Canada Revenue Agency moves to muzzle animal charity

[Animal 0]

Reçu cette info par mail, mais ne la trouve pas sur le site de l'auteur.... Elle ne date sûrement pas de mars 2011...=====================================================


Subject: Canada Revenue Agency moves to muzzle animal charities
>
> From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
>
>
> Canada Revenue Agency moves to muzzle animal charities
>
>
> OTTAWA--The Canada Revenue Agency on February 5, 2011
> published new regulations governing animal charities which would
> revoke the nonprofit status of any who oppose vivisection, hunting,
> trapping, the fur trade, seal-clubbing, animal agriculture, and
> any other legal use of animals.>


"Under common law, an activity or purpose is only charitable
> when it provides a benefit to humans," the Canada Revenue Agency
> regulations assert. "As far back as the 19th century, the courts
> have stated that promoting the welfare of animals 'has for its
> object, not merely the protection of the animals themselves, but the
> advancement of morals and education among [people].' To be
> charitable, the benefit to humans must always take precedence over
> any benefit to animals. If a purpose or activity that promotes the
> welfare of animals harms humans, or has a real potential to cause
> significant harm to humans, it is likely not charitable.">

The Canada Revenue Agency interpretation of common law
> governing charities parallels the interpretation that the United
> Kingdom has applied since the 19th century to constrain the
> opposition of major animal charities to vivisection and fox hunting,
> in particular. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the Indian
> Revenue Agency, however, have taken a broader view of the same
> common law precedents, and have not imposed a test of whether
> activities benefiting animals benefit humans more.
> The Canada Revenue Agency draft regulations recognize that
> "Purposes that promote the welfare of animals may fall under the
> advancement of education," or qualify for nonprofit status by
> "promoting the moral or ethical development of the community,
> upholding the administration and enforcement of the law, protecting
> the environment, [and/or] promoting agriculture," but assert that
> "Any benefit or potential benefit to the welfare of animals must be
> balanced against any harm or potential harm to humans."
> "For example," the Canada Revenue Agency draft regulations
> state, "the courts have decided," in the 1947 case National
> Anti-Vivisection Society v. Inland Revenue Commissioners, "that
> seeking to abolish vivisection is not charitable. This is in part
> because, as the courts have put it, despite the suffering inflicted
> on animals, the 'immense and incalculable benefits which have
> resulted from vivisection,' and the 'positive and calamitous
> detriment of appalling magnitude' that would result from its
> abolition, outweigh any possible promotion of the moral and ethical
> development of the community.'"
> The Canada Revenue Agency draft regulations do not directly
> mention trapping and sealing, but include an example making clear
> that Canadian animal charities may not openly oppose them: "A
> charity might offer courses in how to minimize harm to local wildlife
> and ecosystems that tend to result from human activity. However, if
> the charity were to try to convince people that certain legal hunting
> practices were morally wrong and should be abolished, it would not
> be advancing education in the charitable sense."
>
> Slaughter allowed
>
> The Canada Revenue Agency draft regulations will prevent
> Canadian charities from opposing animal slaughter and consumption,
> but note that in a 1946 case, "The courts have recognized promoting
> 'the humane slaughtering of animals' for food as charitable. Such
> purposes would not try to prevent the animals from being processed
> for food, as permitted by animal welfare law, but would seek to
> minimize any pain or suffering felt by the animals."
> The U.S. Internal Revenue Service allows charities to engage
> in political activity to a limited extent, usually interpreted as
> spending less than 5% of their cumulative program budget to influence
> legislation over a three-year interval. This allows charities to
> either lobby for legislation or exercise political influence in
> election years, but limits their ability to do both without
> incorporating a separate not-tax-exempt subsidiary.
> In Canada, "Applicants will be denied registration if their
> purposes are to oppose or change or retain a law or policy of a
