Get lost Oxfam! Canada’s not about to start arguing with God: CRA

Listen up, Canada. Jesus said, the poor will always be with you. They’ll just have to make their own pancakes, according to the CRA.

The Canada Revenue Agency has told a well-known charity that it can no longer try to prevent poverty around the world if it wants to keep its charitable status for tax purposes because ending poverty would violate a law of God.

In a letter to Oxfam Canada, which had hoped to renew its non-profit status, the CRA told the agency: “Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with you.’ That sounds like pretty clear English to us, and if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for Oxfam Canada!

“You may want to argue with God, but the CRA isn’t about to let that happen,” added the spokesperson, who could not be identified because he is not authorized to quote scripture without an interpreter from the Prime Minister’s Office present. “Not in Canada, anyway.”

“If your goal is to eliminate poverty, then you’re trying to contradict the word of Jesus, and that is obviously a sin,” he explained. “The Harper Government does not encourage sin, at least not sin of that kind.”

The spokesperson added: “On matters like this, Prime Minister Harper thinks you should ask yourself, ‘What would Jesus do?’ I’ll tell you what Jesus would do. He was an unemployed non-union carpenter! He’d be praying for his father to get him a job on the Northern Gateway Pipeline! Or in the mailroom at Imperial Oil if foreign environmentalists had managed to keep the pipeline from being built.”

Asked the story Jesus handed out loaves and fishes, the spokesperson responded with a chuckle: “Who told you he did that? Some Communist from the United Church? I don’t think Jesus would do anything that encouraged taxpayers to become dependent on handouts!”