In October 2023, we wrote a blog entitled “Ontario Government proposing to remove requirement for charities to notify the OPGT when established”. It discussed the Ontario government’s proposal to eliminate certain unnecessary and duplicative reporting to the Ontario Public Guardian and Trustee (OPGT). The blog goes into some detail about the changes.
We had noted, “This is probably a good thing. It will save charities time and money. I did not think that notifying the PGT was that helpful. The PGT does not maintain a public database and the PGT can probably easily access the CRA website if they want an up-to-date list of most of the charities in Ontario.”
This was in the Less Red Tape, More Common Sense Act, 2023 (formerly Bill 139), and it received Royal Assent on December 4, 2023.
Now, the OPGT has updated their PGT Not-for-Profit Incorporators Handbook as of April 19, 2024. The last time it was revised was when ONCA came into force in 2021.
This time around, the revisions to the PGT handbook are, more specifically, to section 6.4.2 and Appendix B:
6.4.2 Reporting Requirements of the Public Guardian and Trustee
Charities are no longer required to send notice of their establishment, receipt of funds, or governance changes to the Public Guardian Trustee. However, charities
must comply with the Public Guardian and Trustee’s requests for information and records under section 2 of the Charities Accounting Act.
Please see the next section of this Handbook for more details about requests for records and information.
APPENDIX “B”: Reporting Requirements of the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee
Charities are not required to send notice of their establishment, receipt of funds, or governance changes to the Public Guardian Trustee.
However, the Public Guardian and Trustee can request information and documentation about the administration or management of the charity. When the information is requested under section 2 of the Charities Accounting Act the directors of the charity are required to provide it.
The Public Guardian and Trustee can require that the accounts of the administration and management of a charity’s property be passed in the Superior Court of Justice.
The passing of accounts is a legal process in which a charity submits a detailed record of its expenses and revenues. The Public Guardian and Trustee could ask for records for a period of multiple years, if appropriate.
As an aside, I have a few technical concerns with the revised Handbook:
- The title of the Handbook is a little misleading because it does a lot more than just help those thinking about incorporation. It is a handbook that covers many issues relating to the operation of charities and changes in their operations and should be consulted, especially by charities in Ontario that are under Ontario Not-for-Profit Corporations Act (“ONCA”). Many might think it is just about incorporating.
- This is not the third testament of the bible, so it is a little beyond me why they don’t insert a date on the front page so that people will look at the correct version! I can imagine that many people will be using the older version, unaware that there is a newer version and even if they did know and had downloaded both, they may be confused about which is the more recent version. This may be an area for significant regulatory reform! If you look closely on page 79 it says (c) King’s Printer for Ontario, 2007 Reprinted in 2024 Disponible en français ISBN 978-1-4868-5574-2. According to the ISBN folk, “A reprint means more copies are being printed with no substantial changes.” Yes, I would say that there are big differences between 2007 and 2024.
- The document is not searchable, which is at times frustrating. The older version in 2021 was searchable you could cut and paste the text. Now, not only is it not searchable, but it is locked down, so you cannot do optical character recognition.
- It is 13 MB, whereas the previous handbook was 963 kb! Why should it be so much more? There is only a slight difference in the text. I could imagine some people with bad internet connections having problems or people using cell data wasting a lot of their monthly allocation. This is Canada, not some country where you can buy 50GB per month for $10!
- Finally, I might have missed it but I don’t think I saw any announcement by the OPGT about this change. You would think that the PGT would have a newsletter for charities where they would send out occasional updates and anyone interested could sign up to the newsletter.