I wish I did not have to write this article about the Canadian rules around international philanthropy and foreign activities but unfortunately, a small group of people has been constantly complaining about direction and control for 20 years. It is…
If you have followed the WE Charity scandal one of the major concerns is the lack of transparency with Canadian registered charities. That is not to say that a charity cannot be transparent, but the legally required transparency for registered…
As we have discussed extensively, as a result of COVID the CRA has extended the deadline for filing the T3010s that were or will be due from March 18, 2020 till December 31, 2020 to a deadline for this year…
Here is a description of the presentation on November 24, 2020: Lunch ’N Learn Panel: WE Have a Problem Jaya Mootoo , Ann Rosenfield, MBA, CFRE , Hawa Y. Mire, MA , Mark Blumberg, LLB, LLM, TEP Description:…
Our firm has been using online tools for over 10 years – primarily webinars. In 2018, we moved to providing paid online courses dealing with charity and non-profit legal compliance and risk management to the non-profit and charity sector as…
We were pleasantly surprised to see that The Charity Report “your independent source of news in the charity sector” recently published an article Blumberg Snapshot: Taking measurement of the charity sector, 2010 to 2018. It profiles the many years that our…
Foundation Magazine has focused on the WE Charity scandal in its latest edition. A number of different articles deal with different aspects of the media coverage over the last 6 months.
Here is our Blumbergs Canadian Charity Sector Snapshot 2018. We recently reviewed the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return database for 2018 as part of the Sean Blumberg Transparency Project. The database covers about 84,323 of the 85,800 registered charities in…
The Canada Gazette on October 17, 2020 published the names of over 170 Canadian registered charities that had requested voluntary revocation. Here is the list. The last voluntary revocations that happened were on March 28, 2020. The last “failure to file”…
Every year Blumbergs has its Blumbergs’ Canadian Charity Law Institute. This year we will be doing a “mini-institute” – very virtual, much shorter and more affordable but covering a number of topics that are of concern to Canadian charities. So…
A lot has happened since we originally published this article on September 4th so here is an updated version below. The WE Charity scandal has now been going on for over 3 months. It has caused the Minister…
The Canadian access to information system seems to underperforming when it comes to the WE Charity scandal. See this PDF of Completed Access to Information Requests from the Government of Canada. The PCO and the OCL in six access requests…
[Update – the motion to extend the period within ONCA can be brought into force was carried on September 21, 2020.] As we have noted before, ONCA was passed in 2010 and it was never brought into force. Unless…
While restrictions are easing up and businesses are getting back to work, now is still a good time for registered charities to get on to CRA’s new Digital Services for Charities. CRA launched this new online services a year ago…
The Charities Directorate of CRA sent out an email today to their electronic mailing list. The full text is below and our comments are in [brackets and italics]. If you want the boring stuff from CRA then you should definitely…
A recent public opinion poll by Proof Communications, which runs the CanTrust index, dealing with trust shows a 6% decline for the non-profit and charity sector from May to September 2020. Clearly having over 2 months of very negative WE…
The WE Charity scandal has now been going on for over 2 months. A few weeks ago the Minister of Finance resigned and parliament was prorogued. Some will say this has nothing to do with WE Charity. I will leave…
In this New York Times article published today entitled “Steve Bannon Is Charged With Fraud in We Build the Wall Campaign” it has shocking revelations about a fundraising campaign in the US. Hat tip to Paul Alof for retweeting it.…
With the current focus on WE Charity and the CSSG program, there is a lot that can be learned about transparency in the charity sector. I will now discuss directors’ changes and the importance of notifying Corporations Canada if you…
Today Dalal Al-Waheidi, Executive Director of WE Charity, told the Finance Committee that today they filed their registration for the Federal lobbyist registration system. Here is a printout WE Charity _ Dalal Al-Waheidi, Executive Director – 12-Month Lobbying Summary –…
Would you like to obtain a grant from the Federal government? Well if you “communicate with a public officer holder” asking for funds that probably is lobbying and if you spend over 1/5 of an FTE over any month (A…
The Finance Committee has had a number of meetings to inquire into the CSSG and WE Charity. You can watch the testimony live or a recording of it. A few days after the meeting the PDF of the transcript is…
In what is very good news for many non-profits and registered charities in Canada, Corporations Canada has extended the deadline for AGMs for Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act (“CNCA”) corporations till Dec 31, 2020. This helps these organizations in that they…
As we have noted previously, the Federal government has brought in a new bill C-17 dealing with various issues especially extending CNCA deadlines for CNCA financial statement disclosure and AGMs and now that bill has received Royal Assent this week. …