For decades, we viewed the Canada Revenue Agency as a neutral referee – a boring, grey-suited accountant interested only in your receipts. But since October 7th, that accountant has traded the whistle for brass knuckles. We are witnessing a Regulatory Red Wedding: a high-velocity purge of Jewish and non-Jewish charities supportive of Jewish indigeneity at a speed that should alarm every taxpayer in Canada.
Jon Liedtke joins Gene Valaitis on 610 CKTB to break down the ‘math of unfairness’ currently hollowing out the charitable sector. From the $2.5 million ‘Jeopardy Order’ against the Ne’eman Foundation to the PIPSC union’s public activism, Liedtke argues that the Rule of Law is being traded for a ‘Trial by Timeline.’
In this segment, we discuss:
- The 25x Ratio: Why Jewish and non-Jewish charities supportive of Jewish indigeneity are being revoked at twenty-five times the rate of any other sector.
- The Niagara Church Stat: Why the CRA’s current trajectory would mean shuttering hundreds, if not thousands, of other religious charities.
- The Digital Mob: How the CRA admitted that 11,000 automated activist letters are now influencing national tax policy.
“In Canada today, you’re ‘Guilty until proven dead.’ If the taxman can become a political firing squad for one group today, nobody is safe tomorrow.”
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Gene Valaitis: “Hey, good morning, Jon. How are you, buddy?”
Jon Liedtke: “Good morning, Gene. I wouldn’t say that I broke this one. I saw this in the National Post. I decided to dig a little bit deeper into it, though.”
Gene Valaitis: “Okay. Yeah. Well, that’s good. You know, antisemitism is at an all-time high in Canada. That’s the political way of saying Jew-hate is hitting an all-time high in Canada. And you’ve got a story here about the CRA. Now, when I think of the Canadian Revenue Agency, I think of it as boring, slow-moving, nobody answers their phone. But you’re saying it’s undergone a radical shift since the terrible events of October 7th. So, what’s exactly happening with what they call the Charities Directorate?”
Jon Liedtke: “Yeah, these are bean counters with brass knuckles right now, Gene. What we have seen is eight major Jewish organizations wiped out in the last 18 months. This is not an audit; it is a regulatory red wedding. The JNF, the Ne’eman, Mazon, Masorti, Herut, CZCA, and CCP, and it all started with Beth Oloth. That was patient zero for this new legal contagion. Since October the 7th, there has been some kind of a change, it seems, within the CRA, and it’s not just a policy change; it’s administrative attrition. We’re seeing a high-velocity purge of Jewish organizations and charities at a speed that would make a Silicon Valley startup blush, quite frankly. And there’s a few accusations. One, they’re saying that some of these organizations are engaging in foreign military support. That’s a bunk argument. We’re talking about playgrounds and fitness areas that are supporting people who are in the military and their families. We’re not talking about military support. And the fact of the matter is, the CRA has signed off on this for the past six decades. To suddenly start calling playgrounds military infrastructure in 2024, it’s clear that something changed. It was October the 7th.”
Gene Valaitis: “Wow.”
Jon Liedtke: “They also say that there is a lack of direction and control of these funds. This is a technical ‘gotcha’. Every international charity uses local partners on the ground to distribute aid. But the CRA is only pulling out the microscope for Jewish organizations supportive of Jews living in their indigenous lands. If we applied this standard across the board, the entire Canadian charity sector would be dead by noon, Gene.”
Gene Valaitis: “Wow. Now, are these isolated cases, or is this… well, I’m trying to play devil’s advocate here. So, are they isolated cases, or is this a bigger statistical trend?”
Jon Liedtke: “Oh, this is a statistical hit job, Gene. In 2025, a charity in support of Jews living in their indigenous lands was 25 times more likely to be revoked than any other. And the people in the peninsula need to understand the math here, Gene. If the CRA applied this administrative attrition to your listeners locally, right there in Niagara, that is the equivalent of like 500 charities being shut down in the last 18 months, just to put it in a per capita basis. They wouldn’t dream of doing that to St. Catharines. So why are they doing it to the Jews? These are technical rules being used as a political firing squad. They decided to hit the turbo button on this. And if they decided to treat the Hope Center, Community Care, or Project Share the way that they have these eight organizations, your entire social service sector would collapse. We don’t execute our local pillars over a missing receipt, but that’s what’s happening right now in Ottawa.”
Gene Valaitis: “Hmm. You know, some might suggest that the Canada Revenue Agency is just enforcing the rules. So why do you believe this is being triggered by outside pressure, the digital mob, etc., on and on?”
