Alberta Election Legislation and Charities.

• Date: 01 May 2019
• Author: Broder, Peter

After years of turmoil around the topic, the federal government moved recently to reform treatment of charities' "public policy dialogue and development activities". The reform was, at least in part, in response to the striking down as unconstitutional of certain provisions of the Income Tax Act dealing with registered charities' political activities.

In a 2018 case, the Ontario Superior Court found that the measures violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

One of the outcomes of the reform was clarity on the long troublesome area of the overlap between policy positions of registered charities and those held by political parties.

It is undisputed that charities should not engage in partisanship. However, many charities develop stances on policy matters that are later adopted or adapted by political parties. These positions can originate in a host of ways--among them, in an organization's frontline experience, out of research it does, or, in the case of faith-based groups, from tenets of belief.

Historically, developing policy positions related to their missions that are the same or similar to those taken by political parties or candidates has placed charities...