Charitable Impact Foundation, known as "CHIMP," claims to have received $1.5 billion from more than 200,000 Canadians and claims to be the "fastest growing" giving network in Canada. That sounds impressive but, as I have said many times at this blog, there are signs of trouble.
A few years ago, Deloitte warned that it could not vouch for $193 million of CHIMP's assets . Within weeks, CHIMP's entire board resigned and Deloitte is no longer CHIMP's auditor.
CHIMP advertises that it helps Canadian to make a "true impact" with "absolute confidence."
Here are a few questions that anyone thinking of working with CHIMP might want to ask:
1. Deloitte Audit:
2. $94 Million paid to Chimp Technology Inc.
3. $24.5 Million from the sale of Quest University
4. Sale of 83 Apartments
4. 188 Real Estate Properties
5. Is CHIMP being audited by CRA?
Tax-receipted, non-cash donations: $639 Million (2011-2024) Figure 3 CHIMP (2009-2024) CHIMP Tax Return 2024 CHIMP Financial Statements 2024 Backgrounder CHIMP Real Estate $74 Million Gift for Refinancing Debt Chimp Annual Report 2018 CHIMP Gifts (2024) CRA email 2025-03-31
Updated April 8, 2025.
Good news!
The defamation claim brought against me, the author of this blog, has been dismissed following a court hearing in Vancouver on May 13 & 14, 2024. To read the reasons for judgement by Justice Kevin Loo, click here.
This goes back almost three years to when Scott Cousens, a Vancouver business person, filed a defamation claim against me because of a series of letters that I wrote to the City of Burnaby. My letters warned the City to do more due diligence before paying $26 million to Fortius Foundation, a charity of which Cousens claims to be the founder.
Fortius Foundation built and owned Fortius Sport & Health Centre until it was sold to the City of Burnaby for $26 million in the spring of 2021. It has since been renamed The Christine Sinclair Community Centre.
My main concerns with regards to Cousens and Fortius are:
1) Cousens claimed that he made a $23 million gift to build the sports centre but when one looks as a whole at all the transactions involved, there was no $23 million gift. Instead, there was a loan, not a true gift.
2) Fortius received a "gift" of $74 million from Charitable Impact Foundation ("CHIMP") but the $74 million just went in circles and back to CHIMP via Fortius and other charities, all run by the same people. Again, the $74 million was not a true gift. This concerns me because when that $74 million "gift" was reported in CHIMP's tax returns, it was the single largest in B.C. history, and one of the largest in Canadian history.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, when Cousens sued me, he had been just been informed that CRA intended to revoke the charitable status of Foundation Foundation. Not only that, CRA warned Cousens that Fortius could be assessed a penalty of nearly $13 million.
According to a CRA audit report, Fortius and Cousens' for-profit business, Fortius Institute, had an unwritten expense sharing agreement. Payroll-related expenses at the business were being paid via the charity.
CRA also found that Fortius Foundation "leased" the sports centre to Cousens' for-profit business, Fortius Institute, but failed to collect any rent owed. The outstanding amount over seven years was $21 million, according to financial statements.
Blaming me for having motivated CRA to audit and revoke the charitable status of Fortius Foundation, Cousens applied to the Federal Court of Appeal for an injunction against CRA. His application was dismissed. He then applied to the Supreme Court of Canada and was again dismissed. Despite his charity having been revoked, and despite having lost in both the Federal Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada, Cousens pursued legal action against me for nearly three years. In response, I retained Dan Burnett, K.C. at Owen Bird Law Corp. and filed a motion for dismissal under the Protection of Public Participation Act. After two postponements, my motion was finally heard by Justice Kevin Loo.
For my dismissal motion to succeed in court, I needed to show that the comments about which I am being sued are a matter of public interest. I succeeded.
Justice Loo wrote, "I am of the view that it is in the public interest to consider whether someone is illegitimately taking funds from the public purse. Further, I note that the Letters were all published in the context of the sale of the Fortius Centre to the City. In my view, it is in the public interest to know whether an asset sold by a charitable foundation to a municipality for $25.8 million was funded by charitable donations or otherwise. Finally, it is in the public interest to know whether a person has legitimately taken public credit for a donation to build a recreational facility for the community."
