Two Jewish Canadian charities have had their charitable status formally revoked by Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and can no longer issue charitable receipts for tax purposes.
CRA’s published notice in the government-issued Canada Gazette on Aug. 10 confirmed the revocations of the charitable registrations for the Jewish National Fund of Canada (JNF) and Ne’eman Foundation of Canada. Updates on Aug. 13 to the CRA website’s charities directory showed, separately, the revoked and audited status on the two charities’ listings.
JNF and Ne’eman’s charitable status had been revoked effective Aug. 10, CRA spokesperson Nina Ioussoupova confirmed in an email to The CJN.
While the federal tax agency confirmed it revoked the registration of the two organizations from its Charities Directorate over violations of donation rules, CRA did not detail its concerns over any specific projects.
Critics of JNF and Ne’eman say they have funded prohibited projects in Israel, which they allege support the military or settlements or groups in the West Bank, and that the CRA has decided were in contravention of the Income Tax Act.
The CRA information online for each organization mentions the parts of that law with which it says JNF and Ne’eman failed to comply, but does not give further details connected to specific projects or activities.
CRA wrote that JNF’s tax law violations included “providing funds to non-qualified donees,” while Ne’eman “failed to maintain proper books and records,” among the other sections of the Act cited in updates to the two separate CRA charity listing pages.
In a previous statement to The CJN, JNF president Nathan Disenhouse and CEO Lance Davis maintained the core issue for the revocation was “the CRA’s assertion that our original founding charitable object that it accepted almost 60 years ago is now no longer considered to be a charitable object.”
Directors for the Ne’eman Foundation, which has offices in Toronto, the U.S., and Israel, could not be reached for comment by The CJN’s deadline.
(The decision was announced just prior to the fast day of Tisha b’Av—during which this article was written and published. The CJN will update if the organization responds.)
The Ne’eman Foundation’s website says it “provides Canadians with a wide selection of tax-deductible projects in Israel that are monitored to guarantee that allocated funds are used accordingly and comply with the requirements of Canadian tax legislation.” Numerous charities in Israel are listed on its webpage, including programs for lone soldiers.
According to the website Charity Data, Ne’eman Foundation Canada had revenues of $7.3 million in 2022.
In an email to supporters on Aug. 13, JNF’s Davis and Disenhouse said the organization had been “blindsided” by the Aug. 10 announcement, over Shabbat, “despite court proceedings currently underway.”
On June 26, JNF learned from a CRA correspondence that the agency was confirming a previously stated intention, from 2019, to revoke its charitable status. JNF filed an appeal of the decision in federal court July 24, contesting CRA’s “wrong and unjustified decision,” Disenhouse and Davis posted online the next day.
The charity had said it would continue to issue tax receipts while the matter was before the courts.
In the letter Aug. 13, Disenhouse and Davis wrote:
“This (revocation) was done in a manner contrary to the CRA’s standard practice. The norm is that the CRA would hold the revocation until the legal proceedings conclude and a decision is delivered from the court.
“This draconian and unprecedented action is consistent with the CRA’s attitude towards JNF since it informed us that it was intending to revoke our charitable status. We appealed while at the same time striving to reach an agreement with the CRA on a constructive path forward, while our overtures to have a dialogue in order to negotiate were consistently rebuffed.
“In the coming days we will be advising the court of the severe damage the CRA is causing us and asking for an application for judicial review until our case is heard on its merits.”
In its federal court appeal notice, JNF maintains the CRA erred in its findings, that the procedures itself “are unfair in that it does not allow us to test the facts before it goes to the Federal Court of Appeal,” and that there is “a reasonable apprehension of bias in the audit” by CRA due to “great public pressure” on the revenue minister to revoke JNF’s registered charity status.
JNF says CRA’s decision was influenced by anti-Israel groups, though it says it does not suggest CRA is itself antisemitic.
“As a Zionist-inspired organization, JNF Canada has many vociferous antisemitic detractors who we believe have influenced the decision-making process in this matter,” read one part of a Q&A on its website regarding the court appeal of CRA’s decision.
The Federal Court of Appeal confirmed JNF’s case was active and ongoing in an Aug. 13 email from a court registry officer.
JNF Canada cannot currently issue charitable receipts, however, Davis and Disenhouse said the charity was continuing to operate.
