Faustian Deals, Faith Leaders, and the Canadian Trucker Conveys

Canada’s so-called freedom conveys don’t have much to do with freedom, faith, or cross border vaccine requirements for truckers. And they’re no party for downtown residents of our nation’s capital or citizens in many other communities. But that hasn’t stopped a few so-called Christian leaders from making a Faustian deal with the folks who laid siege to Ottawa’s downtown, briefly shut down a major border crossing in the Province of Alberta, and attempted to create gridlock in other cities last weekend.

The problem with Faustian deals is that you get what you want in the short-term — money, power, a boozy party in front of the Parliament buildings in Ottawa complete with bouncy castles, revival meetings, war memorial desecrations, and flag burnings. But you could wind up in a hell of your own making.

If you happen to be a Canadian Christian who joined the Freedom Convoy 2022, there’s also the issue of having aligned yourself with homegrown radicals and foreign provocateurs who want to overthrow the recently elected House of Commons. If you run a ministry, you might be risking your organization’s tax free charitable status as well as your credibility with the nation you claim to love enough to evangelize. And we could all wind up losing our country thanks to your clumsy power play.

Let’s take The Miracle Channel Association as an example. Based in Lethbridge Alberta, the association runs CJIL television, including its flagship news program, Bridge City News. The Miracle Channel Association is a registered charity under the Canadian Income Tax Act.

That means they get to operate their business as a Christian Ministry without paying taxes as long as they adhere to their stated mission. And what is that? Well, they’ve told the Government of Canada it’s to share the Christian faith by producing and broadcasting Christian television programming in Canada and around the world. According to the 2020 statement on the CRA site, the ministry operates in Canada, Pakstian, Central and South America, the Middle East, Philippines, and the United States.

The station is also licenced by the Canadian Radio Television Commission as the English-language independent conventional television station CJIL-DT broadcasting from Lethbridge, Alberta. The current licence runs from 1 September 2020 to 31 August 2025. CJIL is obliged to provide Canadian, local, and religious programs. It does not run commercial advertisements.

Let’s take a closer look. According to statements posted on Canada Revenue Agency’s website, in 2020 The Miracle Channel Association raised $1,545,409.00 (29.57%) through through receipted donation,$5,706.00 (0.11%) in non-receipted donations, $79,438.00 (1.52%) in gifts from other registered charities and an astounding $3,594,943.00 (68.80%) from unspecified other revenue.

The charity had $4,947,017.00 in expenses in 2020 and paid employees $2,604,055.00. A closer look shows that two of the station’s 35 full-time employees made over $200K in 2020.

One employee, likely the station’s CEO, Leon Fontaine, made over $250K. A popular speaker and evangelist, Fontaine is also Founder and Senior Pastor of of the multi-campus Springs Church which is based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Springs Church got into hot water for bending and flouting COVID-19 rules in Manitoba in 2021. The Senior Pastor promotes the truckers’ protests on his Facebook Page. The church’s website and Fontaine’s Instagram Page currently link to Miracle Channel coverage of the Freedom Convoy 2022 as well as to Fontaine’s recent interviews with former Conservative leadership candidate and current People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier as well as to Member of Parliament Candice Bergen, who is both Leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition and Interim Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Another five employees earned between $80,000 to $119,999, one earned $120,000 to $159,999, and two earned $40,000 to $79,999. The station also employed 11 part-time employees.

Here’s how Miracle Channel spent its money in 2020. Charitable programs accounted for $3,862,949.00 (78.09%), management and administration $708,512.00 (14.32%), and fundraising $375,556.00 (7.59%). Professional and consulting fees totalled $162,510.00.

Power, Poltics, and Charity

Surprisingly, the station declared $0.00 spending on political activities in 2020. They probably need to revisit that line item.

Registered charities in Canada are allowed to engage in political activity, with a few stipulations. That activity must be related to and support the stated charitable purpose and it must be non-partisan. However, the scope of allowable activities is fairly broad. While CJIL can’t explicitly endorse or give money to a political party, they can conduct public policy dialogue and development activities (PPDDAs) connected to their legal purpose as long as they are not directly or indirectly partisan. They must also adhere to rules spanning 20 sometimes obscure areas such as fundraising, receipts, T3010 filings, undue private benefits, business activities, and dealing with non-qualified donees.

