In the first article in The Maple’s series on HonestReporting Canada (HRC), we demonstrated how, unlike what many may expect of a grassroots organization, HRC was started and is directed by a group of prominent individuals, and also has ties to the Israeli government.
Davide Mastracci
In this article, we’ll provide an unprecedented look into some of the funding HRC has received in recent years that has helped make its work possible.
HRC was created as a non-profit corporation in Ontario in May 2003. This corporation remains active. Due to privacy laws for corporations within Canada, The Maple wasn’t able to access records of how much money the non-profit has had and where it has received it from over the years.
However, in October 2019, HRC was registered as a federal charity under the name “HR Canada Charitable Organization.” Federal charities in Canada are required to make far more of their financial operations public than non-profit corporations. As a result, The Maple has been able to acquire some insight into HRC’s revenue, expenses and hiring since 2019, though the continued existence of the non-profit in Ontario means publicly available data may not present the full picture even from the creation of the charity onward.
The Maple sent several emails to HRC executive director Mike Fegelman’s work email address and also called HRC’s public phone number and left a voicemail. Neither Fegelman nor anyone else working at HRC responded to these messages.
Here is a table breaking down some of the financial information The Maple was able to acquire about HRC’s charity.
The majority of HRC’s charitable revenue each year has come from individual donations. However, the “Support HonestReporting Canada” section of HRC emails sent during the end-of-year fundraising campaigns in Decembers since at least 2021 declare that donations up to $125,000 will be matched by benefactors, implying that a noteworthy chunk of its donated amount per year may come from a small group of people. In addition, donations from other charities also make up a significant portion of total revenue.
Since 2019, HRC’s total assets, revenue and expenses have risen significantly, indicating that HRC has either been growing or shifting its activities from its non-profit to its charity, or both.
In 2020, the sole expense HRC listed was $193 in “interest and bank charges.” In 2021, HRC was listed as having two full-time employees and two part-time employees, paid a total of $42,008 between them. HRC also spent $12,547 on “advertising and promotion” and $37,615 on other expenses, including sub-contractors. In 2022, compensation skyrocketed, with two full-time and two-part time employees now pulling in $299,991 together. One full-time employee was listed as having made between $200,000 to $249,999. HRC also spent far more compared to the prior year, including $127,700 on advertising and promotion, $128,100 on other expenses, including sub-contractors, and $43,499 on “office supplies and expenses.”
So, where are the funds that are making this activity possible coming from?
Donations from individuals to charities are confidential. However, donations from one charity to another are not. The Maple reached out to the Canada Revenue Agency and was able to obtain a list of donations charities have made to HRC’s charity since 2019.
As a general overview, about 73 per cent (27/37) of the charities that have donated to HRC according to the CRA document included in The Maple’s review had assets of more than $1 million as of their latest CRA disclosure. Of these 27, five had more than $100 million in assets. Of these five, two had more than $1 billion in assets. The charities are a mix of private family foundations as well as Jewish philanthropic organizations. The individuals behind these charities hold/held important positions in a range of industries and fields, including real estate, law, academia, retail, news media, oil, health care, government, banking and finance, and others.
The two sections of the article below provide some more information on the various charities. For the first section, we’ve pulled out five of the billionaire, millionaire and otherwise notable charities and the families behind them that have donated money to HRC. In the second section of this article, we’ve listed basic information about the other charitable donors to HRC, in alphabetical order.
Taken together, these two sections offer a great deal of insight regarding the sort of forces materially supporting HRC in its mission to “control the narrative” on Israel in Canadian media.
A Close Look At 5 Of HRC’s Charitable Donors
The Azrieli Foundation
As of 2022, the Azrieli Foundation (AF) had total assets of more than $2.4 billion. Two of its directors, Sharon and Naomi Azrieli, and one of its former directors, Danna Azrieli, are billionaires according to Forbes’ listing of their real-time net worth.