The $23 Million
With regards to Scott Cousens' alleged $23 million gift, Justice Loo wrote:
“Mr. Cousens concedes that he did not donate the funds used to build the Fortius Centre directly to Fortius, but he asserts that he chose to structure his contribution to the Fortius Centre as loans from NDF (New Dimensions Foundation) and Imladris for ‘a variety of valid reasons.’
In my view, whether Mr. Cousens arranged this transaction for ‘valid reasons’ is not the point, at least with respect to justifying this particular defamatory statement. The point is that in public materials, Mr. Cousens stated that he made a $23 million donation 'to create' the Fortius Centre, and this statement appears to have been untrue based on the admitted facts.”
The $74 Million
With regards to the $74 million transaction between CHIMP and Fortius, Justice Loo wrote:
“In particular, CHIMP – a charity created by Mr. Bromley – made a gift of $74.7 million to Fortius, which in turn used the money to repay debts it owed to five different Bromley-created charities, including the debt to Imladris (which became $29 million with interest). But then all five of those charities made gifts back to CHIMP in the same or slightly greater amounts.”
Justice Loo concluded, “While it is beyond the scope of this application to make any conclusive findings regarding whether these transactions occurred as Ms. Krause alleges, or whether the transactions had some legitimate purpose, I note that Mr. Cousens does not appear to deny the basic facts underlying Ms. Krause’s allegations.”
This case is important because it raises troubling questions about CRA oversight. What does it say about CRA that some of the largest so-called "gifts" in Canadian history were not true gift? Furthermore, the so-called $74 million "gift" was made six years ago. Why is it taking CRA so long to audit and address this? Its not as if CRA isn't aware. It has been more than three years since I first wrote to CRA about this.
To read the reasons for judgement of Justice Kevin Lee, click here.
Charitable Impact Foundation, known as "CHIMP" claims that it is the "fastest growing" giving network in Canada. CHIMP says that 200,000 people have used CHIMP's website to donate $1.5 billion to 14,000 charities. If CHIMP truly has funded a billion dollars worth of charity, that's fantastic! The problem is, CHIMP has more red flags than a Chinese military parade.
This post is about one of these red flags, the payments that CHIMP has made for a total of $94 million paid to a private company owned by CHIMP's CEO and his father, John Bromley and Blake Bromley.
Since CHIMP began, CHIMP has been paying a private company called Chimp Technology Inc. ("Chimp Tech") to provide CHIMP with technology, human resources and business services. The striking thing about CHIMP's payments to Chimp Tech is how they have soared, as follows:
2011 $ 50,522
2012 $ 81,429
2013 $ 158,540
2014 $ 681,701
2015 $ 2,573,169
2016 $ 3,573,722
2017 $ 3,484,139
2018 $ 12,773,997
2019 $ 7,202,359
2020 $ 10,118,606
2021 $ 13,641,648
2022 $ 13,632,500
2023 $ 11,640,965
2024 $ 15 185 375
Total $ 94,798,672
The second thing to note is that Chimp Technology Inc. is a for-profit company run by John Bromley and Blake Bromley. John Bromley is CHIMP's CEO. Blake Bromley is John's father. This means is that CHIMP has paid $94 million to a for-profit company run by the charity's president and his dad. This is unusual and warrants explanation.
Lets be clear: There's nothing wrong with a charity paying for services from a private company. What's important is that the services are paid for at fair market value.
The third thing that is troubling here is the unexplained origin of the $94 million.
The main service that CHIMP provides is a website that enables donations to any charity in Canada. CHIMP says that this service is "free" to use.
Obviously, CHIMP didn't generate $94 million by providing a "free" service.
On securities and charitable investments, CHIMP charges a fee of 0.5%. Even if CHIMP had charged 0.5% on the entire $886 Million that CHIMP has reported as tax-receipted donations since CHIMP began, that's only $5 million, not $94 million.
So where did CHIMP get the $94 million?
In a long series of letters, John Bromley and Blake Bromley have been asked about the origin of the funds that CHIMP pays to their private company and other questions. A year ago, I wrote to John Bromley specifically about CHIMP's payments to Chimp Tech. No reply. At that point, CHIMP had paid $68 million to CHIMP Tech. Add in the payments over the last few years and the total is now $94 million.
In the absence of any explanation from the Bromley's, I wrote to CRA, requesting a CRA audit.
Updated: April 7, 2025.
Academic Success
Located in Squamish, B.C., the now defunct Quest university (“Quest”) was Canada’s first, independent university, similar to the Liberal Arts colleges across the U.S.
