the wrong people, working in what are called high risk areas where there may be an consistent uptick in terrorism,
Speaker: or it may be sending money to the wrong places, these types of things. And when they notice these things, they make a decision based on recommendations by their analysts.
Speaker: The RAD will then go in and to trigger an audit of this particular targeted suspicious charity. Concerns have been raised for years that Muslim charities are particular targets of audits and that this is a result of bias.
Speaker: And the report actually breaks down the religious affiliation of charities assessed and audited by the RAD. How many of those charities audited are Muslim? So from 2009 to 2022, about two-thirds of these audited charities are Muslim.
Speaker: And also they do work often in ah Muslim-majority countries that might need humanitarian help and so on. And the Intelligence Review Agency's conclusion is that the RAD does not have...
Speaker: an evidence-based process where they can actually prove their suspicions through audits that they have conducted. And they found this time and time again when looking at these dozens of audits, both Muslim and non-Muslim.
Speaker: And just to be clear, these are not minor audits. Some of them go on for a number of years with a significant impact on on the work of the charity. Well, I think i hope Canadians understand and can empathize with the positions of these charities that, you know, often are Muslim. And I said two thirds in terms of that timeframe.
Speaker: But these things are not limited to one community. any charity is at risk of this kind of bullying and intrusive auditing, which will drain tens of thousands, if not much more amounts of dollars from the coffers and the budget of, let's say, religious organizations like the mosque and so on, who now have to step up their fundraising efforts, they have to cut back on their services, and it does systemic damage
Speaker: to the community and to the charity sectors of certain communities. And the charity sector is the backbone of the Muslim Canadian community. Does the report identify what has led to Muslim organizations making up such a high proportion of the charities that have been audited? Is there something in in the mandate or the operation of RAD that's leading to that result?
Speaker: I think the report points out several details that are deeply troubling. And the conclusion is that they simply are not doing their jobs properly. And I don't suppose anybody will read this report and walk away without thinking this is a broken system.
Speaker: At the very outset, the document keeping of ah the CRA's RAD division is incomplete. And when these questions are asked, they're not able to point to record keeping that will exonerate them fully from suspicions of ah violating charities and Muslim charities' charter religious freedoms rights.
Speaker: That's at the very outset. And at the core of a lot of the criticisms and findings is that the RAD simply does not have a consistent, accountable process where they can prove that the suspicions they have of a certain charity or charities are real, that they can't always point to the right evidence to basically affirm and to validate that those initial suspicions they've had of charity A or charity B is real.
Speaker: And this is actually true also from their internal findings because they often do assessments of their own audits. And many times they find that these audits should have never taken place in the first place.
Speaker: And there are so many more points, including inability to marshal all the most up-to-date information in order to conduct an audit. And all these things put together basically adds up to a ah very error-prone system.
Speaker: And to go back to your question of why these audits often target Muslim charities, number one being that they find, you know, what they deem to be problematic elements in contact with these charities, or they find that these charities are operating within high risk areas.
Speaker: And in many of these cases, they're not actually able to prove these points. And yet, the Muslim charity sector often falls into this broader anti-terror mandate.
Speaker: What are some of the key recommendations in the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency's report? What do they think should happen? I think that you know the review agency offers a number of recommendations like updating the list of risk factors. you know There's a broad list of risk factors or a suspicious signs that the RAD can pick from to make sure that it's actually evergreen and right now it's not.
Speaker: hasn't been updated since 2016. ah There are things like making sure you keep the documents consistent and to make sure that you actually have written down the reasons why you decided to trigger certain audits in the first place.
Speaker: Or there's things like make sure you actually have the right intelligence and the up-to-date information, even if it exonerates the targeted charity in question that you have to take these things into account.
Speaker: There are, I think, couple of dozen or so of these specific things. But if listeners go ahead and read this report and its findings and recommendations, what they'll find is that it adds up to a broader picture, very easily discernible to any person that this system, this RAD unit is not functional.
Speaker: It's very broken system. It has done tremendous damage to Muslim Canadian charities and possibly to other charities. And it should be dismantled.
Speaker: We have to have CRA oversight that's built into the next budget in November. And we have to have a new system and a new culture at the CRA. This has been allowed to go on for too long.
Speaker: And the report is very damning in terms of this is not a workable, accountable system in any way. Are there Muslim charities right now that are going through audits that are going to change now that this report has come down?
Speaker: ah We see no indication. that the RAD might change their direction when it comes to some of these things. One factor is that these artists take so long, they're years and years and years.
Speaker: They put a lot of time into it. They force the charities being targeted to spend tremendous amount of resources and money into the legal process and other types of processes.
Speaker: And we don't know practically what this report might mean, but what it should mean, I can tell you, is for current audits to cease, for the RAD to be dismantled, essentially, and for there to be a reevaluation of all these things, because it is very clearly mentioned in the report that many, many times that the rat simply has not bothered to update themselves with the current most up-to-date intelligence that often exonerates the targeted charity ah that's being looked at and that's being bullied and that's being questioned again and again.
Speaker: It's not a credible situation. It's not a credible process. It's not ah fair to Canadians or to charities. Well, thank you so much for speaking with me today, Stephen. Thank you so much.
Speaker: I've been speaking with Stephen Jo, Media and Communications Lead with the National Councils of Canadian Muslims. You've been listening to the Red Eye Podcast, produced by an independent media collective based in Vancouver.
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Speaker: Thanks for listening.
