Documents filed by A4C give a look at the balance sheet of one of Canada’s most vocal and active Christian Nationalist and anti-2SLGBTQ+ organizations.
Peter Smith
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Action4Canada Director Tanya Gaw during a protest in 2021. Source: YouTube
Documents filed with the federal government by Action4Canada – one of the country’s most active Christian Nationalist organizations with a history of Islamophobic, conspiratorial, and anti-2SLGBTQ+ activism – indicate the group is pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to finance its advocacy campaigns across the country.
Posted online by a BC-based activist through a publicly viewable Google folder, the documents titled “Balance Sheet,” “General Ledger,” and “Profit and Loss” are all available to the public via the Corporations Canada website.
Money is the fuel behind the hate. Check out the latest financial statements from Action4Canada at the link. Teaser in the image. Balance sheet, P&L, and general ledger showing deposits and disbursements. Imagine if these $s were actually used for good?https://t.co/Eo90dFlyK6 pic.twitter.com/MfnV21ZXf1
— Wilbur Turner 🇺🇦🇨🇦🌈 (@62Takes) February 18, 2023
Overall, between August 16, 2021, to August 15, 2022, Action4Canada reported pulling in a total income of $790,446.34.
The funds come from two sources, according to the filings, dues and donations. Chapter dues – collected from the membership of numerous local branches – account for only $59,724.13 or a little over 7.5 per cent of the total income. Donations make up the bulk of A4C’s cash flow, with a listed total of $730,722.21, according to A4C’s “Profit and Loss” section.
The same page indicates that A4C spent $201,681.71 on legal expenses. The group filed a highly publicized 391-page civil claim against numerous parties over COVID health restrictions and mandates including numerous public health officials, the Province of BC, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a winding document that includes citations of laws outside of Canada and allegations of crimes against humanity.
In his decision on a motion to strike the claim, Justice Alan Ross categorized the filing from lawyer Rocco Galati as “bad beyond argument.” The claim was also deemed far too long to be responded to and was struck in its entirety. A4C does have the opportunity to refile and has stated publicly they intend to do so.
Other major expenses include $65,981.21 on advertising and resource materials, $62,500 on professional and administrative services, 71,465.58 on tech support, and more.
Overall, A4C’s expenses totalled $607,044.59, leaving a reported $182,999.17 in profit.
The total reported donations by A4C to other organizations for 2022 add up to $32,827. These include $30,000 to a Toronto-based charity One Free World International (OFWI), $2,000 for the ARK Village Network (which appears to be another BC-based organization, according to its website and corporate registry), $500 for Vaccine Choice Canada, and other small donations, including one marked only as “For Katie (?)” of around $200.
An additional $15,134.83 was spent on “Chapter Start-Up Rally Supplies.” Action4Canada currently lists 97 total chapters on its website, which all include unique A4C email addresses as a point of contact. The documents filed by A4C show that in August, the group indicated 32 of these chapters had float money available to them from the A4C budget. This includes chapters in Calgary, Medicine Hat, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Winnipeg. There are no archives of the group’s website from the end of the latest reporting period, August 2022, but in October 2022, A4C was listing 132 chapters in total.
Rising from a bubbling ocean of protest groups during the COVID and anti-health mandate street movements, A4C distinguished itself by providing printable Notices of Liability, which it encouraged members to deliver to public officials and law enforcement, claiming it provided a type of legal protection and opens up future avenues of legal recourse against a variety of levels of government.
A4C incorporated as a not-for-profit in August 2019, and is led by Tanya Gaw, who appears in most of the video updates and live streams regularly released online. Valerie Thomas and Mariah Elsie Fehr are also listed as directors. Thomas, now known as Valerie Price, is a director of Act! For Canada, an older advocacy organization determined to “protect” Canada’s national security and democracy from “threats posed by Islamism.” After Price and Gaw founded Action4Canada together it has led or been a part of numerous protests and actions across Canada.
Public disclosure by A4C from previous years demonstrates just how much the organization is growing over time. When reporting its first year’s income in August 2020, A4C submitted a total of $18,334.34. By August 2021, that number had climbed to $497,558.34, reported purely as monetary donations, according to the organization’s filing with Corporations Canada. That same year, A4C reports spending $225,000 on “legal expenses.” This is the highest total expense reported for this period, followed distantly by website maintenance costs of $21,575.31.
While A4C’s website lists a number of concerns, ranging from 5G cellular technology to Islam to the concept of a “plandemic,” most of its current activity appears dedicated to delegating at school board meetings and expressing concerns over books they deem to be “pornographic” being available in schools. Nationally, chapters of Action4Canada have become regular attendees of protests outside of family-friendly drag events and more.
The group has also filed police complaints alleging “pornographic” material in books available to schoolchildren, prompting the RCMP in Chilliwack, BC to issue a statement last month confirming that the materials do not meet the legal definition of child pornography.
School District 75 in Mission, BC, recently banned all delegates from Action4Canada from its meetings, citing a “commitment to inclusivity and upholding the values of the BC Human Rights Code and ensuring orderly meetings of the board.”
The latest financial documents have been available publicly on Corporations Canada for a short while, Wilbur Turner, the chair and founder of Advocacy Canada, requested them and posted the material online via an open-access Google Drive.
Turner took notice of Action4Canada when he encountered the Kelowna chapter organizing in his community.
“We have a local person in Kelowna who is very active targeting school boards and the LGBTQ community,” he told the Canadian Anti-Hate Network over the phone.
Concerned about A4C’s goal of weaving a regressive interpretation of Christianity into Canada’s governance, Turner advocates against the message he sees them spreading in his community.
“They’re a Christian Nationalist organization,” he said, “with a real need to get people elected. If they do that it will completely erase support for LGBTQ communities and people.”
Requests for comment sent to Tanya Gaw through Action4Canada and Valerie Price did not receive a response by the time of publication.
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