It is the political partisanship rule that is most likely to get the channel’s charitable status revoked. For one thing, Bridge City News gives a lot of softball interviews to Conservative MP for Lethbridge Rachael Thomas as well as to Lethbridge East United Conservative MLA Nathan Neudorf. Both politicians have been interviewed about Covid-19 restrictions over the past month. High profile Lethbridge West MLA Shannon Phillips has also advocated for constituents on the issue, but her statements about the convoy haven’t been mentioned once. As far as I can tell, she has never been featured in a sit down interview at the station, although her media conferences are covered by Bridge City News. She happens to be Alberta’s former Environment Minister and the NDP’s current Finance Critic.

Let’s be clear, Neudorf and Thomas have every right to promote their causes. And why wouldn’t they jump at the chance to be interviewed by friendly reporters. To her credit, MP Thomas does try to reach beyond her base to create dialogue. Her opinion piece published in the Toronto Star 4 February is an example.

But should the station’s news anchor, Hal Roberts, nod approval when Thomas answers his questions as he did recently on Bridge City news? And should the station be unabashedly supporting the Truckers Convey, which has zero to do with their stated charitable mission?

Pass the Salt and Forget the Light

More problematic is a recent pro-convoy special which featured Roberts, Fontaine, and activist/media personality Faytene Grasseschi, who is introduced approvingly as a Conservative covering the Ottawa protests on https://www.faytene.tv.

The special is an infomercial for Freedom Convey 2022. Viewers are told not to believe negative reports on major media outlets and instead look at social media posts and grassroots outlets, such a Grassechi’s television show and YouTube channel. Grassechi and Fontaine tell viewers they had found little evidence for the negative reports, many of which were later substantiated by multiple sources.

Both on the infomercial and in subsequent coverage, they have taken a similar stance as right wing Rebel News: portraying the barricades in Ottawa as well as protests near the US border at Coutts and Milk River, Alberta as one big party, a love in with bouncy castles for the kids, prayer warriors blessing the nation, and dance parties late into the night. A brave stand for freedom and liberty.

Let’s talk about Rebel News for a second. Rebel News targets Christians as a key market, but its business strategy is anything but Christlike. It’s alluded to a defamatory and chronologically impossible conspiracy theory about Justin Trudeau‘s paternity. It stokes outrage at individuals it does not consider conservative enough, including former Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. It’s raged at the police for doing their job. And that’s just this week.

The only real difference between Miracle Channel coverage and Rebel News is that Rebel News would never tell viewers to obey Grassechi’s plea to pray for the PM while they kick him out of office.

Sadly, many Christians seem to more addicted to rage and half truths than to loving their neighbour who thinks differently than they do. Just like some of the left wing activists they say they are saving Canada from, they choose to stay in their comfortable eco chambers. Leaders like Fontaine don’t seem to mind. And why should they?

The Trouble With The Whole Story

Some Christians support these protests because they want to defend their right to worship and make Canada a better place. If they dismiss any troubling thoughts about Freedom Convoy 2022, maybe it’s because they think their leaders would never steer them wrong.

Yet troubling reports dismissed by Fontaine and his team have been verified on other media and by the police: horns blaring non-stop into the night, flammable fuels stored in Ottawa’s city core, NAZI symbols painted on Canadian flags, eighteen wheelers choking city roads, and fireworks set off in the street in the middle of the night.

One of the darkest parts of this protests is its foreign, often anonymous funding. There’s little doubt that millions have been raised because some Americans think they have the right to bring down the Canadian government.

In the early days of the protest, $10M dollars was raised through an American platform, GoFundMe. After the Ottawa police contacted the platform with evidence that the money was being raised to support criminal activity, the campaign stopped.

Hundreds of outraged donors outed themselves as foreigners in the comment sections of international news sites like DailyMail.com. Nearly a week later they are still furious that the money they intended to be used to bring down the government of another G-7 nation, Canada, is being returned to them.

Within the span of a few hours, organizers got bitcoin funding set up. They started a new fundraiser on GiveSendGo.com. That site is obstensibly a vehicle for Christians to give to their favourite community and ministry projects. In fact, a recent data breech shows that it has funded groups such as The Proud Boys, a right wing organization that has been declared a terrorist group under Canadian law.

Canadian organizers of the protest were served with a multi-million lawsuit by the residents of Ottawa’s downtown because they clogged streets with commercial trucks and their 24 hour a day horn honking made life a misery for anyone who actually lives there. On 7 February, a judge granted an injunction that made the trucker stop leaning on their horns. The lawsuit continues.

