Christian nationalists enraged to learn faith-based groups that do zero public good might lose tax-free charitable status
‘Religious organizations should have charitable status because they do charitable works, they shouldn’t have charitable status just because they are religious’
Canada’s Christian nationalists who advocate for policies of ignorance and division have their collective chastity belts in a knot over the federal government’s move toward finally ending charitable status for uncharitable religious groups.
The BC Humanist Association, which advocates for secular governance and ethical, reason-based living, is being credited – or blamed, depending on your point of view – by the far-right Manitoba-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy for a hidden tidbit from the House of Commons Finance Committee that should make it into the Mark Carney government’s first budget coming in November.
Namely, a recommendation to end the “privileged status of advancement of religion” in charity law.
“Right-wing think tanks and religious billionaires are pressing the government to abandon this idea, which could save the public billions of dollars annually,” according to a BC Humanist Association (BCHA) social media post from Oct. 21.
“Despite their alarmism, all the ‘benefits’ of religious charities would still remain eligible for charitable status. Providing homeless shelters or soup kitchens are core charitable activities and no one is considering repealing that.”
You know, when they do that Jesus stuff?
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy (FCPP) campaign includes a report attacking the finance committee’s proposal to remove the loophole that allows religious groups to be considered charitable just for being religious. The report’s author Pierre Gilbert is either clueless, disingenuous, or a liar, as he fear-mongers that Ottawa “has churches in its crosshairs” and that if the committee recommendation makes it into the budget, “proposals to revoke charitable status for faith-based groups would devastate the community services thousands rely on,” saying that for every dollar of tax exemption, religious groups deliver $10 in community services.
That latter “statistic” is attributed to Cardus. What’s Cardus? A Christian think tank advocating for religion and faith in Canadian government and society.
Regardless of the source, maybe that’s true, but any faith-based group actually providing community services would not lose their tax-free charitable status. The AI-generated cartoon that goes with the FCPP Tweet on the report is also a lie, showing a pair of giant scissors with the words “Ottawa” and “charitable” cutting a rope that says “charitable status” running from a church to a food bank and a youth centre.
Pierre Gilbert warns Ottawa has churches in its crosshairs. A federal cash crunch could strip faith groups of tax breaks, crippling Canada’s community backbone. The message is clear: shape up or ship out. This isn’t just policy—it’s a cultural attack on institutions that shaped… pic.twitter.com/P2MxCfjFlP
— Frontier Centre (@FrontierCentre) October 19, 2025
That’s not going to happen even if the federal budget adopts every word from the finance committee’s recommendations.
A great many Christian churches and religious groups of all kinds, Sikh, Muslim, Buddhist, do amazing charitable work that follows the tenets of their particular beliefs, tending to the sick, helping the poor. Members and leaders at Sardis Fellowship in Chilliwack, to give an example of one church at random (after a ChatGPT question), do many good works around Chilliwack and around the world. Among many other things, they say on their website that they support Ruth & Naomi’s Mission financially as well as cooking and serving meals twice a month. They also support The Salvation Army’s charitable work, and much more.
Churches such as Sardis Fellowship, and obviously faith-based organizations such as Ruth & Naomi’s Mission where unhoused people get meals and sleep, do good works in communities across Canada and as a result benefit rightly from tax-free charitable status.
But religious organizations should have charitable status because they do charitable works, they shouldn’t have charitable status just because they are religious.
Maybe some religious groups and churches don’t do enough or do only token amounts, but that’s getting too much into the weeds. The point is that many churches not only do nothing to warrant charitable status, they do less than nothing by proselytizing on street corners or via right-wing lobby groups to spread private religious beliefs on taxpayers’ dimes.
Some of them do worse than less than nothing, such as, you guessed it, the far-right Frontier Centre for Public Policy, which has charitable status, while spreading homophobia, misogyny, anti-science ideology, and residential school denialism. They've even been accused of anti-semitism with their attack on the “cultural Marxists” who claim residential schools weren’t a happy picnic for Indigenous people.
“Cultural Marxists are becoming more extreme and less credible,” FCPP senior fellow William Brooks wrote in an article dismissing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “They deliberately focus on the absolute worst in the history of any people they oppose.”
“Cultural Marxism” is a recycled anti-semitic conspiracy theory that the Southern Poverty Law Center in the U.S. points out can be traced to blaming progressive changes in the 1960s to a “tiny group of Jewish philosophers who fled Germany in the 1930s,”
The above was addressed in an article in PressProgress from 2023 after Pierre Poilievre spoke at a FCPP meeting.
“It is deeply distressing that Poilievre spoke at an event organized by an organization that peddles in racism and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” Aaron Lakoff, spokesperson for Independent Jewish Voices told PressProgress.
In response to the FCPP, the BCHA launched a petition to, firstly, remind government that it has a duty of religious neutrality in a secular multicultural country.
These organizations seem to forget that Charter-protected freedom of religion includes freedom from religion.
And secondly, charities must prove a public benefit, whether they are religious or otherwise.
“If a religious group operates a genuine charity (e.g. a homeless shelter or soup kitchen), it can keep its status,” according to the BCHA’s message about its petition. “We are only closing the loophole for activities that only serve religious dogma.”
The Liberal government will table the federal budget on Nov. 4, 2025.
*Note: By way of disclosure I'll point out that I am a member of the BC Humanist Association, but in no way was paid, urged, or even asked to write about this topic - Paul J. Henderson
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