Case studies · Moncton
Eight revocations in four years, and one of them is alive.
Moncton, Dieppe and the Acadian shore of Beauséjour. 456 charities that filed a 2024 return, read from the public record.
The Gazette prints a revocation. It does not say whether the organization was still there.
What the sector looks like here.
These two ridings have 456 registered charities and one community in two languages. Moncton–Dieppe is the city and its francophone twin; Beauséjour follows the Acadian shore through Shediac, Cap-Pelé, Bouctouche and Richibucto and turns inland to Memramcook. Moncton has been officially bilingual since 2002. In Dieppe, Shediac, Cap-Pelé and Memramcook three people in four know French, and for a third of the metropolitan area French is the only official language they have. The Université de Moncton, the largest French-language university outside Quebec, and the Archidiocèse de Moncton are both here. Any work done with boards in this community is done in both languages.
The sector is built evenly. Fifty-six organizations run on over $2 million, the hospital foundations and the university among them, and the median charity runs on $156,000. Religion is the largest group, 185 of the 456, with community benefit next. The shore's parishes and halls file alongside the city's institutions, and the two halves are close in size: 260 charities in the city, 196 on the shore.
This year's strain comes from outside the sector. The province is running the largest deficit in its history, forecast at $1.4 billion in March 2026 and revised to almost $1.7 billion in August, with 1,400 public-service positions to go. The Université de Moncton's operating grant is frozen, its tuition is up four per cent, and its new international enrolment fell by two-fifths. Homelessness in the city, about 550 people in late 2024 against 59 counted in 2016, has outgrown the thirty organizations that answer to it, and the city has twice taken a building from another charity's program to house the response.
By annual revenue
By charitable purpose
Purpose is the category head on the CRA return. Median revenue here is $156,000; the median board has 7 members.
What the record shows about strain.
The model flags thirty-seven charities here, eight per cent, a little under the national nine. A flag means only that an organization's filings over several years resemble those of charities that later lost their registration. Sixteen of the thirty-seven run on under $150,000, and fewer than five have the stronger flag.
Eight registrations were revoked between 2022 and 2025, fewer than two in a hundred over four years, and the split between the two reasons is too small to print. They are eight separate organizations, not one decision printed eight times. One of them, among the shore's best-known cultural attractions, was printed in the Gazette in February 2024 as revoked for failing to file, and is registered today and publicly funded, with close to $600,000 in federal money for its upgrades. A Gazette notice records a revocation. It does not say whether the organization was still there.
A second kind of closure is possible here and has not happened in this case study's window. The archdiocese registers its parishes under one business number, and it said in 2017 that twenty of its fifty-three churches were at risk of closing. One decision in the chancery can end many registrations at once. A parish council on the shore should know that its number is not its own.
What an ending looks like here.
A company without share capital in New Brunswick ends by surrendering its charter under section 35.2 of the Companies Act: a by-law of the board, a two-thirds vote of the members, and a twelve-dollar form to the Director. A registered charity ends under the Income Tax Act as well, everywhere in Canada. The city has done both in public, twice, in two different circumstances.
The Seniors Information Centre ended when its money stopped. For thirteen years it helped people over fifty and their families find their way through the services, ran the tax clinics, and mailed a bilingual magazine to twenty thousand households. On 30 September 2020 it suspended every service, its provincial funding having been discontinued with very little notice. The board said so in both languages, passed the magazine and the community calendar to new owners so that they would go on, thanked the people who had done the work, and asked for its registration to be revoked. The Gazette printed that in March 2023, two and a half years after the last day. An orderly closure can take that long.
Five Anglican parishes acted before the money stopped. They spent two years, with a vote at every stage and twenty-two months of a planning committee's work, becoming the Parish of the Six Saints on 1 April 2024, four of the five congregations having twenty people or fewer; the diocese said the aim was to decide from strength rather than from desperation. A year later St. Philip's, opened in 1957, held its last service with the archbishop present and three of the original thirty-four choir voices in the pews, and the building was sold. The quilting group moved to St. James and still gives its quilts away. The congregation held three evenings of memory before the doors closed, as the synod's guidelines suggest.
