The organization is now inviting supporters to plant ‘thousands’ of trees in Israel for Justin Trudeau and revenue minister Marie-Claude Bibeau. Read on for more details about this initiative and other recent developments as part of The CJN’s in-depth coverage of JNF Canada’s charitable revocation.
If the embattled Jewish National Fund of Canada has its way, its supporters will soon be buying thousands of new trees to be planted in Israel in the names of the prime minister and also the country’s minister of national revenue.
As part of a new “Stand with JNF Campaign” launched Sept. 12, the historic Jewish charity hopes to flood Ottawa with thank-you cards showing trees will be planted in Israel as a gift in the names of Justin Trudeau and Marie-Claude Bibeau. It’s the latest effort to protest the Canadian tax agency’s Aug. 10 decision to revoke JNF Canada’s charitable status for “serious and repeated non-compliance” with income tax rules.
The tree cards are designed to send “a clear message” and apply some political pressure on the federal government, JNF Canada suggested in an email to its supporters.
“Together, we can stand up for our Canadian right to charitably support Israel and all its citizens, and make a real impact,” said the unsigned e-blast.
As part of the Canada Revenue Agency’s revocation order, JNF Canada must wind up its charitable operations within a year, while disposing of $30 million in assets. Two legal challenges to the revocation have been filed, one with the Federal Court and the other with the Federal Court of Appeal. In the meantime, JNF Canada is operating as a non-profit corporation for now, but can no longer issue tax receipts for donations.
Individual Canadians have long been in the habit of donating money to JNF Canada towards planting of trees in Israel as a way to mark milestone life cycle events and to celebrate Jewish holidays. Recipients would get a colourful thank-you card showing that a tree has been planted in Israel in their name.
These new “Stand Up for JNF” trees will be planted in northern Israel as part of the reforestation of the area “following the devastating attacks by Hezbollah” rockets since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
The Netanyahu government launched a military campaign in Gaza in October 2023 after Hamas attacks killed 1,200 and more than 200 Israeli residents were taken hostage. Iranian-backed troops in Lebanon soon began to launch rockets and drones across the northern border with Israel, forcing mass evacuations but also sparking forest fires around border communities like Kiryat Shmona and Metula.
For every $18 donated, JNF Canada promises to send out two tree cards to the politicians.
‘Off the books’ meetings with PM
This tree campaign comes a month after the CRA decision to revoke JNF’s charitable status was officially published in the Canada Gazette. At the time, JNF Canada officials said the move “blindsided” the organization.
JNF Canada had expected the CRA would work out a compliance agreement that would allow the charity to continue operating, which is normally done except in very aggravated cases–such as fraud or not issuing proper tax receipts, which wasn’t the case here.
As the dispute was coming to a head, JNF Canada pursued high level political involvement to help its cause, CEO Lance Davis told The CJN in an interview Aug. 16, which broadcast on The CJN Daily on Aug. 27, as well as an accompanying print story.
But now, The CJN has confirmed more details of just how high level JNF Canada’s political entreaties went.
“We did engage the Prime Minister’s Office. We did have two off-the-books meetings with the Prime Minister, so we did get indication that this would be handled, and this would be sorted out,” JNF’s CEO Lance Davis told a group of about 100 JNF Canada staff, former honourees, supporters and partners during a Zoom briefing on Thursday Sept. 12.
“And needless to say, it wasn’t. More than a year ago, we had an indication from – at the highest level – that this will be handled.”
So it came as a surprise a year later, after Oct. 7, that the assurances of “We’ll take care of it” became “a walk back”, Davis said told the Zoom meeting. He suggested that the war in Israel, and, claims of “God knows what” against Israel committing genocide in Gaza, likely played a role.
According to Davis, his charity then came up with an alternative strategy to ward off the hammer falling “just in the last month before revocation.”
“We went to the prime minister’s office and the prime minister himself, and said, ‘[Here’s] an off-ramp. If you really, really need to kick JNF, annul us as a charity, don’t revoke. It’s a terrible black mark. Annul the charity.’ And people in the Prime Minister’s office really thought that was the way to go.
“It didn’t happen.”
The CJN was not invited to attend the Zoom briefing, but was able to listen to the hour-long discussion. JNF Canada officials did not respond to our request for clarification about what Davis meant by “off the books” meetings with Justin Trudeau or when and where exactly they took place.
The Prime Minister’s Office was asked to confirm that such “off the books meetings” with the PM and JNF Canada took place.
An official with knowledge of the file but who is not authorized to speak on the record, did not confirm whether any face to face meetings had taken place with Justin Trudeau, but denied there were any held this summer, The CJN was told on Friday.
