Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm here today to share with you the implications of the findings of my master's thesis. I interviewed 16 leaders of charities of various sizes in five sectors and five provinces and also five charity experts. The leaders spoke, most on condition of anonymi

Finance committee  I attempted to get some information from them, but CRA has a lot of its policies and approaches on its website as it stated. I spoke to 16 charity leaders and five charity experts, and only eight of them were being audited or had similar experiences with CRA.

Finance committee  Is there a question in that, sir?

Finance committee  I'm glad you asked that. No, that's not what I'm suggesting at all. What I found from talking to the charities, to a person, is that the leaders emphasized that they understand the need for audits. Many of the organizations have been through multiple audits in the past. The diff

Finance committee  I audited from five different sectors in five different provinces, sir, and absolutely. I won't say who I audited. Part of my ethics process was that I not say that. The agreement with the charity leaders was that I wouldn't identify them or say anything that would lead directly

Finance committee  I'd like to address anonymity, actually.

Finance committee  Absolutely. It's hard to imagine that anybody would disagree with that. You keep referring to the value of the sector, which is a financial question. These are not financial audits. Again, sir, they're political activity audits, which are—

Finance committee  I found that three major sectors are being audited: environmental organizations that work on energy issues, particularly around the oil sands and pipelines, and exports off the coast; secondly, international development and human rights organizations; and the third were charities

Finance committee  On that first one, the pre-2012 program had a dimension of auditing for political activities, but it was mainly random. When an issue came forward, they addressed it. I think another one is the purposes. There's a need to look at purposes. Canada has three charitable purposes. W

Finance committee  I don't understand why you would say that, “anecdotal evidence”. I followed a process that's considered an excellent process in qualitative research. I went through all of the steps—

Finance committee  I'm confused by your suggestion—

Finance committee  Sure. I have the evidence of what I heard from the leaders and the experts condensed, and also looking at the literature—

Finance committee  No, it is absolutely not anecdotal evidence. It's based on people's experience.

Finance committee  That's a very strange question, sir, I think.

Finance committee  Some of the charities I spoke to were among, I would say, many Canadians' favourite charities, small and large, in different sectors, and in different provinces.