Commentary
When Parliament’s finance committee slipped Recommendation 430 into its 2025 pre-budget report, few noticed. Yet the clause proposing to delete “advancement of religion” from Canada’s definition of charity could transform the country’s social landscape. If adopted, every church, synagogue, mosque, and temple would be taxed like a business and lose its authority to issue receipts to donors.
Canada’s churches are already struggling with shrinking congregations, aging volunteers, and rising costs. To remove their tax exemption now would be a mortal blow. It would also sever one of the oldest links between faith and public welfare—one that predates the welfare state itself….