“Please rest assured that we remain steadfast in our commitment to building Israel’s charitable environmental and social service infrastructure for the benefit of all Israelis.”
The Aug. 13 email encouraged supporters to sign JNF’s petition to the Federal Minister of National Revenue, Marie-Claude Bibeau, asking the government to withdraw the CRA revocation of charitable status and allow JNF’s court case to proceed.
Established in 1967, JNF, one of Canada’s oldest Jewish charities, is known for its tree-planting and environmental work in Israel, along with building playgrounds for children. Its more recent projects include JNF Quebec division’s Climate Solutions Prize, which encourages the development of innovative technology addressing climate change by nonprofit institutions and early-stage companies.
The website Charity Intelligence Canada currently lists JNF Canada as a one-star rated charity. “JNF Canada is not financially transparent. Its audited financial statements are not posted on its website, nor provided when requested,” the website reported.
JNF’s last audited financial statements, in 2022, show it received $13.2 million in donations and spent $6.2 million on programs and grants, according to the Charity Intelligence listing.
The CRA did not respond before press time about whether it had met with JNF, or had any contact between June 26, when CRA confirmed it would revoke JNF Canada’s charitable status, and the Aug. 10 notice.
JNF says CRA has consistently refused meetings with the organization, both in recent months and since the CRA issued its original notice of intent to revoke charitable status, in August 2019.
JNF Canada has been audited five times by the CRA since it began in the 1960s, with the most recent audit in 2014. As a result of that audit, which was based on work done in 2011 and 2012, JNF learned in 2019 that the CRA intended to revoke its charitable status.
CRA confirmed that intention in its June 26, 2024 correspondence to JFN, then formalized the revocation with the Aug. 10 Canada Gazette notice.
Some of JNF’s projects, which its critics allege support the Israeli military or are on land in the West Bank, have made it the focus of scrutiny by Canadian critics of Israel. Adding to that scrutiny, former prime minister Stephen Harper—criticized by some for his pro-Israel stance—was a visible JNF supporter during his years in office, and JNF named the visitor centre at its Hula Valley bird sanctuary in Israel after Harper when it opened in 2006.
In an earlier email to supporters, on July 30, Disenhouse and Davis wrote that media reports about JNF’s struggles with the CRA since the July 24 court filing had inaccurately referenced past projects, conflating two different matters.
“The articles conflated the matter of JNF’s community projects on IDF bases and our recent notice of confirmation to revoke our charitable status. In the June 26, 2024 correspondence from CRA, there was not one mention of the projects on IDF property.”
One of JNF’s fiercest critics, Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), a Canadian Jewish group which supports the boycott and sanctions movement against Israel and had been involved for more than a decade in the attempt to have CRA revoke JNF’s charitable status, applauded the decision.
In 2017, IJV filed a complaint against JNF with federal authorities, alleging that the charity’s activities contravened the Income Tax Act, international law and CRA guidelines. Then, in a highly critical CBC News article in January 2019, reporter Evan Dyer wrote that JNF had been the subject of the CRA audit over a complaint that it used charitable donations to build infrastructure for the Israel Defense Forces “in violation of Canada’s tax rules.”
JNF Canada said it had stopped funding those projects in 2016 following CRA guidance, and told Dyer for the CBC report that JNF operates within CRA rules concerning the organization’s charitable status.
Davis said at the time the projects were carried out on land owned by the IDF, but that JNF Canada’s charitable funds never flowed to the IDF.
Davis told The CJN in 2019 that with regards to projects “in disputed territory,” JNF is committed to continuing to work with the CRA “to ensure we are in full compliance.”
However, later in 2019, CRA confirmed it was responding to an IJV-led petition to the revenue minister to probe JNF’s charitable status.
Along with IJV, Canadian group Just Peace Advocates are among those who have targeted charities including United Israel Appeal of Canada, Mizrachi Canada, and others.
IJV member Niall Clapham Ricardo confirmed to The CJN via email that the organization supported the CRA decision on JNF’s charitable status and was advocating for further revocations of other such charities it wants to see investigated.
