Originally “exclusive” to Mondoweiss.
April 21, 2026
By: Dr. Miles Howe
An Access to Information request to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) confirms that between 2003 – 2023 the Jewish National Fund of Canada systematically omitted having received over one hundred million dollars CDN in donations from some of Canada’s most well-heeled philanthropists.
The data set in hand only stretches between 2003-2023, meaning that the actual amount of unreported revenue may precede modern-day, electronic, archiving practices at the Canada Revenue Agency. But the current, running, total of non-reported revenue from JNF Canada currently stands at over $101 million CDN. Troublingly, no reference to this missing revenue was made in the most recent CRA audit of JNF Canada’s operations. Nor do publicly available independent audits of JNF Canada’s financial statements make mention of any anomalous accounting arrangement that would explain omitting having reported the missing $101 million. The money, for all intents and purposes, seems to have simply disappeared.
Uncovering this missing money took place by happenstance, as a component of a wider project meant to track the flows of revenue between several recently revoked Canadian charities that claimed to move money to Israel, of which JNF Canada was but one. An aspect of this broader project, which you can read about in more summary detail here, was to determine the origin of the sources of these donations and to draw linkages between familial and corporate fortunes, making use of the Canadian charitable sector to move illicit funds to Israel.
From an investigative standpoint, the movement of money between Canadian charities is required to leave a paper trail. Déborah Cléry, Media Relations Officer for the CRA, confirmed to Mondoweiss that Canadian charities, like JNF Canada, “must” disclose all money received from other Canadian charities in a unique line on their yearly tax returns (Line 4510). Conversely, Canadian charities donating to other Canadian charities must disclose these donations, by name and dollar amount, in the T1236 Form of their yearly tax returns. As such, the total amount disclosed by the receiving charity on Line 4510 must equal all money reported as having been donated by other Canadian charities in their respective T1236 Forms. If the two totals don’t add up, whatever algorithmics that guide CRA enforcement and oversight protocols over the Canadian charitable sector should theoretically spring into action and flag the return for regulatory scrutiny. This, apparently, is not what happened in the case of JNF Canada. For at least 21 years.
The obvious problem with JNF Canada’s tax returns is that, since 2003, it has never reported a single dollar as having been received from other Canadian charities. For 21 years, JNF Canada’s Line 4510, in other words, has always read ‘zero’. Its total revenue, which during this time period was claimed as over $241 million CDN, is always disclosed as having originated from receipted and non-receipted individual donations. What JNF Canada is saying here is that its revenue uniquely stems from private Canadian citizens who either request a tax-deductible receipt for their donations (worth upwards of 50% of the donated principle) or not. It is, in essence, declaring that, between 2003-2023, it never received a cent from another Canadian charity.
Within the 2003-2023 timeframe, other Canadian charities, however, have disclosed making significant donations to JNF Canada in their respective T1236 Forms, some ranging into the tens of millions of dollars CDN. By the CRA’s own accounting, and as disclosed to me in their response to my Access request, the total value of donations that other Canadian charities claimed to have made to JNF Canada is the missing $101 million CDN – and potentially counting.
As the graphic below describes, in certain years—2015 in particular—the actual amount that JNF Canada received in donations from other Canadian charities (over $26.2 million CDN) eclipsed the $15.3 million CDN that JNF Canada claimed as total revenue for the entire year.
TABLE 1. JNF Canada: Total Revenue Claimed vs. Revenue Claimed from Other Canadian Charities vs. Actual Revenue Received by JNF Canada from other Canadian Charities (2003-2023)
| Year | Total Revenue Claimed | Revenue Claimed from Other Canadian Charities | Actual Revenue Received from Other Canadian Charities |
| 2003 | $5,823,111.00 | $0.00 | $737,776.00 |
| 2004 | $7,564,700.00 | $0.00 | $709,335.00 |
| 2005 | $8,432,342.00 | $0.00 | $382,146.00 |
| 2006 | $8,929,274.00 | $0.00 | $543,063.00 |
| 2007 | $7,640,487.00 | $0.00 | $887,432.00 |
| 2008 | $4,735,936.00 | $0.00 | $1,018,718.00 |
| 2009 | $7,674,758.00 | $0.00 | $1,536,679.00 |
| 2010 | $12,785,095.00 | $0.00 | $1,598,951.00 |
| 2011 | $9,405,273.00 | $0.00 | $1,280,055.00 |
| 2012 | $12,487,453.00 | $0.00 | $1,268,346.00 |
| 2013 | $12,313,642.00 | $0.00 | $2,732,029.00 |
| 2014 | $29,181,589.00 | $0.00 | $21,027,305.00 |
| 2015 | $15,386,685.00 | $0.00 | $26,207,130.00 |
| 2016 | $29,064,915.00 | $0.00 | $16,484,050.00 |
| 2017 | $13,797,341.00 | $0.00 | $3,460,374.00 |
| 2018 | $12,840,803.00 | $0.00 | $2,440,204.00 |
| 2019 | $12,227,750.00 | $0.00 | $2,214,410.00 |
| 2020 | $8,282,388.00 | $0.00 | $3,060,009.00 |
| 2021 | $10,488,671.00 | $0.00 | $3,346,726.00 |
| 2022 | $12,628,958.00 | $0.00 | $4,650,712.00 |
| 2023 | ? | ? | $5,947,768.00 |
| TOTAL | $241,691,171.00 | $0.00 | $101,533,218.00 |
The disappearance of $101 million CDN raises numerous questions.
