Case studies · The Anglican Church of Canada
Two structures inside one church.
An episcopal church: parishes registered on their own in some dioceses, under the synod's number in others. 940 registrations that filed a 2024 return, read from the public record.
Some parishes hold their own registration; some are held by the diocese. The record keeps both.
What the sector looks like here.
The Anglican Church of Canada is two structures inside one church, and the record shows both. The 940 registrations it lets us pick out come in two kinds. Three hundred and sixty-seven are held as sub-numbers of a diocesan synod, ten synods in all, from Niagara and Ottawa with eighty-three each to Eastern Newfoundland, Kootenay, Caledonia, and the Yukon. Five hundred and seventy-three parishes hold their own registration, in the name of the incumbent and churchwardens or of the church itself. The church, the bishop and the canons are the same; the two are different ways of being a charity. The church counts about 2,800 congregations in 1,700 parishes across thirty dioceses, so the true number is higher than ours; the foot of this case study says why.
The median registration runs on $126,000, the total is $352 million, and fifty-six per cent run on under $150,000. The boards are small, a median of five, and twenty-three per cent report three members or fewer, which for a parish means the incumbent and the two wardens, the rector's and the people's, and no one else on the return.
Ontario has a third, the Prairies and the Atlantic provinces a fifth each; and the Atlantic share is the diocesan kind, because Newfoundland's synods hold their parishes under the synod's number and Ontario's mostly do not.
By annual revenue
By region
Region follows the riding a registration's mailing address falls in; 57 could not be assigned. Median revenue is $126,000 and the whole body reports $352 million; the median board has 5 members.
What the record shows about strain.
The model flags sixty registrations, six per cent, under Canada's nine. A flag means only that an organization's filings over several years resemble those of charities that later lost their registration. Forty-one of the sixty run on under $150,000, and fewer than five have the stronger flag. The church's own figures for 2019 to 2022 are the harder ones: parish rolls down twelve per cent, Sunday attendance down twenty-six, identifiable givers down seventeen.
The value of this case study is the comparison inside it. Parishes held by a diocese are flagged a little less often than parishes on their own, six per cent against seven, and are a little larger, but they have more tiny vestries, not fewer. Since 2019 the record shows eighty Anglican revocations: thirty chosen and fifty for failing to file. Among parishes on their own number, twice as many lapsed as chose; among parishes held by a diocese, the split is closer, seventeen lapsed to thirteen chosen. The diocesan number helps. It does not, on this record, rescue a parish from a closure it did not decide.
We do not name any of them. A parish that stops filing has usually stopped meeting, and the wardens who signed the last return were the last two people willing to.
The two structures, side by side
| Held by a diocese | Registered on their own | |
|---|---|---|
| Registrations | 367 | 573 |
| Median revenue | $150,000 | $100,000 |
| Boards of three or fewer | 24% | 22% |
| Flagged by the model | 21 (5.7%) | 39 (6.8%) |
| Revocations since 2019 | 30 | 50 |
| … chosen | 13 | 17 |
| … for failing to file | 17 | 33 |
"Held by a diocese" means registered as a sub-number of one of 10 synods' business numbers; "on their own" means the parish holds its own number.
Revocations on the record, by year
Revocations published in the Canada Gazette, matched by name and by the synods' business numbers, 2011 to 5 September 2026. 175 in all.
What an ending looks like here.
An Anglican parish ends under its diocese's canons first, and the canons differ by diocese. In Toronto, a special vestry may resolve by two thirds that the parish be disestablished, the bishop approves under hand and seal, the registers go to the diocesan registrar, the wardens stay on three months to wind up, and the property and its proceeds pass to the Synod, which under the diocese's canons held them all along whatever name was on the deed. Niagara's canon is nearly the same, with a year's grace in which seventy-five members of the last vestry may petition to found the parish again elsewhere. Some dioceses return part of the sale proceeds to the congregation; others none. Then the parish ends under the Income Tax Act, with the final return, the transfer of what it held in its own name, and the notice in the Gazette. For a parish under the synod's number, that second step is the diocese's paperwork. For a parish on its own number, it is the wardens'.
That is why the record is worth reading here: the diocese has the property and the authority, and the parish has the people and, half the time, the registration. Whichever has the number has to file the final return, and the record shows which of them forgets.
Who sits on the boards.
Seventy-three of the registrations we can pick out share a lay director with another, and no one sits on more than three. Diocesan holding does not show up as shared people; it shows up as a shared number.
Bubbles are organizations, coloured by purpose and sized by revenue band. Dots are people who sit on two or more of these boards. Drag to move, scroll to zoom, click to see one organization's connections, click the background to clear. No one is named: the shape is public, the people are not.
