The Frontier Centre for Public Policy has released a report that warns against the Standing Committee on Finance’s proposed changes to Canada’s Income Tax Act that would see religious organizations lose their charitable status.

Frontier Centre Senior Fellow Pierre Gilbert says there would be many negative consequences if the changes were to go through and adds that people could lose their trust in the government.

“They would lose a certain number of tax exemptions, which give them certain benefits. The other problem is that they would lose the ability to issue tax deductions for donations. And the third problem is, I’m pretty convinced that if the government revokes charitable status for these organizations, that cities and towns would probably follow suit.”

“We’ve had the benefits of charitable status since the founding of our country. So, for governments all of a sudden to decide that churches and religious organizations don’t benefit from that anymore from one day to the next, I think what that does is it continues to undermine the confidence that people have in their government.”

Gilbert says that protecting religion by allowing it to maintain charitable status is especially important in a secular society.

“While our secular society basically says that humans have no transcendent purpose or meaning, I would say that it’s very important to maintain institutions that communicate the notion of being made in the image of god, the notion of having purpose or meaning beyond what we simply can’t see.”

Gilbert adds that religious organizations should advocate for themselves and demonstrate their value to politicians.