The Public Service Alliance of Canada is on strike as of April 19, 2023, and this affects the Charities Directorate of CRA. Although the media is discussing the strike, as is typically the case, there is little attention paid to how this will affect charities. The hope is that the strike is settled quickly and has the least impact on charities that deal with the Charities Directorate.
Here is a note from CRA relating to the “labour disruption.”
Labour disruptions impact at the Canada Revenue Agency – Canada.ca
Here is part of the note from CRA:
Overview
The Public Service Alliance of Canada declared a general strike beginning Wednesday, April 19th. As a result, bargaining groups representing 159,000 public servants, including the 39,000 represented employees of the Canada Revenue Agency, are on strike. These employees provide a range of services for the public.
During this labour disruption, certain services may be delayed or not delivered at all. As well, the public may have trouble accessing some Government of Canada buildings where services are delivered.
The only reference to charities is:
Businesses, representatives, tax preparers and charitable organizations are encouraged to use MyBusiness Account or Represent a Client to manage their tax affairs or the tax affairs of their client/organization.
CRA elsewhere notes:
While there are no plans to extend tax filing deadlines, the CRA will continue to accept all tax returns. Those that are filed digitally, which represent the vast majority of T1 and T2 returns, will largely be processed automatically by our systems without delay.
The strike does not involve management personnel and many professionals working at CRA who belong to a different union. So, there are still people performing certain vital and other tasks, although presumably at a slower rate. However, keep in mind that other groups may not cross the picket line such as Canada Post employees so best not to mail anything at the moment to the Charities Directorate.
Here is the page with updates from CRA on the Collective bargaining process.
Takeaways
- Never assume that CRA is non-operational – at the beginning of COVID, CRA shut down some services but then within only a few weeks they were almost fully operational and it was not understood by many who thought they were down for months. If you want to put in an application for charity status, put it in. You will go in a line. It may take longer to respond than normal but if you wait, you will be further down the line.
- If you have a form that needs to be filed, such as the T3010, make sure that you file it. Use the CRA MyBA to file anything that can be filed and avoid using mail, fax, courier, etc., unless you have no choice.
- If your charity does not have access to the CRA MyBA, now is a great time to get on that system.