> government, or if their activities reveal that there is an unstated
> political purpose," a phrase which could apply to almost any subject
> of advocacy. Continue the Canada Revenue Agency draft regulations,
> "Examples of political, and therefore unacceptable, purposes for
> charities or applicants promoting the welfare of animals include: to
> pressure the federal, provincial, or territorial governments to ban
> or restrict a particular hunting practice or consumer product; to
> promote legislation to abolish the use of animals for scientific
> research or to ban euthanasia of animals," and "to strengthen the
> laws protecting wildlife."
>
> Already muted
>
> At the March 2011 ANIMAL PEOPLE edition deadline appartently
> no major Canadian animal charity had posted or published any
> criticism or statement of opposition to the new Canada Revenue Agency
> draft regulations, perhaps because of the chilling effect of past
> rulings depriving animal charities of tax exempt status.
> Neither had any international animal charity with a Canadian
> office spoken out against the new Canada Revenue Agency draft
> regulations in any evident way, including the World Society for the
> Protection of Animals, whose current board vice president, Dominic
> Bellemare of Montreal, has three times run unsuccessfully for
> Parliament as a candidate of the governing Conservative Party of
> Canada.
> Bellemare in 2008-2010 was WSPA board president. Articles
> published in the June and July/August 2008 editions of ANIMAL PEOPLE
> pointed out that Bellemare--a 19-year WSPA board member--has rarely
> if ever taken public positions on animal issues, has never
> individually and explicitly denounced the seal hunt and wearing fur,
> and was elected to the WSPA board after working for the Canadian
> Ministry for External Affairs, which then and now led Canadian
> governmental efforts to prevent the European Union from banning
> imports of seal pelts and trapped fur.
> The Ministry for External Affairs while Bellemare worked
> there was headed by former Canadian prime minister Joe Clark, a
> strong defender of sealing, trapping, and hunting. Bellemare
> campaigned in 1983 for Clark, against Brian Mulroney. Elected
> prime minister, Mulroney suspended the seal hunt in 1984. The hunt
> resumed in 1995, a year after Mulroney left office.
> Bellemare and Clark both told ANIMAL PEOPLE that Bellemare
> did not work on animal issues while working for the Ministry of
> External Affairs, but neither would say what Bellemare did work on.
>
> Revocations
>
> The Canada Revenue Agency began actively revoking tax-exempt
> status of animal and environmental charities in the early 1990s. In
> 1992 the agency, then called Revenue Canada, revoked the charitable
> status of the Animal Defence League of Canada, and in 1999 it
> revoked the nonprofit status of the Fur-Bearers Protection
> Association, both for allegedly spending too much money on
> "political" activity.
> "Revenue Canada's threat of canceling any group's charitable
> status if they criticize the fur industry has effectively silenced
> all of the big groups in eastern Canada. They are now afraid to
> speak out," Fur-Bearers cofounder George Clements charged in an
> April 2003 letter to ANIMAL PEOPLE.
> In December 2001 the CBC public affairs program Disclosure
> reported that the Canada Revenue Agency routinely targeted charities
> for audits after they were denounced by Charity Watch, whose
> president, George Barkhouse, also headed online entities called
> Hunt Action Canada and Hunt Action U.S. Among the charities audited
> were the Schad Foundation, which helped to halt spring bear hunting
> in Ontario and British Columbia; the Sierra Club of Canada; the
> Federation of Ontario Naturalists; WSPA; the Toronto Wildlife
> Centre; Ecotrust Canada; and the David Suzuki Foundation.
> --Merritt Clifton
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> \ The Canada Revenue Agency will accept comment on the new
> draft regulations for animal charities until March 31, 2011, c/o
> <consultation-policy-politique@cra-arc.gc.ca>; fax 613-948-1320; or
> Charities Directorate, Canada Revenue Agency, Ottawa, Ontario K1A
> 0L5, Canada.
>
>
>
> --
> Merritt Clifton
> Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE
> P.O. Box 960
> Clinton, WA 98236
>
> Telephone: 360-579-2505
> Cell: 360-969-0450
> Fax: 360-579-2575
> E-mail: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
> Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

[animo-aequoanimo 0]

Selon le communiqué c'est en février que cela aurait été publié, Do.