First, can the public be plausibly expected to trust anything that JNF Canada has disclosed in its tax returns? If this $101 million CDN has simply not been reported, then what component of JNF Canada’s tax returns is real? In the same vein, is the public expected to believe that JNF Canada’s total revenue between 2003-2023 really was $241 million CDN, and if so, does this include the undeclared $101 million CDN? Or is the disappeared $101 million CDN something else, and should it then be added to JNF Canada’s declared total revenue, for a total in excess of $343 million CDN? One might argue that this isn’t the type of guesswork that the general public should be expected to undertake. Nor is it the type of confusion that benefits the broader Canadian philanthropic sector, whose overall functionality relies largely upon donor trust.
Once JNF Canada’s actual, total, revenue is considered in this light, the rest of its charitable disclosures arguably fall like a string of suspicious dominoes. For example, between 2018-2022, JNF Canada self-reported having sent over $21 million CDN to Keren Kayemeth Leisrael (KKL), an organization whose operations are baked into Israeli law and whose state-expanding efforts are steeped in findings of cronyism, anti-Arab red-lining within Israel proper, greenwashing and Palestinian erasure, and bankrolling illegal settlement expansions into the occupied West Bank. In a tepid about-face against an overall acquiescence to the Zionist expansionism that actively makes use of the Canadian charitable sector, the CRA itself, in its final audit of JNF Canada, made mention of the lack of demonstrable direction and control that the charity had over the funding it administered to the KKL. But the CRA’s audit appears to have taken at face value that JNF Canada’s books themselves were balanced. If JNF Canada can seemingly make $101 million CDN in charity-derived revenue disappear, can one be expected to take at face value whatever claims the organization has made about what happened to tens of millions CDN in expenses once they left Canada, bound for the KKL?
The JNF Canada did not respond to a request for comment when contacted for this article.
This cloud of doubt, I would argue, casts a secondary shadow upon JNF Canada’s stable of big-time donors and demands a further, in-depth, accounting. For example, a quick glance back at Table 1 suggests that not all of JNF Canada’s fiscal years were of equal financial relevance. Between 2014-2016, for example, revenue received by JNF Canada from other Canadian charities skyrocketed to amounts never seen before, or seen again; inter-charity financial movement within this three-year period accounted for almost $64 million CDN of the $101 million CDN in undeclared revenue. More curiously, about three-quarters of the financial activity during this three-year flourish can be traced back to a handful of one-time donations that were never repeated.
Representing some of the largest one-time donations that JNF Canada had ever received, in 2014, the Joseph Lebovic Charitable Foundation donated over six million dollars CDN, while the Dr. Wolf Lebovic Charitable Foundation, which both share the same post office box address, donated close to ten million dollars CDN. In 2015, the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba donated nearly twenty million dollars CDN, while in 2016, the Dr. Wolf Lebovic Foundation made another ten million CDN donation of a gift-in-kind. Given that these donations never even took place, according to JNF Canada’s tax returns, there’s little hope in understanding what exactly was done with the money.
Drilling down deeper, Table 2 represents a list of donors who, when their total donations are aggregated between 2003-2023, donated over $250,000 to JNF Canada. Some of the names may be familiar to readers. The Mizrachi Organization of Canada, which donated over $2.8 million CDN to JNF Canada, annually moves millions in Canadian donations to dozens of war crimes-complicit Israeli recipients, all with the knowledge and tacit approval of the CRA and Canadian Parliament. The Asper Foundation, avowedly Zionist and tied to the sizable remnants of the Asper media fortune, bankrolls Israel’s would-be “digital army” in Canada. The Azrieli Foundation, another big giver to JNF Canada, is tied to Israeli real estate conglomerate ‘The Azrieli Group’ and allegedly derives profit from assets in the occupied Palestinian territory. Signalling the deference paid to Zionism within the wider Canadian Jewish community, many of Canada’s network of foundations and federations – ostensibly tied to redistributive and supportive efforts within the broader Canadian community – also made JNF Canada’s ‘top donors’ list.
