Canadian tax subsidies to Israel likely total billions

How many registered Canadian charities are assisting an apartheid state commit a holocaust? How much money are they raising? And what percentage of these funds are taxpayers covering?

It’s difficult to answer these questions but it’s almost certainly more than I and other critics have been stating.

“Over 200 registered Canadian charities finance projects in Israel”, I wrote eight months ago in a piece headlined “Time to fix Canada’s anti-Palestinian tax code”. “It’s difficult to quantify exactly how much they funnel to a country with a GDP per capita equal to Canada’s, but Just Peace Advocates research has put it at around a quarter billion dollars annually. A third of that sum would be covered by taxpayers through charitable write-offs.”

The statistic of 200 groups raising a quarter billion dollars a year is based on the amounts reported on charities’ T2 fillings. That doesn’t include tax-receipted donations subsidizing Israeli universities, which fall under a different filing category. Yet Canadian Friends of Tel-Aviv University, Canadian Friends of the University of Haifa, Canadian Friends of Hebrew University, Canadian Friends of Ben-Gurion University, Canadian Friends of Bar Ilan University, Weizmann Canada and Technion Canada help raise money for universities that collaborate with Israel’s military. And the sums raised are astounding. In December Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams gave $135 million ($US 100 million) to Ben-Gurion University at a Canadian Friends of Ben-Gurion University gala. According to the 2021 report Who Gives and Who Gets: The Beneficiaries of Private Foundation Philanthropy, the single top recipient of private Canadian foundations between 2014 and 2018 was Israel’s Technion, which received $89 million. By my calculation, Canadians raised half a billion dollars for Israeli universities over the past decade.

If you include the funds to universities, the total to Israel tops $300 million a year. But there’s more. There are millions of dollars in donations that are listed as going to the US and eastern Europe that ultimately go to Israel. More significantly, dozens, probably hundreds, of registered charities assist Israel in other ways. Tens of millions of dollars a year in tax receipts are granted to donors or parents of a couple dozen private Jewish schools promoting Israel (as well as tens of millions of dollars in direct grants). The Zionist indoctrination is so intense that a quarter of the students at one Toronto school reportedly join the Israeli military after graduation.

In a recent Canadian Jewish News interview about the Canada Revenue Agency revoking the Jewish National Fund’s charitable status, charity law expert Mark Blumberg claims there are a thousand “Jewish charities” in Canada. While many likely have little to do with Israel, it’s safe to assume that most include an Israel element. According to Blumberg, the 1,000 registered “Jewish charities” have a whopping $12 billion in assets. Supposed to donate, not accumulate assets, these groups must be raising two or three billion dollars a year.

Just how much of the money supporting Israel are all Canadians covering?

When I began discussing the JNF’s charitable status 15 years ago I thought maybe a quarter of its budget was subsidized by taxpayers. Over the years I’ve realized that figure underestimates the scope of the subsidy, which is likely more than a third and, for some charities, far greater. In the Canadian Jewish News interview Blumberg suggests up to “90%” of wealthy people’s donations are subsidized. He tells the interviewer, “If you or I donate to charity, we’re probably getting 50 cents on a dollar but there’s a lot of wealthy people getting 80 or 90 cents on the dollar when they donate. What that means is their money is going to Israel, for very good stuff in Israel, but it’s only 10 cents their money 90 percent [is] federal and provincial money.”

There are various ways that skilled accountants help the wealthy maximize their deductions. Among other financial tricks, the ultra-wealthy create foundations and purchase “resource-based flow-through shares”, which have added charitable tax credit benefits.

To put the 80% or 90% figure into practical perspective, billionaire power couple Gerry Schwartz and Heather Reisman have given nearly $200 million to support non-Israelis joining an occupation force brutalizing Palestinians. In 2005 Reisman and Schwartz established the HESEG Foundation for Lone Soldiers, which supports Torontonians, New Yorkers and other non-Israelis (Lone Soldiers) who join the Israel military. Have all Canadians provided a tax write-off of 90% to Reisman and Schwartz’s funding for a charity violating CRA rules by assisting a foreign military and possibly Canada’s Foreign Enlistment Act? If so, that would mean Canadian taxpayers gave $180 million while Reisman and Schwartz were out of pocket only $20 million.

Whatever the actual numbers, it’s imperative to push back against the staggering sums of public funds subsidizing Israel and sustaining the apartheid lobby in Canada. The Canada Revenue Agency needs to be pressed to revoke the charitable status of groups contravening the rules by assisting West Bank colonies, racist organizations and the Israeli military.

On September 5, International Day of Charity, join one of the 20 protests across the country telling the CRA that not one cent of taxpayer funds should be subsidizing genocide.

Support Yves’ work. Donate Now.