Deleted emails and the hushed-up loss of millions of dollars under the watch of former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, and charges of financial impropriety on the part of senators, have Canadians demanding financial accountability and transparency from publicly funded institutions.

The Jewish community is no different. In recent weeks its members have begun to question one of the largest allocations of communal funds – $8.1 million to the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) – which has been used in part to finance trips to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah II, and to Israel an unknown number of times for persons unknown. Following revelations that CIJA paid for a two-week trip to Israel for a production company to shoot a video depicting a threesome in a Tel Aviv bathroom, members of the Jewish community have become vocal in demanding answers.

Yet a veil of secrecy descends when CIJA’s professionals and directors are asked about budget approvals and allocations made to date.

Although CIJA claims to serve as “the Canadian Jewish community’s official spokesperson to government and media,” according to the bio on CIJA CEO Shimon Fogel’s Times of Israel blog, the community has challenged that assumption and is demanding to know what messages are actually being transmitted to government.

But what happens when the Jewish community’s “official spokesperson” to the media only speaks to media that asks easy questions?

Straightforward questions posed by the Tribune to Martin Sampson, CIJA’s director of communications and marketing, go unacknowledged and unanswered. The Tribune’s requests for interviews relating to CIJA’s $8 million budgets are met with “no comment” emails from Sampson.

Sampson has informed the Tribune by email that all requests must be funnelled through him alone.

However, Sampson is not the only one who won’t answer questions. The majority of CIJA board members and funders refuse outright to speak to the Jewish media, which asks hard questions. Others, with palpable fear in their voices, demand that their names not be mentioned in articles about CIJA and that even their “no comment” must be off the record.

Few people are willing to pull back the curtain on CIJA and speak on the record – either for or against – regarding its decision-making process. Stockwell Day, who has talked to the Tribune previously, was one notable exception.

Joseph Winter, president of the Toronto Zionist Council, said he doesn’t know how CIJA’s board members make their decisions about how and where community money is spent but he’d be interested to find out.

“I have no idea what they do,” said Winter. “I don’t think that we need an organization like CIJA on top of everything else. I was satisfied with Federation when they were running the show and I’m not in favour of the contacts that they [CIJA] make with the Palestinians and [CIJA’s] mixing into the business of the Israeli government.”

Rabbi Reuben Poupko, spiritual leader of Beth Israel Beth Aaron Congregation in Montreal, said he had only been a member of CIJA’s board of directors for a couple of weeks but he had already had the opportunity to vote in favour of CIJA’s next annual budget, although he admitted it was not a line-by-line approval.

Questions CIJA refused to answer for us last week:

1. Did CIJA send a delegation to Israel for the celebrations of President Shimon Peres’s 90th birthday? If yes:

a) Who was in CIJA’s delegation?

b) Who decided on the make-up of the delegation?

c) What hotel(s) did the members of CIJA’s delegation stay in?

2. On all of CIJA’s missions to Israel since its inception as the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA 1.0), have they visited Hebron, Ariel, Shilo, Ma’ale Adumim, Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem and/or the Temple Mount?

3. Did CIJA cover all expenses of its recent LGBTQ mission to Israel and did this mission visit the aforementioned sites?

4. How are people appointed to CIJA’s board of directors?

5. Who decides how and where CIJA’s annual budget of $8.1 million is spent?

6. Does CIJA publish an annual report and is it available to members of the public?

7. Please provide the Jewish Tribune with copies of all annual reports published to date by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA 2.0) and the last three reports published by the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA 1.0).