The Azrieli sisters are among the heirs to the Azrieli Group fortune, left to them by their father, David, who, according to Forbes, had a personal net worth of 3.1 billion USD at the time of his death in 2014. Founded by David in 1983 and currently based in Tel Aviv, the Azrieli Group describes itself as “Israel’s largest publicly traded real estate company.” The Azrieli Group, which lists Naomi as an executive director and Sharon as a director, had assets of 13.6 billion USD in 2022, according to Forbes, and made more than 895 million USD in profit in that year alone.
AF has made a donation of, or very close to, $25,000 to HRC every year since it was established as a charity.
The Maple initially contacted AF through their website’s form, which had a character limit. AF replied after several more messages through the form, but then failed to respond to a follow-up email containing questions for the charity
The Asper Foundation
The Asper Foundation, with total assets as of 2022 listed at more than $199 million, is another charity that has repeatedly donated to HRC.
The charity has three members of the Asper family listed as trustees: Gail, David and Leonard. The three siblings are the children of Israel Asper, who started the foundation in 1983 and CanWest Global Communications Corp. in 1977. CanWest would grow to become Canada’s largest media chain, owning, at one point, more than 136 daily and weekly newspapers, including: the National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Regina Leader Post, Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Province, Victoria Times Colonist and the Windsor Star. The corporation also owned the Global Television Network. In May 2010, CanWest sold its newspapers for $1.1 billion to a group that would become Postmedia.
Israel Asper, whose “commitment to the State of Israel and the Jewish people cannot be overstated,” according to the Asper Foundation’s biography for him, died in 2003. Leonard was the president and CEO of CanWest from 1999 until 2010, meaning the director of a foundation that has repeatedly donated to a group pushing for pro-Israel media coverage was also at one time running the largest media chain in the country. The Asper family also took an active role in forcing its media properties to publish pro-Israel articles and punish those who dissented, as documented extensively elsewhere.
Davide Mastracci
It’s unclear whether the Asper Foundation or members of the Asper family donated to HRC when they were still running CanWest, given that HRC was just a non-profit at the time. However, members of the Asper family have endorsed and/or called for the sort of work HRC does.
On Oct. 30, 2002, Israel Asper gave an infamous speech before the Israel Bonds Gala Dinner in Montreal, held in honour of David Azrieli, where he stated that “too many” journalists were either “lazy, or sloppy, or stupid” or “biased, or anti-Semitic,” and argued they were “destroying the world’s favourable disposition toward” Israel. The speech focused on contrasting what he claimed was “dishonest reporting” with “honest reporting.” Toward the end of his speech, Asper stated: “You, the public, must be more vigilant and aggressive against media wrong-doers, by your e-mails, your letters to the editor, your phone calls, your cancellation of subscriptions, your refusal to patronize advertisers of offending media, your withholding of your own advertising from media which are guilty of dishonest reporting. The more active of you should join the boards of universities. May I strongly suggest that you should establish, in your community, honest reporting response groups to call to account offending dishonest media.” Just a few months later, HonestReporting Canada was created.
In addition, an endorsement page on the HRC website listed Leonard at least as early as November 2009, when he was still the president and CEO of CanWest. His endorsement claims, “Honest Reporting Canada is a leader in promoting fair and accurate news coverage of Israel. By identifying and exposing bias in headlines, pictures and words, HRC holds Canadian news organizations accountable for their Israel coverage.”
The Asper Foundation has donated to HRC at least twice thus far, pledging $10,000 in 2021 and 2022.
The Maple sent several messages to the Asper Foundation through its website’s form and also called their public number and left a voicemail. The Asper Foundation didn’t respond to any of these messages.
The Peter And Melanie Munk Charitable Foundation
The Peter And Melanie Munk Charitable Foundation, started by the Munk family, had total assets of more than $215 million in 2022.