Quest began as a legacy project of the late Dr. David Strangway, a geophysicist who was referred to affectionately as "the moon rocks guy" because of his role in research on the surface of the moon. Strangway was the Chief Geophysicist at NASA, responsible for the Apollo 17 Missions that put men on the moon. Strangway is also a former president of both the University of Toronto and UBC.
As part of his legacy, Strangway wanted to create a new, alternative type of university that specialized in top calibre, undergraduate education. In this regard, Quest became a great success, consistently ranking higher than any other Canadian University in terms of student engagement.
Quest's faculty, hired initially by Strangway, was excellent. Glen van Brummelen and Richard Hoshino, for example, won prestigious prizes for teaching math.
But behind the scenes, Strangway's plucky, promising university was in trouble from the start because of financial shenanigans.
Strangway left Quest's Board of Governors shortly after the university opened in 2007. He wrote about his disappointments, especially with Quest's fundraiser, in an oped published by Macleans magazine.
Quest's Birthright: 240 Acres
Quest began in 2001 with the purchase of 240 acres of land which The District of Squamish re-zoned to allow the construction of 960 housing units. According to a Covenant put on the land, real estate development was to support and endow the university.
By 2006, about 100 acres had been sold to developers for approximately $35 million. This appears to have been put towards the costs of campus construction.
One of the crucial issues in Quest's financial history is the true cost of the construction of Quest's original campus and how this was paid for. From publicly available information, this is not entirely clear. Financial statements for Quest indicate that initial campus construction costs appear to have been somewhere between $21 million and $31 million, possibly as high as $47 million. This is significant because it means that most or perhaps all of the initial construction costs may have been covered by the proceeds from land sales. Put another way, the construction of Quest's campus appears to have been paid for with funds raised mostly from selling Quest's land, not from charitable donations.
Dubious Donations
Fundraising for Quest's start-up was handled by Blake Bromley, a lawyer with a reputation for tax planning arrangements that involve dubious charitable donations. In 2004, in a matter unrelated to Quest, Bromley was charged with 23 counts of tax evasion and making false of deceptive statements. While Bromley was acquitted, the judge found that Bromley had set up an elaborate series of transactions where no real money changed hands.
Bromley was a member of Quest's Board of Governors and so he had fiduciary duty to the university. A CRA audit report found that Bromley and others failed to fulfill their fiduciary responsibility with regards to one of the charities that Bromley set up in support of Quest, Association for the Advancement of Scholarship. CRA revoked its charitable status in 2023 following an audit that was completed 11 years earlier, in 2012.
Only now, years after Quest's campus was sold in 2020, Bromley's shenanigans, and those of others, are finally coming to light. One of the reasons this has taken so long is because the release of the CRA audit reports that reveal the truth has been delayed by an average of ten years. In one case, there was a delay of 21 years between the issuance of a tax receipt for $30 million and the closure of one of the charities involved, HSEF Renaissance Academy, in 2022.
Stewart Blusson
In addition to funds raised via land sales, Quest was to benefit from a gift of $100 million from Stewart Blusson, a pioneer of diamond mining in northern Canada. Blusson was a client of Bromley. Blusson's mining companies received tax receipts for at least $195 million. Sad to say, CRA audits eventually found that most or all of Blusson’s so-called gifts were not true charitable gifts.
For a gift to be a true charitable gift, worthy of a tax receipt, specific criteria must be met. Firstly, there must be a genuine intent to benefit the recipient ("donative intent"). Secondly, there must be a true transfer of property which generally impoverishes the donor. Thirdly, the gift must be made without the expectation of something in return.
CRA audit reports, not released until after years Quest was sold, reveal that Blusson’s gifts to Quest do not meet these criteria. Instead, via a complex series of pre-planned transactions, Blusson got back the shares that he claimed to have "donated." In one case, Blusson got back shares of his mining company, valued at $30 million, via a series of transactions that spanned five years. In another case, one of the charities that was supposed to support Quest lost nearly $8 million by buying shares of Blusson's mining company, according to CRA.
CRA audit reports and other sources indicate that Blusson’s purported gifts were part of a tax plan that ran afoul of CRA. This fatally flawed tax plan involved tax receipts issued by four of Bromley's charities for $195 million. But since these transactions were not true charitable gifts, Blusson got in trouble with CRA, resulting in a CRA judgement against Blusson’s personal residence for $8.6 million. But none of this became publicly known. Instead, it was all kept quiet.