TABLE 2. All aggregated donations to JNF Canada claimed ($250,000+) by other Canadian charities, 2003-2023.
| Amount | Legal Name |
| $22,245,946.00 | THE JEWISH FOUNDATION OF MANITOBA |
| $20,433,736.00 | THE DR. WOLF LEBOVIC CHARITABLE FOUNDATION |
| $8,638,775.00 | THE JOSEPH LEBOVIC CHARITABLE FOUNDATION |
| $8,333,903.00 | Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal / La Fondation Communautaire Juive de Montréal |
| $3,702,896.00 | THE ASPER FOUNDATION |
| $2,825,046.00 | Mizrachi Organization Of Canada |
| $2,201,673.00 | Jewish Foundation of Greater Toronto |
| $1,479,260.00 | MORRIS AND ROSALIND GOODMAN FAMILY FOUNDATION / FONDATION DE LA FAMILLE MORRIS ET ROSALIND GOODMAN |
| $1,400,000.00 | Historic Jerusalem |
| $1,301,474.00 | THE DR. MAX GLASSMAN CHARITABLE FOUNDATION |
| $1,270,900.00 | BINAH CHARITABLE FOUNDATION |
| $1,061,139.00 | NEWTON GLASSMAN CHARITABLE FOUNDATION |
| $825,501.00 | THE AZRIELI FOUNDATION/LA FONDATION AZRIELI |
| $626,756.00 | THE ARTHUR AND MARGARET WEISZ FAMILY FOUNDATION |
| $534,602.00 | ALVIN SEGAL FAMILY FOUNDATION |
| $510,518.00 | THE BRETTLER/Mintz Foundation |
| $501,600.00 | DANBE FOUNDATION INC. |
| $500,000.00 | THE PETER GILGAN FOUNDATION |
| $465,627.00 | THE ABE AND ELSIE POSLUNS FAMILY FOUNDATION |
| $462,788.00 | THE ROTHFAM FOUNDATION |
| $444,596.00 | CHIMP: Charitable Impact Foundation (Canada) |
| $437,107.00 | JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER VANCOUVER |
| $437,070.00 | PRIVATE GIVING FOUNDATION |
| $433,934.00 | WCPD FOUNDATION |
| $400,178.00 | THE OTTAWA JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION |
| $399,200.00 | THE FRIEBERG FAMILY CHARITABLE FOUNDATION |
| $396,000.00 | THE GERALD SCHWARTZ & HEATHER REISMAN FOUNDATION |
| $395,000.00 | The Sandra and Leo Kolber Foundation |
| $373,680.00 | SILVER FAMILY CHARITABLE FOUNDATION |
| $341,530.00 | RBC FOUNDATION/RBC FONDATION |
| $315,479.00 | GIFTPACT FOUNDATION INC. |
| $310,518.00 | RAYJO CHARITABLE TRUST |
| $307,023.00 | THE HENRY AND SYLVIA WAKS FAMILY FOUNDATION |
| $306,780.00 | THE JOSEPH SEGAL FAMILY FOUNDATION |
| $293,000.00 | Greenlight Foundation Inc. |
| $285,820.00 | THE JIM PATTISON FOUNDATION |
| $283,780.00 | THE BILL AND JUDITH RUBINSTEIN CHARITABLE FOUNDATION |
| $275,000.00 | TRINITY DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION |
| $274,355.00 | Charitable Gift Funds Canada Foundation / Fonds de Bienfaisance Canada |
| $271,721.00 | ALEXANDER E GROSSMAN FOUNDATION |
| $266,760.00 | THE BEN AND ESTHER DAYSON CHARITABLE FOUNDATION |
| $252,154.00 | THE LINDA FRUM & HOWARD SOKOLOWSKI CHARITABLE FOUNDATION |
| $252,144.00 | UNITED WAY OF GREATER TORONTO1 |
| $250,720.00 | SHERMAN FOUNDATION |
This all brings into question the CRA’s enforcement capabilities and responsibilities over the Canadian charitable sector. Recently, well-founded claims have documented instances of over-regulation of Muslim-identified Canadian charities, and have pointed the accusing finger at the residual influence of 9/11-era racist, risk profiling data upon the operational prioritizations of the CRA. These reports suggest that the CRA does have the resources to expend on charity sector surveillance and enforcement. But the proverbial targeting system seems aimed at Muslim-identified charities, and is making the sector as a whole no “safer” from the possibilities of money laundering and terror financing against which it claims to protect. While certainly conjectural, one can’t imagine a Canadian, Muslim-identified charity, specifically one like JNF Canada, with a history of moving millions of dollars per year into the international sphere, being allowed to get away with 20 years of disappeared, undeclared revenue.