The Munks are well known for their various donations, including to the Munk School of Global Affairs at U of T, and for founding the Munk Debates. The chair, president and director of the foundation is Melanie Munk, wife of the late Peter Munk, who died in 2018. Peter is the founder of Barrick Gold, the largest gold mining company in the world. The New York Times obituary for Peter notes that there were “few good estimates” of his net worth, but that he “led the life of an international billionaire” and “his associates included Prince Charles; fellow billionaires [...] and Brian Mulroney.” Forbes notes that as of 2023, Barrick Gold had assets of around 46.2 billion USD.
In 2021, the Munk Foundation made a $1,000 donation to HRC.
The Maple sent several messages to a group associated with the Munk Foundation and also called the Foundation’s number and left a voicemail. The Munk Foundation didn’t respond to any of these messages.
The Rotman Family Foundation
The Rotman Family Foundation, which had total assets of nearly $10 million in 2022, made a $12,500 donation to HRC in 2020. One of HRC’s co-founders, Ken Rotman, is a member of the Rotman family and a director at the foundation. A biography for the Rotman family on the website for U of T’s “Chancellors’ Circle of Benefactors” notes that it donated more than $100 million to the university and health-care institutions affiliated with it alone. Joseph, it states, was “the founder of many companies, including Roy-L Capital Corporation, Tarragon Oil & Gas and Clairvest Group Inc. [and] served on the boards of Bank of Montreal, Barrick Gold Corporation, and numerous energy firms.” The Maple sent several emails to Ken Rotman’s work address and also called his work number and left a voicemail. Rotman didn’t respond to any of these messages.
The Linda Frum & Howard Sokolowski Charitable Foundation
The Linda Frum & Howard Sokolowski Charitable Foundation made a $5,000 donation to HRC in 2020. At the time, Linda Frum, the secretary treasurer of the charity, was an active senator in Canada. The Maple tweeted at Frum multiple times, both of which went unanswered. The Maple also attempted to reach Sokolowski by sending a message through his company’s form, but this effort was unsuccessful.
A Brief Look At The Rest
Beth Sholom Synagogue
- Description: A Toronto synagogue.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $1,000 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $15,649,806
Famglas Foundation
- Description: A family charity with Alex Glasenberg, president of Sherfam, the holding company for the billionaire Sherman family, as a director.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $1,800 (2021); $5,000 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $18,535,372
Felicia And Arnold Aaron Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Aaron family.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $5,000 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $29,227,346
Gerald Sheff & Shanitha Kachan Family Foundation
- Description: A private foundation. Trustee Gerald Sheff, described as having “a deep sense of commitment to both the Jewish community and the State of Israel,” co-founded wealth management company Gluskin Sheff + Associates Inc. in 1984, and along with his co-founder sold most of their stake in 2013 for around $122 million.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $5,000 (2021); $5,000 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $54,560,263
Heitner Charitable Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Heitner family. In 2017, director Bernard Heitner sold Cambridge Global Payments, a company he founded in 1992, for $900 million.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $250 (2021); $250 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $406,746
J.Frankel Family Charitable Trust
- Description: A private foundation for the Frankel family. Director Joshua Frankel is described on the Innopex Limited website as the president of investment holding companies.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $1,000 (2021); $2,800 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $214,743
Jewish Community Foundation Of Calgary
- Description: Jewish philanthropic organization.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $1,000 (2021); $1,500 (2023)
- Assets as of 2023: $31,347,803
Jewish Community Foundation Of Montreal
- Description: Jewish philanthropic organization.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $5,000 (2021); $52,950 (2022); $41,160 (2023)
- Assets as of 2023: $1,841,012,585
Jewish Federation Of Greater Vancouver
- Description: Jewish philanthropic organization.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $1,800 (2022); $17,533 (2023)
- Assets as of 2023: $98,406,077
Jewish Foundation Of Greater Toronto
- Description: Jewish philanthropic organization.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $13,600 (2021); $32,190 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $650,114,044
Kahn Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Kahn family. The foundation’s four directors are the wife and three of the children of deceased real estate mogul Leon Kahn.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $1,000 (2020); $7,500 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $10,574,102
M And J Peskin Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Peskin family.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $200 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $136,964
Marvin & Rhoda Rosenbloom Family Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Rosenbloom family.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $2,000 (2021); $1,000 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $14,235,837