72 Acres: Parcel A & Lot 12
Quest's campus accounts for 60 acres of the original 240 acres. After the initial land sales of about 100 acres, roughly 80 acres remained.
Over the same years that the Bromley's tax plan for Blusson ran afoul of CRA, Blusson obtained the ownership of nearly all of Quest’s undeveloped land, a total of 72 acres. This was only discovered in December of 2023. The 72 acres consists of two sections of land known as Parcel A (60 acres) and Lot 12 (12 acres).
A CRA audit found that the transfer of Lot 12 to one of Blusson's companies, 1012986 B.C. Ltd., was not a proper sale. As a result, the charity involved lost its charitable status - but not until five years after the sale took place.
Parcel A was transferred from Quest to Blusson's private foundation and then to Global Charity Fund which remains the registered owner. The problem, is Parcel A was transferred from Quest to Blusson's private foundation for only $1 and the "forgiveness" of a questionable debt. In the absence of any explanation from Blusson or his lawyer despite repeated requests for more than a year, this calls for investigation.
Quest's $75 Million "Debt"
Early on, another problem that Quest faced is that as soon as campus construction was completed, Bromley and another member of Quest’s Board of Governors, Peter Ufford, signed a mortgage loan which indebted Quest to the tune of $75 million to one of Bromley's charities. In hindsight, it seems highly unlikely that the $75 million debt could ever have been paid without selling Quest. This raises concern that from the outset, plans were laid to sell the university before it had even opened. Indeed, as far back as 2011, tentative plans were already in writing to close Quest if ambitious enrolment and financial criteria were not met. This gives the impression that from the beginning, Bromley appears to have set Quest up to be sold and to benefit from Quest's eventual sale. And as we now know, this appears to be exactly what eventually occurred, as explained in detail at this blog.
To most of us, it wouldn't even cross our minds to sign a mortgage and then not get any cash but that appears to be exactly what happened in Quest's case. Quest's financial statements do not appear to show any loan proceeds received as a result of the $75 million mortgage. So what was the point?
The $75 million mortgage that Bromley put on Quest was secured against Quest’s entire campus. This meant that if Quest defaulted, Bromley could force the sale of the entire university. The $75 million mortgage also meant that effectively, Quest had negative equity even though its campus had been paid for by the sale of much of Quest’s land. Also, Quest could not get loans through normal banking channels because the $75 million mortgage hung around Quest’s neck like a millstone.
Quest grew quickly but as to be expected, the university needed supplementary funding while enrolment grew. Unable to borrow from anywhere else, Quest was effectively cornered into taking loans from Bromley’s charities at high interest rates that he set.
According to the terms of a Funding Agreement, the funds initially advanced via Bromley’s charities were supposed to be gifts, not loans. But ultimately, these terms were not followed. In circumstances that are not entirely clear, Quest ended up in deep debt to Bromley’s charities, the same charities that received hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-receipted donations ostensibly in the name of supporting the university. Two of Bromley's charities that made loans to Quest issued tax receipts for $100 million.
In 2014, Quest’s loans were bundled into another mortgage loan secured against the entire campus (not part of the $75 million mortgage but a separate mortgage loan). When Quest defaulted, Bromley forced Quest into creditor protection and Quest was sold to pay a debt to one of Bromley's charities, Vanchorverve Foundation. Then, as soon as Vanchorverve received $25 million from Quest's sale, Vanchorverve transferred $24.5 million to a charity run by Bromley's son, Charitable Impact Foundation, known as "CHIMP."
The $24.5 million that CHIMP received from Quest's sale is part of a larger picture of $145 million that CHIMP has received over the past 20 years from a dozen charities involved in Quest's financial history. The $145 million includes the proceeds of the sale of Quest's land as well as the proceeds from land sales, the lease and sale of a student residence, royalty income, interest on loans and more. Over the same years, CHIMP has paid $79 million to a private company owned by Blake Bromley and John Bromley.
Under the shocking financial circumstances described here, Quest nonetheless delivered an extraordinary undergraduate education to approximately 1,000 students from across Canada and around the world. That's the Quest legacy of which David Strangway and all involved can be very proud. It is an outrage that such a worthy endeavour to improve post-secondary education was brought down by a few unscrupulous tax lawyers running circles around CRA.