Presented with such a discrepancy in leniency in enforcement, the mind wanders to the conspiratorial. Despite its recent revocation, JNF Canada was, and still is, extremely cozy with political power in Canada; former prime minister (2006-2015) and ongoing apocalyptic Evangelist Stephen Harper has been repeatedly fêted at JNF Canada ‘Negev’ Dinner fundraisers.
Suggesting that kid gloves were and are worn at the Canadian bureaucratic level when discussing JNF Canada, Yves Engler has documented that at least as far back as the 2010s, special, Zionism-empathetic, media lines had been preemptively prepared for potential media inquiries into the CRA’s hands-off handling of the now revoked charity.
Complementing this odd relationship, consider that the CRA’s own website has been scrubbed of all JNF Canada tax return data between 2019-2023. No reason has been provided for this erasure of data, and the only way to access JNF Canada’s 2019-2023 data, which was filed and should be publicly available via the CRA’s open-access portal, is to formally request it from the CRA.
Even now, with JNF Canada’s charitable status revoked, specters of its past power continue to materialize: On November 6, 2024, JNF Canada claimed that it had received a letter from the CRA, noting that it would not have to disperse its remaining assets (apparently totaling about $31 million CDN) prior to the originally required deadline of November 13, 2024. Asset dispersal within the “winding-up period” of a revoked charity’s lifespan is legally required, and the CRA’s own policy on the matter makes no mention of possible extensions. Yet JNF Canada continues to sit on a potentially tax-free asset portfolio ball parked at $30 million CDN, with no hard cap on dispersal in sight.
Signalling yet another angle to this bizarre relationship to regulatory enforcement, there are indications that JNF Canada’s money funneling operations to Israel continue, unabated, despite its status revocation, and have simply undergone a change in name. In a since-scrubbed promotional page for their November 13, 2024, ‘Negev Dinner’ in Ottawa, honoring former Member of Provincial Parliament of Ontario Lisa MacLeod (arguably most famous for hate-tweeting a Muslim-identified political rival), JNF Canada noted that it had opted to co-host their yearly gala of Zionism with another Canadian charity, registered as Israel Magen Fund of Canada. JNF Canada’s in-house promotional materials for the ‘Negev Dinner’ made it known that Israel Magen would be conducting the charitable tax receipt issuing for the gala, as their own charitable status had been stripped.
A comparative bottom-feeder in the Canadian Zionist charity landscape, in 2023, Israel Magen claimed to have just over $13,000 CDN in total assets, which represented its highest total since formally registering itself as a charity in 2008, and had only cracked $100,000 in revenue once, in 2021. It’s good showing as JNF Canada’s tax issuing stand-in at the Ottawa ‘Negev Dinner,’ however, appears to have thrust Israel Magen into a higher echelon; its 2024 tax returns note over $900,000 in revenue, $850,000 of which was sourced from other Canadian charities. It isn’t known whether Israel Magen’s tax receipt-issuing, stand-in role at the Ottawa ‘Negev Dinner’ has been ‘formalized’ with JNF Canada’s ‘big donors’ in any other capacity, but they appear to now be taking notice. As for its own actual purpose, Israel Magen claims to act as a donation conduit for the Israeli disinformation and propaganda engine, ‘ZAKA’, itself responsible for kick starting many of the now-debunked false narratives surrounding sexual violence on October 7.
JNF Canada has very publicly promised to challenge its charitable status revocation and has claimed to have filed an appeal against the CRA’s findings with the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal. As of writing, there is no appeal date set, but it is likely to take place in the summer months. Beyond whether or not the public ever gets to find out what happened to $101 million CDN in donations, at stake in the appeal is the core question: Does Zionism, as exemplified by the racist, expansionist, land hoarding, activities of JNF Canada’s Israeli recipient, the KKL, qualify as charity in Canada? Should we expect more? Or should the Canadian Income Tax Act be formally amended to include genocide, apartheid, and war crimes as acceptable charitable purposes?
Notes
- This amount reflects donor-directed donations made through donor advised funds administered by the United Way Greater Toronto, which are separate from other organizational grantmaking the United Way conducts. ↩︎
