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 a guide from Open Road Alliance (openroadalliance.org) with some helpful tips for emergency grant funding. The guide outlines the following key principles to help organizations streamline and focus their grant making during emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic:…
The CRA has service standards and the Charities Directorate publishes those service standards. The service standards are for “enquiries” and “charity applications”. At the moment, despite COVID, anecdotally it seems that CRA has been quite quick in their responses especially…
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”…
The Ontario government has recently extended the ability for Ontario Corporations Act (OCA) corporations to have virtual meetings until May 31, 2021. It is contained in O. Reg. 544/20: EXTENSION OF TEMPORARY SUSPENSION PERIOD. This will be useful for some Ontario…
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…
As of October 1, 2020, Blumberg Segal LLP is moving to a new office address which is: Blumberg Segal LLP 2300 Yonge Street, Suite 1600 Toronto, ON M4P 1E4 Like many of you, our firm has been working remotely since…
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…
For almost a year now (long before COVID) CRA has not revoked one single charity as a result of audit! Admittedly CRA typically in a year revokes only 20-30 charities for all sorts of problems from inappropriate receipting, terrorism, lack…
In the case Eisbrenner v. Canada, the Federal Court of Appeal deals with 2 tax shelter donation schemes that were not accepted in the Tax Court of Canada and the FCA denied these appeals. Here is the text of…
In the case of Mudge v. The Queen, it deals with a charitable scheme and a motion by the taxpayer to strike out portions of CRA’s pleadings when CRA was trying to deny the deductibility of the ‘donation’. The case…
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…
Recently, the CBC published an article entitled Charity Gospel for Asia files for creditor protection after $170M lawsuit. It is interesting that people have not heard of Gospel for Asia including those who have worked in the international development sector for…
When CRA audits charities they typically send a long questionnaire to be filled in by the charity on many different issues. With some questionnaires, it is clear that they have a particular interest in a certain area such as foreign…
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…