Senate Report Offers Blueprint for Federal Charity Law Reform.

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

With a federal election slated for this October, there is little chance we will see any major changes to the Income Tax Act (ITA) rules governing registered charities in the coming weeks.

Once the election is over, however, whichever party forms government could do worse than use the recently-released Report of the Special Senate Committee on the Charitable Sector as a blueprint for a needed and long-awaited revamping of federal regulation of charities and non-profit organizations. The report, Catalyst for Change: A Roadmap to a Stronger Charitable Sector, is available online.

Leaving aside the issue of the role of registered charities in public policy debate, which was the subject of new legislation passed by Parliament last December, charity regulation is not something that has drawn much attention federally in recent years. (Indeed, action on the political activities rules was only prompted once there had been a successful court challenge to the old ITA provisions under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.)

The report offers a roadmap for addressing a host of problems plaguing the current regulatory regime.

It features 42 recommendations, and while not all of them will be feasible to implement or are uncontroversial, taken broadly they present the opportunity to:

* modernize the current regulatory system;

* simplify or clarify various regulatory structures or requirements;

* reduce unnecessary red tape for registered charities and other sector groups; and

* better align Canadian regulatory practice with that of comparable jurisdictions.

The report, Catalyst for Change: A Roadmap to a...