The deficit is due to market losses.

The Anglican Church used to be known as the conservative party at prayer, now it is the communist party at smudging.

The ACoC likes to waft an aroma of socialist egalitarianism heavenward in clouds of smudging fumes, but it still loves money and, even though it pretends to emulate the homeless man/God who had nowhere to lay his head, it just can’t stop loving money and the means of making more of it.

To that end, in 2021 it had $27,790,616 invested in Cash, Equities, Alternative Investments and Real Estate.

To paper a veneer of pious poverty over this, the Diocese of Toronto displays a statue of homeless Panhandler Jesus outside one of its churches. It makes Toronto’s homeless population feel so much better.

But back to the thing the ACoC isn’t interested in: money.

Last year’s global market decline left the church’s national office with a budget deficit of $1.55 million at the end of 2022. The treasurer explains more here. Do I see a tear in her eye?

Investment losses from last year’s global market decline left the church’s national office with a budget deficit of $1.55 million at the end of 2022, a financial statement released to General Synod shows.

The deficit occurred despite an operational surplus of $346,000. Total revenue for General Synod in 2022 was $9.75 million, down by more than $37,900 from the previous year. Expenses were $9.40 million, or $882,000 higher than last year.

In the financial management committee’s report to General Synod June 30, treasurer and CFO Amal Attia said investment losses, however, made “that surplus a deficit and that is as a result of the nosedive that the entire investment portfolio [took] for everybody.” Investment losses of $1.77 million and a $250,000 provision for potential legal settlements left the budget awash in red ink, despite more than $123,000 in undesignated legacies. Market losses from unrealized investments, Attia added, were “not anything in our control.”

Stock and other investment markets around the world experienced declines in 2022 due to a number of factors going back to the economic recession that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, which later resulted in soaring inflation and global supply chain problems. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 also cause.