Both were decided by the people who would live with the decision, one after the funding stopped and one before it did. Neither appears in the Gazette as anything more than a line, and one does not appear at all.
Who sits on the boards.
One hundred and eighty organizations, four in ten, share a director with another, through 171 people; one person sits on twenty-five boards. Drawn out, it is two networks: a city's, dense around the hospitals and the university, and a shore's, where the same few people sit on the parish, the hall and the festival, and the two are joined almost evenly.
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.
In Moncton, closing together would mean boards from the city and the shore working together in two languages, because the same people sit on boards in both.
A host charity, usually a healthy one with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch, would invite boards from the two ridings in French and in English. Each organization that joins passes a board motion naming a coordinator from its own community and takes its own Toolkit licence in the edition of its language, at no cost where the board has already decided to wind down. Public Benefit brings the method, the binder, the training, and a phone number that is answered. When the last of them has closed, the method stays in Moncton.
The centre and the parishes in this case study are named because they ended, or joined, by their own decision and said so in public. The organization the Gazette printed in error is not named, because it is alive. We do not use the model to approach anyone. A board 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 in Moncton, hosted by a local charity.
The public record only shows so much. A roundtable brings six to twenty community leaders in Moncton 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 healthy local charity with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch, 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.
- The Seniors Information Centre closed its doors on 30 September 2020 when its provincial funding stopped with little notice, and its registration was revoked at its own request two and a half years later. Which of the city's organizations that run on a single provincial contract have asked their board what the last day would look like, and how long the orderly closure after it would take?
- Five Anglican parishes spent two years, with a vote at every stage, becoming the Parish of the Six Saints in April 2024, and St. Philip's held its last service a year later with its quilting group moved down the road. Religion is the largest group in these two ridings. Which of the shore's parishes and the city's congregations have begun that conversation, and which are waiting for the chancery to have it for them?
- One of the shore's best-known cultural attractions was printed in the Gazette as revoked for failing to file in 2024, and is registered and publicly funded today. Of the failure-to-file revocations in these two ridings, how many were real closures, and who on a board here would know the difference?
- About 550 people were homeless in Greater Moncton in late 2024, up from 59 counted in 2016, and the city's answer has twice taken a building from another charity's program. Which boards here have a plan for the day their space, or their contract, is needed for something more urgent?
- One person here sits on twenty-five boards, and a hundred and seventy-one people make the connections between a hundred and eighty organizations across the city and the shore. Which of the seventy-two boards of three members or fewer would lose their quorum if one of those people stepped back this winter?
The Critical Path
Closing an organization in New Brunswick.
A charity in New Brunswick closes twice: once under the Companies Act, which governs the corporation, and once under the Income Tax Act, which governs the registration. The two have an order, and no government page sets it out.
The Critical Path, New Brunswick edition, is that order on one folded sheet: 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. This case study is printed inside it. It will come as part of Foundations, with the Guide and access to the Foundations Course. Foundations is in development.
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.
A mailing address is not a service area, and 22 of Canada's 343 ridings are not yet in the postal-code 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: Seniors Information Centre, the board's statement on suspending services, 30 September 2020 (archived); Anglican Diocese of Fredericton on five Moncton-area parishes becoming the Parish of the Six Saints, April 2024; Anglican Diocese of Fredericton, How to close a church, on St. Philip's last service, May 2025; CBC on the New Brunswick deficit rising to almost $1.7 billion, August 2026; Radio-Canada on the Université de Moncton's 2026-27 deficit and tuition increase, April 2026; CBC on the Wishart and Hicks report on homelessness in Moncton, March 2026; CBC on the point-in-time count and about 550 people homeless in Moncton, December 2024; CBC on the seniors' centre plan at 1010 St. George Boulevard falling through, May 2025; Radio-Canada, 20 églises menacées de fermeture dans l'archidiocèse de Moncton, 2017; Statistics Canada, Key facts on the French language in New Brunswick in 2021; Canada Revenue Agency, List of charities, basic search.
Sources: CRA List of Charities and T3010 returns, 2011 to 2024; Canada Gazette, Part I, revocations 2022 to 2025; 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.