The work
What we would do here.
For Anglican parishes, closing together would mean working alongside a diocese that already has the property and the canons, from one Toolkit with the diocesan pages in it.
Parishes closing together would be hosted by a healthy charity with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch, or by the diocese itself. The parishes that join, held or independent, each pass a motion in vestry naming a coordinator from among their own people, and take their own Toolkit licence, at no cost where the vestry has already resolved to close. The diocesan pages of the Toolkit set out the canonical closure in its order beside the legal one, so that the wardens and the archdeacon are working from the same page. When the last of them has closed, the diocese keeps the method, and the next parish does not start from nothing.
Nothing in this case study names a parish, and we do not use the model to approach anyone. A vestry that recognizes itself here can start the conversation.
Roundtables · the community of practice, in one room
Come and correct us.
A day or an evening with the parishes of one diocese, hosted by a diocesan synod.
The public record only shows so much. A roundtable brings six to twenty community leaders from the parishes of one diocese together for a day or an evening to go over this case study, correct it, and work out what the charities near them are facing. It is hosted by a diocesan synod, and a sponsor helps defray the cost. Within the month we send a report in the room's own words, and the corrections this case study owes are made and dated in the correction log. How a roundtable works, and who provides what.
What we will ask at the roundtable.
- In Toronto and Niagara a parish is disestablished by a two-thirds vote of vestry and the bishop's hand and seal, and its property passes to the Synod. Which dioceses hold the registration for their parishes and which leave it with the wardens, and do the wardens know which they are?
- Among parishes on their own number, twice as many lapsed as chose since 2019. In how many of those was there still a building held for the diocese, and what did the diocese do when the Gazette notice arrived?
- Twenty-three per cent of vestries report three or fewer: the incumbent and the two wardens. How many parishes have a people's warden who is also the treasurer, the secretary, and the last person on the roll?
- Some dioceses return part of a closed parish's sale proceeds to the congregation and others none. Does that change whether a vestry chooses to end, or only when?
- Which diocese would host its parishes closing together, and would it bring both kinds of parish, held and independent, into the same room?
The Critical Path
Closing an organization, wherever it is incorporated.
Each organization in this case study is incorporated in a province or territory, or federally, and it closes under that statute first and under the Income Tax Act second. The two have an order, and no government page sets it out.
The Critical Path is that order on one folded sheet, one edition per jurisdiction: each step from the first hard conversation to the last filing, who decides it, and the document it files, with its regulator, its fee, and a specimen of its first page. Each edition will come as part of Foundations, with the Guide and access to the Foundations Course. Foundations is in development.
The other national bodies.
How this case study was made.
Public data, and math. The full method brief.
The counts are arithmetic on three public files: the Canada Revenue Agency's list of charities and their annual returns, 2011 to 2024; the Canada Gazette's notices of revocation; and Elections Canada's postal code file, which places a mailing address in a riding. A "flag" is the mark our model, Canary v3 / Distress v3, puts on a charity whose filings over several years resemble those of charities that later lost registration. It is a weak signal and we say so: about 1.4 in a hundred charities lose their registration within three years, about 2.9 in a hundred flagged ones do, and the rest carry on. We use flags to count, never to approach anyone.
This body's registrations are picked out by name and by the synods' shared business numbers. Parishes registered under a saint's name alone are missed, so the true count is higher than this case study's. Regions follow the riding of the mailing address, and 22 of Canada's 343 ridings are not yet in the crosswalk. Where a count is under five, we print "fewer than five", so that no organization can be picked out of it. The method brief has the model's validation, the counting rules, and the limits in full.
Local record, as reported: Anglican Church of Canada, the structure of the church (General Synod 2025); Diocese of Toronto, Canon 13 (disestablishment); Diocese of Niagara, book of canons (2021); Anglican Journal on parishes, money, and closure proceeds, 2025; Anglican Journal on membership decline, 2019 to 2022.
Sources: CRA List of Charities and T3010 returns, 2011 to 2024; Canada Gazette, Part I, revocations 2019 to 2026; Elections Canada, 2023 representation order. Model: Canary v3 / Distress v3, 1 July 2026; out-of-time AUC 0.68; flag precision 2.5 to 3.3 per cent. Counting script: case-study.py; the riding-level counts it produces: case-studies-aggregate.csv. The organization-level score file is available to a reviewer under a data agreement, and the method paper on request. If you find an error in the counting, write to info@publicbenefit.ca; we will correct the case study and record it in the correction log.