Kate Bahen from Charity Intelligence

Kate Bahen is a self-appointed watchdog of the charitable sector in Canada, despite having no credentials for this role. Kate Bahen, and her colleague Greg Thomson, have regularly made false and misleading statements about charities in Canada in their desire to receive media coverage. Despite employing only three full-time staff, none of whom are CPAs, Charity Intelligence issues annual ratings of charities, including giving them a grade on their financial transparency. Between 2014 and 2020, Charity Intelligence had consistently given WE Charity an overall grade of “A”, and did so as recently as 6 months before the CSSG was announced in June 2020. Soon after the CSSG controversy began, the rating was quickly downgraded. Kate Bahen used the media coverage during this period to increase her notoriety and raise money for her own organization, having four times the cash reserves on hand following the attacks on WE Charity.

During this time, Kate Bahen was regularly in line with Conservatives in their talking points attacking WE Charity in Canada. She failed to disclose that she was a regular donor to the Conservative Party of Canada and her Board Chair Graeme Hepburn has donated over $44,000 to the Conservative Party as well as hosting fundraisers for Conservative leaders at his home. Graeme Hepburn’s wife, Claudia, has also donated $24,000 to the Conservative Party and is the former Director of right-wing think tank Fraser Institute.

Kate Bahen is not a Certified Public Accountant and has no evident professional training in accounting that would qualify her to make such assertions and conclusions. Her assessments were directly refuted and proven false by multiple lawyers, tax experts and forensic auditors. Kate Bahen also has a history of making false and inflammatory comments about charities. In May 2019, she was forced to formally apologize for false and misleading statements she made about the True North Foundation – the charitable arm of the Winnipeg Jets hockey team.

What you should know

Kate Bahen from Charity Intelligence

Charity Intelligence’s board and staff have direct and indirect ties to the Conservative Party of Canada, making significant donations to the party and its candidates.

Has a history of making false claims about charities, including statements about the Winnipeg Jets’ charitable foundation (True North Foundation).

In 2019, just before the CSSG, she and Charity Intelligence gave WE Charity an overall grade of “A” and then it was quickly downgraded to suit her political narrative.

Suggested Watching

Kate Bahen from Charity Intelligence uses questionable tactics while operating a non-profit.

Calgary Flames Foundation disputes claims made by charity watchdog about donation destinations

Read the article

Liberal MPs grill charity watchdog that has been critical of WE Charity during latest committee meeting

Read the article

Rhetoric and vitriol

Taking advantage of the media spotlight to promote her own brand

Charity Intelligence’s Board Chair a major donor to the Conservative Party of Canada

Charity Intelligence board chair Graeme Hepburn is a major donor to the Conservative Party, making 56 separate donations to the Conservative Party/candidates totaling over $44,000 and actively hosting fundraisers for Conservative Party members at his home, including former provincial leader Tim Hudak. Charity Intelligence did not disclose this information during the parliamentary testimony or as part of their attacks on WE Charity in Canada. The following image, publicly available from Elections Canada, confirms Graeme Hepburn's significant financial support of and direct ties to the Conservative Party.

See original media

Indirect ties to the Conservative Party of Canada through the Board Chair’s wife

Graeme Hepburn’s wife Claudia Hepburn is also a financial supporter of the Conservative Party of Canada, donating $24,000 to the party over the years. Claudia Hepburn is the CEO of a charity called Windmill Microlending, which has $5M a year in revenue. It is worth noting that Charity Intelligence has not conducted an analysis of that charity. Claudia Hepburn is also the former Director of right-wing think tank Fraser Institute. The following image illustrates once again Charity Intelligence’s direct and indirect financial ties to the Conservative Party of Canada through Board Chair Graeme Hepburn and his wife Claudia.

Kate Bahen’s undisclosed financial ties to the Conservative Party of Canada

Kate Bahen and Charity Intelligence actively supported and amplified the rhetoric of the Conservative Party of Canada to take down WE Charity in Canada. At the request of members of the Finance Committee, including members of the Conservative Party, Kate Bahen testified in front of a parliamentary committee on the issue, but failed to disclose her direct affiliation with the Conservative Party as a active donor. The following image, publicly available from Elections Canada, confirms Kate Bahen's financial support of the Conservative Party.

Using media attention to raise Charity Intelligence’s profile

Kate Bahen's attacks on WE Charity Canada and its cofounders were unrelenting, motivated by the opportunity to exploit the issue to garner media attention for herself and her organization, Charity Intelligence. Kate Bahen and Charity Intelligence appeared in hundreds of news stories over the summer of 2020. This tweet is just one example of her personalizing her attacks against WE Charity cofounders, Marc and Craig Kielburger. In this case, it was before Marc and Craig Kielburger appeared in front of a parliamentary hearing. Kate Bahen mockingly referred to this moment as "burger time".

Kate Bahen’s dishonest, self-serving actions and WE Charity’s response

Ironically, Charlie Angus claims that Pierre Poilievre would do anything for short-term gain, showing great disdain towards him and his policies. Charlie Angus and Pierre Poilievre later teamed up as two prominent political figures alongside journalists to destroy WE Charity in Canada with political grandstanding and dishonest conduct.

This Tweet is demonstrative of the language and approach Charlie Angus uses as an elected official. He is prone to using profanity and demonstrating emotional instability in public communications, often on his official Twitter page.

