Tracking Federal Funding Through Layers (and Layers) of Non-Profits

How significant Canadian government funding found its way into Hamas hands

This won’t be the first time I’ve written about how complicated things can get when you try to follow government funding through nested layers of NGOs, charities, and other governments. But every attempt to pull back the curtain helps add a bit more clarity.

Take a deep breath, this one’s going to get interesting. Like many stories these days, it ends in Gaza. But the trick is getting there.

There’s ample evidence that Islamic Relief Canada (IRC) engages in relief work in many countries with large Islamic populations - including through direct and ongoing collaboration with Global Affairs Canada. Their official mandate scope covers “humanitarian and development programs in over 30 countries”.

IRC has been registered as a charity in Canada since 2006. Besides $93 million in direct donations in 2023, the charity also received $10 million in donations from other charities and $2.3 million from the government, largely in the form of grants.

Which other charities donated to IRC? In 2023, IRC got nearly $900,000 from Myriad Canada Foundation. But their largest donation (worth more than $7 million) came from Humanitarian Coalition, which itself has received tens of millions of dollars in federal grants over the years and reported that 87 percent of their total funding ($37 million) came from the government in just 2023.

Some of that money took the form of matching donations for aid projects in Gaza. Here’s how Humanitarian Coalition’s website puts it:

"Canadians respond generously to the humanitarian needs in Gaza. From October 23 to November 12, 2023, eligible donations made to the Humanitarian Coalition and our members were matched by the Government of Canada."

So the federal government has funded IRC both directly, and indirectly through Humanitarian Coalition. Charitable tax deductions provided even more indirect funding through both of those organizations and through organizations like Myriad Canada Foundation. Total funding of all types easily tops tens of millions of dollars a year.

Here’s a visual to give you just a taste of what all the money flow looks like:

What do we know about IRC? According to their website, IRC identifies their “primary implementing partner” as Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW).

In 2021, Joe Biden’s State Department “cut ties” with IRW and initiated a full review of the organization, claiming that IRW spreads antisemitism. As NGO Monitor reports, the Israeli government outlawed IRW in 2014, accusing them of funneling funds to Hamas.

Remember Care Canada’s box on that graphic just above? Besides indirect transfers of public money from government-supported charities like World Vision Canada, Care Canada gets most of their funding directly from the government. In 2023, that came to $62 million, or 85 percent of their total income.

Well it seems Care Canada has funded at least three NGOs associated with the Canadian government-designated terrorist organization, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

And the government-funded Humanitarian Coalition also supports World Vision Canada - giving them more than $9 million in 2023. In 2022, World Vision’s manager of operations in Gaza (Mohammad El-Halabi) was convicted in Israel on charges that included “illegal use of property for terror purposes, providing information to the enemy, illegal military training, and possession of weapons and ammunition”. Here’s a translation of a court statement:

“The defendant took an active and significant part in the activities of Hamas and assisted Hamas over the years in a variety of ways, including transferring monies and equipment that he knew would be used to fund terrorism and assisting terrorists, as detailed in the indictment. The defendant even participated in military actions such as marking exit points for tunnel openings on the Israeli side of the Erez Crossing…”

The original charges at least partly resulted from a World Vision employee who communicated suspicions about El-Halabi’s Hamas ties to World Vision. World Vision fired the whistleblower who was subsequently caught and interrogated by Hamas.

So an unknown but significant amount of federal government money directed to Islamic Relief Canada, Humanitarian Coalition, Care Canada, and World Vision Canada (among others) found its way to Hamas. The same Hamas that murdered more than a thousand Israel civilians, rained thousands of rockets indiscriminately on Israeli communities, and brought untold death and devastation to their own people.

Tracking how public funds are spent should be a core function of responsible governments. If a government doesn’t have the competence to understand their programs’ true impact - or if, due to the built-in complexity of the system, oversight is impossible - then perhaps the current system isn’t an appropriate use of taxpayers’ resources.