Nor was the movement without incident when it popped up in other cities. In Calgary, Alberta, protesters harassed staff at the Sheldon Chumir Health Centre. Further south, trucks and tractors temporarily stopped the flow of trade at the province’s busiest border crossing. As I write, the Coutts-Milk River protest honks on, although the protesters have switched most of their angst from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney for not immediately meeting demands to end to all provincial and federal Covid-19 restrictions.

This brings us to another point. Many of these protesters appear to have no clue how government works. For example, The Prime Minister does not give orders to the Ottawa City Police. The Prime Minister cannot cancel provincial health regulations. Premiers cannot cancel federal borders rules. Nor can the Governor General (the Queen’s Representative) fire the PM (especially four months after a General Election), the federal cabinet, the Chief Medical Officer of Health, and all the MPs. Yet these wacko demands have all been made by activists involved in the hodge podge of anarchy that is Freedom Convoy 2022. Yes, this all documented. I am just too tired to put in any more links.

Still, there has been almost no coverage of any of these issues on the Miracle Channel. The station and its viewers across Canada continue to support the convoy. Most of the contingent of fundamentalist Christians on the ground at protests in Ottawa or other parts of Canada are there because they think Jesus wants them there. And they don’t believe the police, the elected representatives, or any media except carefully curated sources like the Miracle Channel, Faytene TV, or Rebel News. They think they are creating unity across Canada and that the whole nation supports them. They aren’t and most of us don’t.

Ideology and Idolatry

One the surface none of this makes any sense. Conservative Christians don’t seem to have anything in common with the partying truckers and right wing activists drawing Swaztika’s on Canadian flags and carrying F*ck Trudeau signs. Many church going families with half a dozen kids jumping on bouncing castles in front of the parliament buildings just want to love their neighbour and go back to lives they had before the pandemic. They are protesting because their leaders told them this ‘movement’ will ensure a brilliant future for them and for Canada.

So why are these nice folks still buying the BS?

Conservative Christian pastors, particularly in Charismatic churches, have immense power over their congregations. The specifics vary between denominations. However, common threads include the belief that Jesus will return soon and that prior to his return Christians will be persecuted and even killed for their faith. (And before you start snickering about how stupid Christians are for believing that, remember that many Muslims also believe that Jesus is coming back to rule the earth after the Battle of Armageddon.)

In addition, Charismatic Christians believe that prophecy is a modern day Fruit of the Spirit and that many Church leaders hear straight from God.

Couple this with the fact that many evangelicals have long suspected that the legacy media, arts community, and liberal church don’t respect them. It is small wonder that congregants are easy pickins for conspiracy theorists, rage merchants, and politically minded leaders.

And they aren’t all wrong. CBC, our national broadcaster, as well as CTV/Bell Media have both been accused of not including minority or unpopular opinions in the Canadian public discourse, sometimes by their own former employees.

So far, the chattering classes haven’t reached out to understand and dialogue with evangelical and charismatic communities as they have finally started to do with other minorities. Many Christians in mainline churches who make a point of trying to build bridges with other religions, publicly ridicule their evangelical or charismatic sisters and brothers on social media. Some have made their own Faustian deals with left wing activists who are only too willing seek Hollywood endorsements or to take American money to fund environmental or anti-pipeline protests. This, too, must stop.

Another complication is that, while they are estranged even from other Christians in their own communities, their leaders often enjoy close tight relationships with American evangelicals. And many American churches practice a kind of Dominionist theology that is mixed with American exceptionalism. They don’t understand our Constitutional Monarchy much less respect it. And some of them may think that failed War of 1812 takeover of Canada was a temporary set-back.

The pandemic has been hard on all Canadians. It has triggered deep seated anxieties and surfaced long held estrangements in many groups. That includes conservative Christians who are often poorer and not nearly as white as progressives imagine. Not being able to worship in person, capacity limits in public spaces, proof of vaccine requirements, and masking rules may trigger a deep seated dread that apocalyptic suffering and persecution is imminent. It doesn’t take much to convince them that the elites are about to lock them out of the Canadian mosaic.

It is time to reach in and pull our neighbours out of the orbit of extremists and charletons before our country descends from being an admittedly imperfect, but largely peaceable, kingdom into a hell of our own making. And somebody needs to ask The Miracle Channel Association and other so-called charities what supporting Freedom Convoy 2022 has to do with their mission?

-30-