London, Ont.
The national office of the Anglican Church of Canada has hired an accounting firm to investigate the way in which a $9-million lease for its new Toronto location at 300 Bloor Street West—space to be shared with the national offices of the United Church of Canada and the Presbyterian Church of Canada—was approved.
Delivering the report of the Financial Management Committee (FMC), Canon (lay) Clare Burns, chancellor of General Synod, told General Synod on June 24 that senior officers of the national church had hired Doane Grant Thornton to investigate the approval process for the lease. Burns said Archdeacon Alan Perry, general secretary of General Synod, and Amal Attia, treasurer and CFO, were the signatories on the lease, signed April 29, 2024.
“Obviously there is a question about why this lease was not taken to the Council of General Synod for its financial commitment,” Burns said, explaining the decision to hire Doane Grant Thornton. The accounting firm had begun its investigation about two weeks prior and had not completed it, she said, meaning they could not report any results to General Synod. Burns later told the Anglican Journal she did not know when the investigation would be complete.
Weeks before the latest meeting of General Synod, Archbishop Anne Germond, acting primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, announced that Perry had taken a leave of absence effective June 3. Her statement did not say why Perry was taking leave or for how long it would be.
The FMC reported to General Synod that $15.09 million was available in unrestricted funds in the Consolidated Trust Fund (CTF), a group of investments the Anglican Church of Canada does not typically use for operational expenses but can draw upon in emergencies. The total value of the CTF in 2024 was about $42.8 million.
The lease for 300 Bloor Street West begins on June 1, 2026 and commits the Anglican Church of Canada to roughly $9 million of expenses over five years, Burns said. That figure includes fixed rent at $19 per square foot, totalling $1.06 million; additional rent including property taxes, utilities, maintenance and insurance, currently estimated at $628,245 per year or $45 per square foot annually; and leasehold improvements—i.e. filling out the empty building structure and turning it into offices, organized space, etc.—which is estimated to cost $3.98 million.
Burns said the Anglican, United and Presbyterian churches had been discussing for many years the possibility of moving their respective headquarters into a single space, both to build ecumenical relations and hopefully to save costs on office operations.
For the Anglican Church of Canada, she said, that idea was based on the plan that it would sell its interests in the property of Church House, General Synod’s current national office located at 80 Hayden Street in Toronto. The intention, Burns said, was that “we would sell Church House and we would use the income earned off the sale proceeds to pay the lease in our new location.”
Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Burns said, investment management firm Colliers told General Synod that it might be able to receive $15-$17 million by selling its interest in the property at 80 Hayden Street in 2020. CoGS subsequently approved giving the general secretary authority to sign a non-binding memorandum of understanding to move the project forward with the Presbyterian and United churches.
In May 2024, shortly after signing the lease for 300 Bloor Street West, Perry told the Anglican Journal that General Synod management did not have concrete numbers for operations costs at the new building or a solid plan for its property at 80 Hayden Street, adding, “We’ll be communicating with staff regularly now that this is becoming more public and will share information as it becomes available.”
The $9-million cost for the lease over five years, Burns said, “is relevant obviously to the financial health of the church,” as well as to a motion General Synod would vote on June 27—Resolution A020, which would permit the next Council of General Synod (CoGS) to allocate $2 million of unrestricted funds held in the CTF over three years to pursue the pathways outlined in the document Creating Pathways for the Transformational Change of the General Synod.
Any motion brought to General Synod that involves spending money, such as Resolution A020, must first go to the FMC. Burns said the committee had approved Resolution A020 as a motion before learning about the financial terms of the lease for 300 Bloor Street West.
Upon learning about those terms, the FMC withdrew its consent for the motion and referred the matter to the Expenditures Committee, a sessional committee that only sits during meetings of General Synod to provide financial review of motions on the floor. The Expenditures Committee heard June 23 that there would be an amendment to Resolution A020 when it comes before General Synod, Burns said.
The FMC was originally only considering whether A020 should be sent to the floor of General Synod with its recommendation and did not have the lease in May when it decided to do so, chair Canon Patricia Dorland told the Anglican Journal.
The committee withdrew its recommendation of A020 after hearing the terms of the lease for 300 Bloor Street West, she said, and it referred the motion to the Expenditures Committee given how soon it was to General Synod.
“FMC was not asked to and did not review the lease before it was signed,” Dorland said.
Following the FMC’s report, General Synod passed resolutions A130 and A131, which approved respectively the draft audited financial statements as at Dec. 31, 2024 of the CTF and the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada. As reported by the Journal in March, the statements show the national office with a $3.19 million excess of revenues over expenses in 2024—most of which, however, is unrealized or “paper” gain in the form of strong growth in the CTF. Without the CTF’s unusually strong performance, the national office would have ended up with a $237,000 deficit in 2024—despite $600,000 in pared-back spending and an unusually high contribution from one diocese.