Stewart Blusson has long been celebrated as the charitable donor who made possible the establishment of the now defunct, Quest University, located in Squamish, B.C.
In 2016, when Blusson was inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame, he was specifically credited for having donated $100 million towards Quest University. Likewise, when Blusson was awarded the Order of Canada, he was credited with having made a significant gift towards Quest (then known as Sea to Sky University).
In December of 2023, when it was discovered that Stewart Blusson is the beneficial owner of two large sections of Quest's original land (Parcel A & Lot 12), letters were written to Mr. & Mrs. Blussons in order to request a meeting with them to discuss the possibility of a donation of the land towards the re-start of Quest or a similar program that would advance the innovative academic model that Quest had pioneered.
Letters were sent to the Blussons by Ralph Sultan, Peter Gordon and Vivian Krause.
Much to our surprise, Mr. & Mrs. Blusson replied, through their lawyer, that they have "no desire to revive Quest University." Coming from Mr. Blusson who supposedly donated $100 million towards Quest, this response was quite the shock. This prompted me to dig deeper to try to figure out why Mr. Blusson would have no interest in supporting something to which he had supposedly given $100 million.
For a copies of all letters sent to Dr. & Mrs. Blusson and the reply from their lawyer, Marilyn Yiu, and other documents pertaining to this post, click here.
Ian Worland, a tax lawyer, based in Vancouver, was the Chair of the Board of Governors of Quest University over a period of nine years, from 2008 until 2017.
While Chair of Quest's board, Mr. Worland signed several documents that are crucial to Quest's financial history. Among these are:
These documents and the transactions that they pertain to raise a series of questions about the debt and mortgage loan on which Quest defaulted, leading ultimately to the sale and closure of the university.
Since Quest was sold in 2020, and subsequently closed, several CRA audit reports have been released (AAS, EDF, HSEF, HSSF & Timothy Foundation). These CRA reports provide previously unavailable information that raises questions about the loans that led to Quest's downfall. In particular, these audit reports reveal that Stewart Blusson, Quest's purported benefactor, never did make true charitable gifts for $100 million towards Quest, nor did he make true gifts for anywhere near that amount. Instead, in a complex series of transactions, Blusson got back the shares in his mining companies that he had supposedly "donated" without paying to buy them back. For an example of CRA's explanation of these transactions, click here.
During 2020, I tried to unsuccessfully to contact Ian Worland. In 2023, when Quest announced that it was closing, I tried again to contact Mr. Worland via LinkedIn.
In February of 2024, once I had learned that Stewart Blusson is the beneficial owner of most of the remaining sections of Quest's original land, I sent a detailed letter to Mr. Worland.
Among my key questions to Mr. Worland are the following:
1. Purported $100 Million from Stewart Blusson
2. Parcel A & Lot 12
4. Global Charity Fund Loans
In 2011, Quest began to take loans from Global Charity Fund (“GCF”), a charity run by Blake Bromley, Quest's original fundraiser. By 2014, Quest had eight loans from GCF for a total of $15,450,000 at interest rates of between 5% and 9%. These loans were consolidated into a mortgage loan on which Quest ultimately defaulted, resulting in Quest's sale and eventual closure.
NOTE: One of the funny things about the "gift" of $70,000,000 to Global Charity Fund is that it is recorded in CRA's digital database as $70,000, not $70,000,000. This is one of at least ten cases in which large gifts made by the Bromley charities are recorded incorrectly in CRA's digital database. In all cases, the error is the same; the last three digits are missing such that a very large gift, in the millions, is recorded as being only in the thousands.
5. Association for the Advancement of Scholarship (“AAS”)
AAS was founded by the late Dr. David Strangway, Quest’s founder, and purportedly received $30 million from Stewart Blusson. However, it is important to note that before AAS issued the tax receipt to Blusson for $30 million, Dr. Strangway had left AAS's board of directors.
In a letter to Macleans magazine, Dr. Strangway expressed that he felt let down by how Quest's start-up had been handled. He appears to have been especially disappointed by Quest's fundraiser, Blake Bromley who apparently charged an 8 percent fee.
During 2014 and 2015, AAS made gifts to CHIMP and other Bromley charities for a total of $15,450,000, precisely the same amount of Quest's loans to that point.
