Iqaluit, make up your mind on taxing places of worship
Need for temporary relief of property taxes shows flaw in existing rule for taxing churches, other religious organizations
Children’s shoes sit on the steps of St. Jude’s Anglican Cathedral in Iqaluit in 2021, tributes to the lives lost in Canada’s residential schools. The church’s role in the system is one reason the City of Iqaluit ended its property tax exemption for places of worship in 2022. (File photo by Dustin Patar)
That’s a relief! Iqaluit city council has seen the light.
Churches and other places of worship in Iqaluit will get a one-year temporary reprieve in 2026 from the crippling city property taxes some of them say risk putting them out of business.
It’s a different direction for this council. The previous council decided in 2022 that churches would be taxed.
Across Canada, churches, mosques and synagogues have traditionally been exempt from the taxes most property owners pay to fill municipal coffers with the money needed to pay for garbage collection, snow plowing, firefighting and arenas.
Historically, they were exempt from taxes because of the benefit they provide. Also, taxing God’s work wasn’t popular with voters.
But, in a fit of anger over the role churches — mainly the Roman Catholic and Anglican denominations — played in Canada’s residential school system, Iqaluit council scrapped that exemption, forcing places of worship to pay taxes for the first time in 2022.
In light of what Canadians were learning about residential schools, it was hard to justify their tax-exempt status because, as then-mayor Kenny Bell put it, “the Catholic church hasn’t done the community any good.”
But he didn’t limit his wrath to the Roman Catholic Church. He went after all of them in order to avoid being seen as picking on any one group.
It was a misguided policy at the time, based on misdirected anger.
The result has been devastating. The Anglican diocese says its property tax debt is one of the financial woes that could lead to the auctioning off of St. Jude’s Cathedral — the “Igloo Church.”
Now, faced with the prospect of losing these places of worship, councillors seem to recognize that religious organizations do provide a service to the community. It’s like a Saul on the road to Damascus conversion.
In granting the Islamic Society of Nunavut $35,000 in tax relief, city officials noted that the religious organization helps Iqalummiut who need food. Of course, other congregations help in the community by supporting food distribution, helping people with addictions and offering other counselling.
Even if the only thing a church did were to provide a solemn setting for marriages and funerals, it would be doing good in the community. Of course, the mission work of most religious organizations do is much further-reaching than that.
Prior to 2022, Iqaluit churches were exempt from property taxes. In 2023, they suddenly found themselves paying taxes for the first time. Then, the city brought in a tax exemption program
Now, this council has backtracked — a bit— and decided not to tax places of worship … but only for 2026. Presumably, come 2027, they’ll be subject to property taxation once again.
Make up your mind!
It’s hard for any taxpayer — a homeowner, business or institution — to plan for the future when one year it doesn’t pay taxes, the next year it does, then it does but can get some relief, then gets a one-year reprieve, then goes back to being taxed.
Other than having low taxes, what property owners want are taxes that are fair, stable and predictable. The writing is on the wall for Iqaluit council. It needs to go back to permanently exempting places of worship from property taxes.
Don’t starve your soul of church and go to church. Tunirusiqattalauritsi inuuqatikkaa !
Starve your brain, go to church
Like I said before, Government of Nunavut should help to pay for the taxes for the churches because, they are making huge $ from the Beer, wine and coolers store in the CAPITAL. Maybe more people would start going to church instead of the no good B&W. It may even help save more lives if the church gets more help and cut the hrs from B&W to days a week and more of the buyers can go back to church like they all use to.
Nunatsiaq News, Please do not delete this and post it even thought there will be all the negative remarks to my thoughts, only because they are supporters to the B&W store.
Help our beautiful Igloo church because that is our only ANGLICAN Church in the Capital and respect out elders that go church few times a week.
So if anyone disagrees with you in any way it’s “only because they are supporters to the B&W store”? That is really immature reasoning and makes it impossible to have any sort of normal or productive conversation.
Can you answer this? What is the average attendance of the Anglican church? If it’s not full or even close to full, why on earth did they build such a massive, fancy building if they can’t afford it? How much do their ministers make? Why aren’t ministers and congregants volunteering to care for the building if it’s so important to them ?
I dropped in once in February with a friend. The people there were lovely and welcoming, but there were only five of them! To be fair, we left just as the service was supposed to start, because the low crowd size made it feel too intimate, so some more may have come in late, but the numbers weren’t looking good.
The Anglican Church is on the verge of extinction. In 1971 it had over 1 million members in Canada, today it has less than 300,000. For now it continues to circle the bowl, but is only a matter of time before it disappears altogether. There’s not an editorial sob story anywhere that will save the vile thing.
I agree totally. Council should permanently reject the decision made to tax the churches.
Kenn, your normally good judgement is clouded on this topic. Why should churches be exempt from paying for the services they receive? Why should people that do not subscribe to religion pay for the services of those that do? Granting blanket exemption from property tax of all religious institutions is morally and ethically wrong. Religious people saying, “you shouldn’t make us pay our share because we help people”, is absolutely wild. If you can’t even pay your own share, your net help is negative.
If you want to support non-profit charitable work, you can do that through grant funding based on applications, and if the churches want to submit to receiving grants based on the work that they do, they can be evaluated along with all other organizations of any or no faith.
Yes, they should be fair. Churches use a lot of the same services like everyone else – garbage collection, snow plowing etc. and should pay property tax to cover their fair share of the expenses.
Spaces that are used for community-wide charity, such as the food banks operated at the church or mosque, should be exempt because of the benefit they provide to the whole city.
