NDP National Revenue Critic Pierre-Luc Dusseault is calling for an investigation into the Canada Revenue Agency charity audit program, saying the Liberal government’s move Wednesday to redress the damage done to some Canadian charities by the Harper government’s controversial tax audits doesn’t go far enough.

“The NDP strongly criticized the Conservatives’ campaign of audits against charities which sent a chill through the sector and made many afraid to speak out,” Dusseault told iPolitics.

“We need to not only enshrine the role of charities in informing public policy debates, but the Liberals should also follow through on promises of greater transparency by launching an independent investigation into the CRA charity audit program launched by the Conservatives.”

The previous Conservative government launched the $13.4 million audit initiative in 2012 to determine if charities were violating the rule of the current Income Tax Act, which stipulates that charities are restricted to spending no more than 10 per cent of their resources on political activity. They must report their political activity to the taxman on a yearly basis.

On Wednesday, Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier announced that the Harper government’s controversial charity audit program would be closed down, specifying that the charities investigated had largely been following the rules restricting political activities.

“In light of these outcomes, the program will be concluded,” she said in a release.

Since the program was created, 30 charities have been audited, 24 that were scheduled to be reviewed will be completed and six charities that were to be audited will no longer be, said the release.

“There’s no question that the Harper government used the tax system and the Canada Revenue Agency audit process to target organizations that they viewed as political opponents. The goal was to shut them down,” said Rick Smith, the executive director of the left-leaning Broadbent Institute.

“Canadians expect that the tax agency is dispassionate and acting in the best interest of Canadian taxpayers,” said Smith, “what seems to have happened in the Canada Revenue Agency in the past few years is that they were turned into a tool of political harassment by the government.”

In October 2014, the Broadbent Institute released their report, Stephen Harper’s CRA: Selective Audits, “Political Activity” and Right Leaning Charities, which found that charities that could be considered “progressive” and critical of the Harper government had been targeted for auditing.

Some groups who were targeted fo this audit program were: Canada Without Poverty, PEN Canada, David Suzuki Foundation, Ecology Action Centre and Environmental Defence.

“The Harper government was applying a very different set of rules to progressive charities than to charities they deemed friendly to their interest,” Smith said.

“High-profile critics like ourselves were put on an enemies list,” said Bruce Campbell, the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a think tank that was audited for its political activities.

The audit of the CCPA began in October 2013 and continued into the spring of 2014, said Campbell. Since then, they have not been cleared by the audit, nor have they heard from the CRA.

“Not a word.”

iPolitics contacted both Lebouthillier’s office and the CRA for comment and further detail. Media spokespeople in Lebouthillier’s office did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the CRA responded by questions by referring back to the news release.

Campbell says the move towards ending the audit program is the right move by the Liberal government who mandated a change in how charities are treated.

Lebouthillier was tasked with “allowing charities to do their work on behalf of Canadians free from political harassment, and modernize the rules governing the charitable and not-for-profit sectors and clarifying the rules governing ‘political activity’.”

Campbell is hoping CCPA will get a “clean bill of health” from the government — or if there are any issues, they can be addressed.