Canadian Charity Law

The Canadian Charity Law Association is delivering some upcoming webinars.  Registration is free but space is limited. Topics are subject to change. 

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Here is Blumbergs' submission to the Department of Finance on their recent Draft Legislative Proposals Regarding Political Activities of Charities.  For further information on political activities and Canadian registered charities see our directory of blogs and documents.  

We launched today at the Blumbergs' Charity Law Institute 2018 the Blumbergs Canadian Charity Sector Snapshot 2016.  It has some interesting statistics on the Canadian charitable sector from the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return filings.  

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Join us on Tuesday October 16, 2018 in Toronto for a financial capacity building workshop with Gordon Holley from Humanity Financial Management.  Gordon will show organization leaders what they can do to increase the financial capacity of their charities and not-for-profit organizations.You can sign up here.

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The Charities Directorate of the Canada Revenue Agency today released guidance on "Charities and public policy advocacy".  This is on the heels of the Finance Department releasing draft legislative proposals recently and requesting comments by October 13, 2018.   CRA notes that it accepts suggestions to guidances on an ongoing basis -  in other words, you can comment at any time on this guidance.  I will be discussing the topic of political activities at our upcoming Blumbergs' Charity Law Institute.  

If your Canadian registered charity conducts foreign activities there are rules that apply.  If you are having trouble explaining that to foreign groups that you work with you might find our article "Canadian Charities and Foreign Activities – A Very Simplified View of the Process" to be helpful.

CRA is asking for some volunteers to provide feedback on their Charities IT Modernization Project (CHAMP) T3010 system.  If you are interested here is the information from CRA.  I understand that there is limited space for participants at this point but that CRA will have other ways of receiving further feedback from the sector on an ongoing basis once the services go live in June 2019. 

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Here is our updated article on Foreign Universities Applying for Prescribed University Status in Canada 2018.  If your university or alma mater is outside of Canada then this article can be vital in terms of understanding how to more easily and tax effectively fundraise from Canada.  

Here is our article on How Much Should a Canadian Registered Charity Spend on Administration?

The CRA announced today that they are delaying the Charities IT Modernization Project (CHAMP) till June 2019. When CHAMP is launched, charities will no longer be able to make application by paper application and will have to use the CHAMP system. As well, although not required, charities will be able to file the T3010 under the CHAMP system.   Because all charity applications will need to go through CHAMP, it is ideal that it works seamlessly and if that means a delay of 6 or 7 months, I don't think many people will care.

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Finance has put out a press release that it will be consulting on the new political activity proposals that were released on Friday.

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On Friday, September 14, 2018 at 5:01PM the Department of Finance released the "Legislative Proposals Notice of Ways and Means Motions" and also the "Explanatory Notes" on their website.   We will be commenting on these changes to the Income Tax Act over the next few weeks.  

Here is our article Ontario rules change for compensation of certain directors of non-profit corporations that are charities.    

​​The CRA announced today that they will be changing the mailing address for the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return effective October 8, 2018 but for other correspondence, there is no change of address.  

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Canadian Charities do a lot of great work.  But with over 86,000 of them, and a few hundred really bad apples amongst the lot, and probably thousands of ineffectual charities, there will be times that you will be disappointed in a charity.  When you have a concern about a charity, or a charity does something wrong, here are some ideas.

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Recently author and fundraiser Gail Picco wrote an extensive article on the CWP decision entitled "How an Ontario Superior Court Decision Has Remade the Charity Sector, Failed Vulnerable Canadians and Why Some People Are Cheering?" 

Althia Raj's article "Super PACs In Canada? Liberals Wrestle With Politically-Active Charities After Court Ruling" covers the fallout from the Canada Without Poverty case and provides some important updates. 

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The CRA announced today that they are appealing the CWB decision.  This is not surprising as we noted in our blog on July 30, 2018 "Canada Without Poverty vs. AG – a pyrrhic victory for CWP and a disaster for the charity sector".  The CRA and Finance press release noted that "the Government of Canada identified significant errors of law and has served notice that it will be appealing the decision to address the uncertainty created by it, and to seek clarification on important issues of constitutional and charity law."  As well, the government has said that they will be introducing legislation in the spring and then responding to the report of the Consultation Panel. 

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Here is a copy of our Submission to the Federal Finance Committee dated August 1, 2018 for the 2019 Federal Budget.  The submission covers transparency of non-profits and registered charities, as well as a number other recommendations to improve the regulation of registered charities.  

Here is my article on the recent CWP v. AG case entitled Canada Without Poverty vs. Attorney General of Canada – a pyrrhic victory for CWP and a disaster for the charity sector.  In short, I think it is a bad decision that is long term going to have very negative repercussions for the charity sector and our society as a whole.  

The Canada Without Poverty v. Attorney General of Canada decision was released on July 16th.  Here is the decision. I have written extensively about the importance of having Canadian charities engage in some political activities and how the rules can work for the charity sector and here is our directory on charities and political activities.   

Here is a letter from CRA discussing when an official donation receipt can be issued for a gift from an estate and how the 2016 changes affect this.  Here is the text of the letter:

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There are certain rules in the Income Tax Act that only apply to private foundations and not charitable organizations and public foundations.  These rules are called the 'excess business holdings' regime or 'excess corporate holdings' regime.  They limit the amount of shares or interests a Canadian private foundation can have, or that the private foundation plus other relevant persons may have.   CRA in a recent letter discusses whether the excess business holdings rules apply when the private foundation will receive the shares as a residue of an alter ego trust. 

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Canadian registered charities often have to provide assistance to people in disasters.  Does an individual or business have to include this amount in their income?  CRA recently released a letter discussing this issue.

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Corporations Canada is looking at changing their fees in relation to the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act (CNCA) as well as some other acts.  Some of the most common fees like filing the annual return will be reduced and others will be increased significantly. Some fees will be eliminated completely.  Here is the full proposal for consultation.   In general it is a fair proposal - encouraging people to move to electronic, making some most commonly done transactions cheaper and reflecting the real cost of certain other transactions.

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