Jon Liedtke: “Because they admitted it! They said it. They said that they’ve received 11,000 activist letters from groups that are engaged in anti-Israel bias. They’ve outsourced their national tax policy to a digital mob. They influence these audits. They’re taking their orders from the social media comments section instead of the Tax Act, Gene. And since when did the taxman start taking his marching orders from the trolls? In Canada, your charitable status shouldn’t depend, quite frankly, on how many dislikes you get from a professional outrage machine on the web. We’ve replaced the rule of law with trial by timeline, and if the mob trends it, it seems the CRA is going to end it.”
Gene Valaitis: “Hmm. Now, are we talking about the actual auditors themselves at the CRA? I mean, is there ever any evidence that these are the people doing the work and perhaps are not neutral, so they have an anti-Jewish bias?”
Jon Liedtke: “Just go onto the Public Service of Canada’s—that’s the union, the Professional Institute of Public Service of Canada’s—Facebook page. The second that the JNF was wiped out by the CRA, the union was on social media celebrating it with political slogans like saying that organizations can’t get engaged in, quote, ‘genocide’. The Federal Court of Appeal has already called this bias credible. Objectivity seems to be dead. They’ve traded their spreadsheets for picket signs. When the ref is wearing the other team’s jersey, the game is rigged.”
Gene Valaitis: “Yikes. When you were telling me about this yesterday, you kept talking about something called a jeopardy order, a jeopardy order. Now, what’s a jeopardy order? Because you made it… you made it sound when we were talking about this yesterday that it was some sort of a nuclear option.”
Jon Liedtke: “Oh, it absolutely is the nuclear option. In the Ne’eman Foundation’s case, they used the jeopardy order to freeze $2.5 million before the charity even finished its legal appeal. This is guilty until proven dead. They’re bankrupting these organizations so that they’re not even able to hire lawyers to be able to fight back. If they can do it today, they can do it to any group tomorrow. They’ve replaced due process with financial handcuffs. You don’t get a day in court if you’ve had your money seized before the trial even starts.”
Gene Valaitis: “Yeah. Now, I’m not Jewish. I’m Anglican, and I barely go to church. Michael Coren would be so upset with me. His church is right around the corner from where I live. He keeps saying, ‘Didn’t see on Sunday, didn’t see on Sunday.’ But you know what? Sue-Ann Levy has already declared me… I’m an honorary Jew. And why should somebody who’s not Jewish or part of the Zionist community, why should they care about this? I mean, what’s the broader rule of law here that is being risked?”
Jon Liedtke: “Well, the real risk here is that if they’re going to be able to do this to the Jews today, they’ll be able to do this to your charity tomorrow. This isn’t how we should be applying standards. I don’t want the tax agency to be involved in taking and fielding their marching orders from a digital mob. I want them to be doing audits based on what their demands comply… I also don’t like the idea of their union or even them to a certain extent engaging in—well, exactly, them to a direct extent—engaging in foreign policy. They’re not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We have a Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a reason. The tax auditor should be looking at numbers, dollars, and cents, full stop. This is beyond their mandate. What we need here is to get a Senate Finance Committee investigation into… to step in and get this map and fairness to be ended.”
Gene Valaitis: “Well, thankfully the toothpaste is out of the tube, as they say. So, I mean, you advocate for Jews’ groups right across Canada. So, are these charities hitting back? Is there going to be any repercussions? Final question.”
Jon Liedtke: “Oh, yeah, you know, there’s appeals right now. They’re all ongoing, and it’s not like this has completely stopped the entire Canadian Jewish charitable sector. It just threw a wrench into it. And it’s just unfortunate because, again, it goes to what we’ve discussed before, Gene, many times. Following October the 7th, the worst attack on Jews, the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, we have seen the largest increases of antisemitism, and I would argue that this is just institutionalized governmental antisemitism, and it needs to be netted out. This can’t be what our government stands for, this can’t be what our country stands for, but increasingly it seems as if we’re being more and more permissive to it, whether it’s on our streets or being administered by our tax auditors. So, we need to get to a bottom of this because, again, if it starts with the Jews, it’ll come for you.”
Gene Valaitis: “Yeah. Thanks for making us aware of this. I always appreciate your stories when you come on. Have a great day, and you’ll be back with us on Tuesday.”
Jon Liedtke: “Absolutely. Thanks, Gene.”
Gene Valaitis: “All right. There he goes. Storyteller Jon Liedtke. He finds the greatest stories. Some are like this, some are like right out in left field. And after you listen to Jon, they always seem to make sense. So, we love having that voice on the show.”
This aired on 610 CKTB
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