But the worship spaces should not have a blanket exemption. They are for the benefit of a specific religious community, not everyone.
That said, they likely don’t use city services to the extent some other institutions do, so having a separate tax category for them makes sense, but it should be based on a fair estimation of the city services used by the worship spaces.
“Historically, they were exempt from taxes because of the benefit they provide. Also, taxing God’s work wasn’t popular with voters.”
That is historical revisionism. Churches were exempt from taxes historically because they received tax income through mandatory tithing or from payments by the government (which they collected via their own taxation), and governments were afraid to levy taxes on the wealth the churches collected because of the threat of excommunication and throwing their support behind a challenger to the throne. Later on it was an assumption in common law that churches by definition did good, therefore they shouldn’t be taxed.
Churches are charities! They are not for profit businesses or companies. They rely on passing the plate to survive in order to provide people with spiritual support and guidance. Cant the city give them a break for Gods Sake. All other cities do. We can be better Iqaluit!!!
Tax…alll…churches…
Exactly so. Churches were exempt from taxes because of the power they had. Same as how the King and the Nobility were exempt from taxes. Taxes were for the “common people” to pay.
What we are seeing now is how Organized Religion exercises power, even today.
What are the churches in town actually doing for the city ? At least the mosque is running a food bank and feeding people. It woukd be nice to see the various churches in town to step up and serve the community and not just stick to the minimum they do.
Amen!
Taxing churches was the punitive result of small and petty minds in Iqaluit.
Our community is broader and more tolerant than that.
What is a church? I can go to spaghettimonster.org and become an ordained minister of The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, one of the fastest growing religions in the world. If I hold prayer meetings in my house or business, does it qualify as a church and therefore a tax exemption? What about Phenomenological Determinism? Should the government be deciding what is or isn’t a religion?
Nonprofit organizations should be granted tax relief based on their benefit to the community, not their relationship to invisible friends or their sale of good feelings.
Thank you! Atheist here but appreciate your point of view…. Ramen.
Another brainiac idea by Kenny Bell to tax churches and open a liquor store🙄
Churches are purveyors of mass delusion impossible without lies, manipulation and exploitation of ignorance. May we see their end soon.
Its interesting that so many posters are not interested in addressing the issue, they go right to the assertion of their religion, atheism, as the reason to tax churches. Forget the community benefit, the non-profit status, and the charity. No, tax churches because “my belief” says that “their belief” is not true.
.
Of course, no one will be intellectually honest and engage in substantiating their belief in atheism. That is the nature of online atheism generally, just a lot of hubris and echo chambers where these people convince themselves that their belief is nothing is not only correct, but obvious. No, everyone who can believe in a religion is “delusional” or “exploited”, so tax them.
.
These organizations do plenty of good for the community. Some do different acts of charity than others. But as the article suggests, cherry-picking based on your feelings about a religion, like Kenny Bell, is not sound tax policy. Most posters jump to the same conclusion here: I had a bad experience, I am not convinced despite doing zero personal reflection of investigation, or I watched three videos by Richard Dawkins so for those reasons, tax them all, well all of them except the Mosque, and well any ones that we feel are deserving.
The Mosque at least does something tangible for the community. Unfortunately the Anglican church can’t afford to help much, being consumed by the heating bill for the huge, impractical space occupies.
By the way, you don’t prove Atheism. It is not a philosophy. It is simply a refusal to participate in the mass delusion we call religion.
You don’t benefit from a unique worldview that need not be proven. This is a common cop out, because it’s always easier to say you don’t need to answer a question than answer it. The best answer you’ll have is “we don’t know yet” after you boil it down from a few questions. I assume like most you’re a naturalist.
In philosophy, and law ‘onus probandi, or “burden of proof” is a fundamental principle that the person who makes an assertion or claim has the obligation to provide sufficient evidence or justification for it, not the skeptic to disprove it.
For example, if I told you Elvis is still alive, it is not your burden to disprove what I’ve said, but for me to prove it is true.
That you call something so obvious a ‘cop out’ shows which of us is truly operating at the high school level here.
I agree the onus is on those who assert things. This applies to atheism as well as theism. The definition of atheism is ostensibly that there there is no god. As I said, instead of applying this standard to yourself you have copped out. This means you’re are avoiding a responsibility, commitment, or difficult situation, often by making an excuse. You have done exactly what I indicated, and then followed it up with exactly the false premise you started with: “I don’t need to prove anything”. Bonus points for the ad hominem.
Your problem begins with the definition you’ve chosen. The ‘A’ before theism (belief in god) means ‘without’ or ‘lack of.’ So, the definition of Atheism is not “there is no god” but that one is without belief in God.
I suspect your confusion goes further and likely follows from the presuppositon ‘god exists.’ To deny the claim is, to you, an assertion that demands evidence. This is the fallacy known as ‘shifting the burden of proof.’
So, can you prove god exists, or can I prove otherwise? No, the question is unfalsifiable as it stands beyond empirical testing.
This is a problem theists often solve by reference to ‘faith’ (belief that excludes both doubt and evidence). This is convenient as it solves the burden of evidence entirely. However, it is also a cop out, as you like to say.
“Of course, no one will be intellectually honest and engage in substantiating their belief in atheism.”
Interesting. Have you ever engaged in substantiating your belief that Zeus, Odin, Izanagi, Horus, Huitzilopochtli, and literally thousands of other deities do not exist? Or do you simply think they do not exist? Because if that’s the case, you’re an atheist. You just have one exception.