Two provincial synods have passed a resolution to call on General Synod to review the impacts of cuts to Council of the North funding. The resolution, passed this September by the ecclesiastical provinces of Ontario and British Columbia and Yukon, follow a 2023 decision which would see the council’s funding reduced by $100,000 yearly, beginning in 2024, until its annual apportionment is equal to 25 per cent of the donations the national church receives through diocesan proportional giving.
The resolution, phrased using the same wording in each province, asks two of each province’s representatives to General Synod 2025 to make a motion directing the Council of General Synod (CoGS) to review the effects of the financial cuts to the Council of the North “and find ways to continue to fund this ministry.” The BC and Yukon Facebook page shows a slide from that synod, including the resolution and several explanatory notes, including one that reads, “We uphold the life-giving ministry of the church in the more remote areas of our country and do not want to see this ministry diminish.” Another note says the Council of the North represents about 80 per cent of the Anglican Church of Canada’s geographical area.
The Council of the North is a group of northern dioceses that gets financial support from the national church and ministers to many remote and Indigenous communities. In 2024, the council received $2.05 million, down from the $2.15 million it had been receiving annually since 2013.
In 2007, the council agreed to an annual five per cent reduction in funding beginning in 2012 to help ease the burden on national finances that were beginning to strain under shrinking church attendance and donations, General Synod Treasurer Amal Attia told CoGS in a Nov. 8 budget presentation.
The church was able to keep the budget steady from 2014 to 2021 and decided not to make the cut in those years. However, General Synod managers and officers eventually settled on the idea of reducing Council of the North funding by $100,000 each year, starting in 2024, until it reaches one-quarter of proportional giving, according to a document explaining the decision and submitted to CoGS in advance of the November meeting.
Between 2018 and 2023, the annual amount of diocesan proportional giving declined by about $2 million from about $8 million to about $6 million. The $2.05 million sent to the Council of the North therefore comprises about one third of that total. General Synod managers and officers settled on the gradual reduction to avoid making a drastic and immediate cut to the council’s funding, according to the document submitted to CoGS.
“Dioceses are increasingly informing the General Synod that they are unable to support General Synod at the same levels as previously,” the document reads. “Continuing to bear the reductions in revenue solely from General Synod operations while maintaining the Council of the North grant at the current level is increasingly unsustainable. We need to find a way in partnership, to bear the consequences of reduced revenue together.”
It does not specify how they arrived at the floor of 25 per cent of proportional giving.
Bishop David Lehmann of the province of Caledonia, chair of the Council of the North, said he understood the need for General Synod to cut spending amid the ongoing decline of resources. However, he said, with cost-cutting measures in place in the North and three dioceses opting to ask for less money than usual from the council this year, ministry in northern Canada is stretched thin. And on top of the financial strains elsewhere in the country, he said, inflation has an even greater effect on cost of living in northern Canada because of the cost of deliveries from the South.
Lehmann also said that while he was involved in negotiating the reduction to 25 per cent of proportional giving with General Synod leaders and financial staff in 2023, the issue was never discussed at CoGS that year. Lehmann said he did not bring it up himself at the 2023 gatherings, as he did not want to raise the possibility of even further cuts.
“Knowing that it was a fight to get the 25 per cent [floor], that it could easily become less and that there are people who would have proposed have proposed recent budgets that would remove Council of the North entirely, that fear drives some of our reactions to things. Fearing that we could be seen as another unnecessary expense.”
Archdeacon Alan Perry, general secretary of General Synod, declined to comment on why the issue was not brought up for open discussion at CoGS.
In her budget presentation, Attia told CoGS that the Council of the North “is always a big part of the General Synod and will remain a big part of the General Synod.” Also in that presentation, however, she said the church would need to make major changes to its finances in order to remain solvent in the years beyond 2025.