“Representatives of the JNF as well as concerned community members reached out to many Government offices, including our office, to express their deep concern,” said the government official.
Which is why the PMO confirmed Trudeau’s staff is very much aware of JNF Canada’s predicament, even if the tax department has the final say.
“We know the decision to revoke the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund by the Canada Revenue Agency is one that has concerned many members of the Jewish Canadian community,” the PMO said, in an official written statement to The CJN. “At all times, decisions on this matter are decisions made by the Canada Revenue Agency.”
In late August, The CJN asked for an interview with the minister responsible for the CRA, the Minister of National Revenue, Marie-Claude Bibeau, to explain why the CRA acted the way it did. We also asked whether the minister was involved in the decision to revoke JNF Canada’s status.
A spokesperson for the minister, Justine Lesage, sent a written reply on Aug. 29 but declined to answer any of our other questions.
“As you probably know, registration and monitoring of the charitable status of organizations is an absolutely non-partisan regulatory process maintained independently by the Canada Revenue Agency,” Lesage wrote in an email. “So I will kindly refer you to the Agency for your questions. And as this case is currently before the courts, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further.”
Nine meeting requests ignored: JNF
The current dispute stems from a CRA audit begun in 2014 on the Montreal-based Jewish charity and the work it was doing both at home and in Israel. This was the fifth audit since JNF Canada was created in 1967.
Although the charity was aware of the CRA’s desire to move to revocation many years before Ottawa pulled the plug, officials also maintained the team had been attempting to work collaboratively with the tax agency’s Charities Directorate to negotiate a compliance agreement.
JNF Canada recently released 277 pages of its own correspondence with the CRA, covering the last decade and even earlier. These files outline the proposals, including offering ways JNF Canada either would, or already had made many of the changes which the CRA’s auditors had been requesting. The papers also portray JNF Canada repeatedly asking for meetings to work out the issues.
David Stevens of law firm Gowling WLG told the people attending the Sept. 12 Zoom meeting that the formerly registered charity sent the CRA “friendly reminders” nine times between 2018 and 2023, asking to have in-person meetings, as all the communications between the two parties had been in written form.
The legal counsel explained his clients were especially keen to have the auditors approve a new charitable purpose for JNF Canada, although he told the meeting JNF Canada could have unilaterally gone ahead and filed it with Industry Canada, without clearing it with CRA first.
Stevens said JNF Canada was in regular telephone contact with the main auditor on the file in 2020 “on a month-to-month basis”, but the organization alleges there was no response from the CRA after that until the winter of 2023.
Many of the legal arguments are contained in a 46-page letter dated Oct. 24, 2023, which Stevens sent to the CRA’s Daniel Racine, and which JNF Canada published on its website.
CRA showed bias: JNF Canada
JNF Canada has long suspected its efforts were falling on increasingly deaf ears due to the Charities Directorate being biased against the Jewish charity over its work in Israel. This bias, JNF Canada asserts, came from years of political pressure from pro-Palestinian groups in Canada who have advocated for the tax department to shutter its chartiable operations.
Documents obtained by JNF Canada show that in mid-2019, the CRA was preparing a case that ultimately resulted in a decision to revoke. Staff at the CRA’s Legislative Policy and Regulatory Affairs Branch compiled a briefing report summarizing the auditors’ main concerns, but also noting the latest political and public controversy about JNF Canada.
The report, authored by Shane Byrnes, a senior policy analyst, cited news coverage, including a 2019 story from The Canadian Jewish News where JNF Canada CEO Lance Davis acknowledged the charity was in negotiations with the CRA, after having been warned about funding projects on IDF bases and also in the West Bank.
Byrnes’ report also noted external political pressure brought to bear on the tax department itself as far back as 2014. The researcher noted the Ministry of National Revenue had been the target of a postcard campaign launched by Independent Jewish Voices back in February 2014. The cards were signed by individual taxpayers but branded with the logos of IJV and Stop the JNF Canada. The cards arrived at the office of Kerry Findlay, who was the Conservative minister of national revenue in the Stephen Harper government.
“The postcards requested that the ‘CRA revoke the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) of Canada [as the] JNF’s activities and policies run contrary to Canadian and international law’, the CRA report stated, adding the government received “over 1,000 postcards as part of this campaign.”
The report noted the continuing efforts by pro-Palestinian politicians from the Green and NDP parties who put forward petitions in Parliament in 2019 calling for the end of the Jewish charity, along with support for this from the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.