See original media

See what Canadians are saying

Exactly
Politicians like @PierrePoilievre and @CharlieAngusNDP distorted facts & events, slandered decent people, mocked and sneered at anyone who defended #WECharity, and permanently damaged an international charity.
The lawsuits are proceeding.
And now 🇨🇦media won’t cover it 🤔
— Barbara Levesque (@belle_levesque) June 30, 2023

Charity Intelligence and Kate Bahren were a go-to “source” for lazy media & politicians who jumped on the #WECharity conspiracy bandwagon.
As the libel suits make there way thru the courts, the bullshittery of it all is exposed.@MarkBourrie & @Theobius write about it 🇨🇦#cdnpoli https://t.co/FiP10meISj
— Barbara Levesque (@belle_levesque) June 30, 2023

What WE Lost tells the full story behind Kate Bahen from Charity Intelligence's undisclosed affiliations with the Conservative Party of Canada and her false commentary on WE Charity’s finances for Charity Intelligence’s financial gain.

Listen to Martin Luther King III speak about Kate Bahen and Charity Intelligence’s lack of qualifications and flawed findings, which became the basis for media and political attacks against WE Charity.

Read excerpts from What WE Lost or order your copy below

Order on Indigo Order on Amazon.com Order on Amazon.ca

Listen to Chapter 7 free on Spotify | Apple

Both eagerly accepted their roles as the chief critics of the WE organization, appearing in hundreds of news stories over the summer of 2020. And it appears to me that both adeptly leveraged their increased media presence for professional and financial success. Bahen and Blumberg advanced many narratives that I contend were misleading, and their commentary was seized on by politicians and journalists to become part of the larger story. A number of these misleading narratives are now assumed to be fact.
‍
Bahen is the managing director of Charity Intelligence (Ci), a self-appointed watchdog agency that she founded in 2006. Ci analyzes charities on factors like financial transparency and social impact, then posts the results on its website. Bahen likens her approach to that of a financial analyst who researches stocks to find the best investment opportunities for clients. Ci is a small operation—based on publicly available information, it has just five permanent staff, including Bahen, and does not employ any full-time accountants or auditors. Research director Greg Thomson admitted to the FINA committee that he and Bahen are “analysts, not auditors.” Ci has a three-member board of directors that includes Bahen and Thomson.
‍
When Ci launched its online search engine in 2011, it was the subject of a flattering profile in the Toronto Star, but it was met with considerable skepticism from other quarters. For an article posted to its website, Charity Village, a company that recruits people to work in the charitable sector, spoke to many who criticized Ci’s “naïve analysis of data and lack of understanding of CRA guidelines and how nonprofits in Canada actually work.” Mark Blumberg, for example, said that “to telescope the issue of transparency into disclosure of an audited financial statement on the website of a charity is a simplification of the complexity of the issues.” Malcolm Burrows, the head of philanthropic advisory services for Scotia Wealth Management, concurred. “Ci seems to want to put all [charities] into a single space, and I think that does a real disservice,” he said. “They need to look at that before they make these huge generalizations in public . . . You can’t have a ‘one-size-fits-all’ standard of accountability in the sector.” And Imagine Canada’s then CEO, Marcel Lauzière, offered a similar observation. “They’ve taken a [data-gathering] model from the investment world,” he noted, “where you look at inputs and then tell your investors where to put their dollars . . . It’s not that simple when you’re looking at charities and at their outcomes and impacts.”
‍
All this matters because when Bahen later began commenting publicly on WE Charity’s involvement with the CSSG and presenting herself as an expert on the charitable industry, some of her assertions were based on exactly this kind of superficial and inaccurate analysis of the organization’s financial statements and structure. For instance, she told journalist Jesse Brown, in an interview for his Canadaland website, that the charity was “in breach of its bank covenants,” a situation she characterized as “a massive, massive red flag.” She compared it to a person who is close to maxed out on her credit cards but can’t stop spending. In fact, though, this was a simple technicality arising from WE Charity’s decision to shift its fiscal year from the standard calendar year to one that aligns with the academic year. That made sense because most of the expenditures for and work around the charity’s domestic programs followed the educational calendar. The switch created a minor complication because WE Charity’s real estate mortgage agreements required the organization to earn a minimum level of revenue each year. In the year of the change, 2018, the charity did not demonstrate the required level of revenue because its financial report covered just eight months instead of twelve. The shift also required the organization to defer some revenue to align with the year in which related program spending would occur. So the same issue came up in 2019. WE Charity’s lenders understood this and waived compliance with the covenants, and its auditors noted the waiver in footnotes to the organization’s financial statements without using the word “breach.”
‍
It’s very simple and uncontroversial stuff, but you would never know it if you listened to Bahen. Although she presented herself as an unbiased observer, her public comments were often one-sided and carried charged language. In the more than one hundred tweets she made about the charity between June and October 2020, she often used the hashtag #WEHaveAProblem, and in one, she asked sarcastically, “Does anyone think it is a good idea for WE Charity to implement this $900m government grant?” Months later, as Marc and Craig were preparing to testify before the ETHI committee, she tweeted the words “Burger time!” with an image of a hamburger and a side of cauliflower alongside the brothers on a television screen….

Kate Bahen from Charity Intelligence