BC’s 2024-25 Public Accounts list a $1.1 million payment to the AMSSA Community Education Society. The charity’s tax return for the year ended March 2025 reports about $265,000 in total revenue.
The records Coastal Front reviewed do not reconcile those figures or identify what the payment funded.
The charity is administered by the Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of BC, known as AMSSA, the umbrella association for BC’s immigrant- and newcomer-serving agencies. AMSSA says the separately incorporated charity receives public and private funding and distributes money to community partners. Together, AMSSA and the charity were listed for at least $14.2 million in federal and BC transfers from 2021-22 to 2024-25, a Coastal Front tally of federal and BC payment records shows.
The payment appears in BC’s April 2024 schedule. The province says that schedule can include invoices that relate to either the 2023-24 or 2024-25 fiscal year. The charity uses accrual accounting, which records revenue in the period it is earned, even if payment arrives at another time, the Canada Revenue Agency’s guide says. Its preceding return, for the year ended March 2024, reports about $105,000 in total revenue.
In other words, the payment may belong to a different year than the one BC listed it in, but neither of the charity’s two most recent returns shows revenue anywhere near $1.1 million.
AMSSA’s website says the charity’s financial management and program oversight are provided through AMSSA’s staff and systems. The records reviewed do not establish whether the payment was recorded in AMSSA’s accounts.
The money came from the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction. Its 2024-25 annual service plan report names AMSSA among organizations with which it collaborated through “multiple strategic grants and shared program implementation,” but gives no amount or connection to the payment.
In BC’s lobbyist registry, AMSSA declared about $378,000 from that ministry to itself for 2024-25. The Public Accounts show no payment from the ministry to AMSSA that year. The registry warns its funding figures are “not intended to be additive,” and no record reviewed shows whether AMSSA’s declaration includes money paid to the charity.
Put simply, AMSSA reports money from the ministry that the province’s books don’t show going to AMSSA directly, while the province’s books show far more going to the charity than the charity reports. No record reviewed explains either difference.
Coastal Front asked AMSSA, for itself and the AMSSA Community Education Society, and the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction for comment on November 5. Neither had replied by the time of publication.