Shiff Family Charitable Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Shiff family, whose former trustee, Randy Shiff, is a co-founder of and the principal partner at Tivona Capital, a private investment company.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $1,000 (2021)
- Assets as of 2022: $2,129,612
The Atid Charitable Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Granovzky family, one of whose trustees, Irving Granovzky, is the chairman of Atlantic Packaging Products Ltd.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $18,000 (2021); $3,800 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $6,995,922
The Aulis Charitable Foundation
- Description: A private foundation whose director, Elie Roth, is a partner at the Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP law firm and whose email address is listed on HRC’s charity page.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $1,800 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $971,784
The Elizabeth And Tony Comper Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Comper family, whose president and director, Tony Comper, was formerly the president and CEO of BMO Financial Group.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $1,000 (2021)
- Assets as of 2022: $3,238,992
The Ira Gluskin And Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Granovzky family, one of whose trustees, Ira Gluskin, co-founded wealth management company Gluskin Sheff + Associates Inc. in 1984, and along with his co-founder sold most of their stake in 2013 for around $122 million.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $10,000 (2021)
- Assets as of 2022: $14,939,181
The Izzy And Betty Kirshenbaum Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Kirshenbaum family.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $5,000 (2020); $5,000 (2021); $5,000 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $1,002,430
The Lillian And Norman Glowinsky Family Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Glowinsky family.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $10,000 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $19,192,978
The Max And Beatrice Wolfe Charitable Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Wolfe family, whose founder, Max Wolfe, started a grocery chain that was sold to Sobeys for $1.5 billion in 1998.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $500 (2022); $500 (2023)
- Assets as of 2023: $2,609,408
The Mesora Charitable Foundation
- Description: A private foundation whose president, Anthony Heller, is listed on the Cranson Capital website as the president and founder of Plazacorp Investments and described as having “initiated and completed approximately $2.1 billion of development projects.”
- Donation(s) to HRC: $5,000 (2021)
- Assets as of 2022: $1,726,149
The Minett Foundation
- Description: A private foundation whose president, Alan Greenberg, was the president of a major condo and real estate development company.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $1,800 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $310,578
The Mireille And Murray Steinberg Family Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for a branch of the Steinberg family that is among the heirs of the Steinberg grocery chain, which was sold for $1.3 billion in 1989.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $250 (2021)
- Assets as of 2022: $27,951,266
The P.Austin Family Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Austin family, one of whose trustees, Paul Austin, is vice president and general counsel of Salpam Corporate Properties.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $100,000 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $954,145
The Penny And Gordon Echenberg Family Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Echenberg family, one of whose former directors, the now deceased Gordon Echenberg, was a lawyer and philanthropist who helped start multiple groups, including the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights with Irwin Cotler.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $1,000 (2021)
- Assets as of 2022: $294,147
The S Sigler Family Charitable Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Sigler family, one of whose directors is Neil Sigler, listed on the ZoomInfo website as the president of the Gold Seal Management property management company.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $100 (2021); $500 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $598,387
The Serruya Family Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Serruya family, whose directors include Michael and Aaron Serruya, brothers that have made hundreds of millions of dollars through a variety of businesses.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $1,800 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $67,905,466
The Tova And Alex Hartman Family Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Hartman family
- Donation(s) to HRC: $250 (2021); $250 (2022); $180 (2023)
- Assets as of 2022: $16,284
The Zacks Family Charitable Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Zacks family.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $1,000 (2021); $2,000 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $1,737,801
United Jewish Appeal Of Greater Toronto
- Description: Jewish philanthropic organization.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $54,785 (2021); $11,309 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $62,031,367
Victor And Rhoda Shields Charitable Foundation
- Description: A private foundation for the Shields family.
- Donation(s) to HRC: $500 (2020); $150 (2021); $250 (2022)
- Assets as of 2022: $1,115,471
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