“The Canadian government has finally taken the consequential step to revoke the JNF Canada’s charitable status,” effective Aug. 10, Clapham said, crediting “the tireless work of Palestinian, Jewish and allied activists that worked for decades” to hold JNF Canada to account for the projects Clapham said were supporting “illegal Israeli occupation, colonization and apartheid.”
“Unfortunately, other charitable organizations such as Mizrachi Canada are using the same loophole to continue to tarnish the fundamental principles of international and Canadian law, the Canadian government must ensure that these organizations’ charitable status is also revoked.”
Reached for comment about United Israel Appeal, Steven Shulman, president and CEO, Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA, told The CJN in an email that any such complaints were baseless.
“We are aware that a bad faith complaint has been made to CRA by ideological opponents of our charitable work in Israel. There is no substance to the complaint. We rigorously comply with Canadian law,” wrote Shulman.
“What [concerns] us is groups attempting to utilize CRA complaints for political ends. We will proudly continue to carry out our charitable activities in Israel to help those in need at this very difficult time and beyond.”
The revocation of JNF’s and Ne’eman’s registration with CRA turns on the status of each organization as a qualified charity, according to a lawyer specializing in the rules governing Canadian charities and their tax status.
Mark Blumberg, a Toronto lawyer who specializes in charity tax law, told The CJN in an interview that it was surprising, in a sense, that the CRA’s official revocation came so quickly. However, he noted, JNF has been under investigation since the 2014 audit.
According to Blumberg’s assessment, that means the correspondence should likely be made available to the public in coming weeks, possibly sooner via media requests. (The CJN has requested copies of the correspondence from CRA between the agency and JNF, and between CRA and Ne’eman.)
“CRA generally—in most cases where it’s small amounts of money at stake or there’s nothing too important—will basically allow a group to go through the full process and only revoke them after they’ve gone through all of their appeals, you could say. In this case, a decision was made, I guess, not to do that,” says Blumberg, who notes CRA has “done this on a number of occasions with different groups.”
“Essentially CRA saying that the group is now no longer a registered charity. I think that maybe some were thinking this [formal decision] would only be in a year or two, but this is the case. And that means they can’t issue official donation receipts anymore. And they basically are not going to be considered a qualified donee, so foundations can’t make grants to them as well,” says Blumberg.
“[JNF] are going to have another year to deal with their assets and basically wind up,” Blumberg says.
And while he notes “an appeal can change the outcome,” Blumberg seems doubtful about the court overturning CRA’s decision.
“In the vast majority, there [have] been about 80 cases over the last, say 30 years… CRA has won about 100 percent of those cases. So I don’t think it’s that likely, typically from a statistical point of view, that a higher court is going to overturn the CRA decision in this case,” he told The CJN.
Blumberg says with that 10-year period, since the 2014 audit, JNF had an opportunity “to get their house in order,” but that it’s possible the organization’s response to CRA, and its public statements, might have played a role in the decision and timeframe.
“You can imagine from a CRA perspective, a group 10 years after an audit begins… the charity saying ‘well, we’re not funding the Israeli military, but we don’t think it’s improper to fund the Israeli military.’ That would be something that I think would be the sort of thing that would be problematic, let’s just say, for a regulator.”
Canadian donors can reasonably expect registered charities to comply with CRA rules, he says.
“You’ve got 86,000 charities and CRA is not getting rid of a lot of them, but occasionally they will get rid of a charity that they have done an audit on and found some, obviously what CRA considers to be, significant problems,” says Blumberg, though he notes the federal court of appeal could still restore JNF’s charitable status.
“If the Federal Court of Appeal agrees with CRA, then they can appeal… basically ask for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada,” he says.
“Worst comes to worst, [JNF] can transfer the funds to another Canadian registered charity that will actually do the work that needs to be done in accordance with the rules—assuming that CRA is correct, which may not be the case– but if they’re correct, that there were things that were done that were not according to the rules.”
“Once we have the CRA letters, we’ll know much more about what it is that CRA was concerned with, and we don’t have that right now,” says Blumberg.
Another Jewish Canadian charity working in Israel, Beth Oloth, had its status revoked in 2019 following a CRA audit and similar allegations of supporting projects in Israel that CRA auditors said increased “the efficiency and effectiveness of the Israeli armed forces,” in addition to projects in the West Bank.
With files from Ellin Bessner.