In recent days, the National Post reported it had obtained a document showing three members of Independent Jewish Voices met in 2017 with a senior CRA official to press their case. IJV also submitted a written brief to the CRA in 2017, totalling 85 pages, suggesting JNF Canada and its Israeli partners violate Canadian law by building projects in the West Bank, discriminate against Palestinians, and help fund projects which directly benefit the Israel Defence Forces (which the CRA says is illegal under Canadian law.)
JNF Canada felt a blatant sign of bias came just last month, when the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), the union representing CRA’s auditors, posted on social media how happy its members were that JNF Canada’s charitable status was being revoked.
Significantly, this posting was made on Aug. 8, 2024, two days before the revocation notice was made public in the Canada Gazette.
The CJN contacted the union on Aug. 29 to ask about the timing of its post—and the pro-Palestinian sentiment behind it—but did not receive a reply.
JNF Canada’s legal counsel David Stevens told the Zoom meeting that tweet will be part of legal arguments showing the CRA was biased.
However, Stevens explained why his client initially didn’t use the bias card during the audit process, except until the end.
It is because CRA “have all the power” during a formal audit, he told the meeting. JNF Canada conducted itself as “supplicants”, Stevens said.
It was decided to call the bureaucrats out for being unfair only after it became clear the matter was going to become “a fight”.
Status of both court cases
Despite having two court cases now in the system, JNF Canada wants to resolve its predicament without the likely delays inherent in the legal route.
“The time has come for the Canadian government to sit down with JNF Canada to find a mutually acceptable path forward,” the organization’s tree campaign says.
A resolution through the courts will take time, predicted its lawyer. The first hearing—for a judicial review—could happen by mid-to-late October, but the second application, before the Federal Court of Appeal, could take up to ten months to be heard. That would be closer to April 2025, honourees, donors and staff were told.
If the court agrees there was bias or CRA’s revocation was improper, JNF Canada’s lawyer said a judge could “vacate the revocation”, then send the file back to the CRA for reconsideration.
“Back to Square One, it would start all over again,” Stevens told the Zoom meeting.
Are the Negev Dinners still on?
In the meantime, there is concern among volunteers about high-profile JNF Canada fundraising events still on the calendar this year.
On Sept. 5, JNF Toronto postponed this year’s 2024 Negev Dinner that had been slated for Nov. 10, citing “a legal dispute with the Canada Revenue Agency which prevents us from issuing donation receipts.”
The event would have honoured philanthropist Jeff Rubenstein, with featured speakers Naftali Bennett, Israel’s former prime minister, and American journalist Bret Stephens.
Ottawa’s Negev dinner is still scheduled for Nov. 13. That night, donors are set to honour Lisa MacLeod, an Ontario Conservative MPP. Proceeds from that fundraiser are to help build a new resilience centre for the people of Sderot, where JNF Canada estimates that 80 percent of the children suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to living in the path of Hamas rockets fired from Gaza all these years.
According to officials in Ottawa, the event is still a go.
While JNF Canada is not able to issue personal tax receipts at the moment, “people who wish to make corporate donations [for these dinners] can do so,” CEO Lance Davis told the Zoom briefing.
JNF Canada did not reveal too much about its contingency plans to keep operating as a charity. It is still a non-profit corporation.
JNF Canada is planning to work “side by side” with an existing charity described as being “open and available to work with”, where tax deductible donations could be processed for projects in Israel, Davis said. However, he cautioned that JNF Canada needs to maintain “arms-length status” with any new charity partner.
All this planning depends on whether JNF Canada wins or loses its appeals. Should the worst case scenario happen, JNF Canada will have the “opportunity to restructure and rebuild around this new charity,” the meeting was told.
One attendee from Toronto who spoke at the Zoom meeting suggested JNF Canada try to win the hearts and minds of members of the Jewish community by getting Canadian synagogues to distribute some positive publicity material during the coming High Holidays in October.
“We’ve lost some donors,” he said. “There’s the court of so-called justice and there’s the court of public opinion.”
A second speaker worried that even if the courts do find the CRA was biased, JNF Canada could still be in trouble for having not complied with the three separate parts of the tax code, as listed in the tax agency’s reasons for revocation.
“I have grave concerns that guidelines haven’t been followed,” he said. “If you win the bias issue, but you’re offside, they’ll still shut you down.”
JNF Canada lawyer David Stevens conceded that JNF Canada may indeed have had some shortcomings, but was treated more severely by the tax agency than other charities have been in similar situations.
“Maybe CRA was right, but there should have been a compliance agreement,” Stevens told the meeting.
