Recently Ontario passed Bill 9, Non-Profit Sector Appreciation Week Act, 2021. Now in Ontario, the third week in February is non-profit appreciation week. On the plus side, this could be a focal point for organizing some events that show appreciation for the non-profit sector.
If I could think of a hundred things the Ontario non-profit sector needs, the Non-Profit Sector Appreciation Week Act would not be one of them. Hopefully, the Ontario government will announce in non-profit sector appreciation week some of the following:
- Approximately 50,000 Ontario nonprofit corporations are needing to make changes under the ONCA to bring them in line with the new ONCA act. The Ontario government has provided very limited resources and capacity building relating to the change. As this affects so many organizations, this is quite unfortunate. Perhaps the Ontario government will announce a significant capacity-building program to help Ontario non-profits deal with ONCA.
- There are billions of dollars held by Ontario charities and foundations that are not able to be spent at all, or not spent efficiently, because they have very old and problematic restrictions. Currently obtaining a court order to change these restrictions is cumbersome. More importantly except in very particular circumstances relating to impossibility, the courts are not prepared to make changes to old restrictions. There should be a more flexible regime to take funds that are basically stranded and to use them for needs today and in the future. Hopefully, the Ontario government will announce changes to the rules dealing with cy pres in Ontario to give courts more flexibility in handling restricted gifts.
- As you know between 60 to 70% of all funds received by Canadian charities come from government. The Ontario government is the largest government in Canada and therefore the amount of funds it provides to Canadian charities and specifically, Ontario charities, is very significant. There are many facets to this issue but anything that can be done to have a lighter burden on non-profits and charities that receive government money should be considered. The application processes, reporting requirements and restrictions make the funds inaccessible to most non-profits and charities. As you can see from our Blumbergs’ Snapshot of the Ontario Charity Sector 2019, Government revenue for Ontario charities totaled $74.3 billion including from the federal government ($5.3 billion), provincial governments ($61.9 billion) and municipal/regional governments ($7.1 billion). In total government is approximately 54.4% of the revenue of the whole charity sector in Ontario. Hopefully, the Ontario government will announce that it will work to lighten the burden, increase unrestricted funding and at a minimum maintain the current funding received by the charity sector.
There are occasionally improvements in Ontario relating to the regulation of charities. Although most regulation of registered charities comes from the CRA and the Federal Income Tax Act there is some Ontario regulation of “charities”. Over the last few months, there have been some positive announcements from the Office of the Public Guardian in Trustee (of the Attorney General) so that now the OPGT is going to be far less involved in the review of Ontario charity corporate documents. I am not always in favour of less regulation which just lets powerful people get away with murder, but sometimes duplicative regulation is not helpful – in this case, two charity regulators – both CRA and the PGT reviewing the same objects.
So it will be interesting to see what happens with the Non-Profit Sector Appreciation Week Act. I have very low expectations but hope that I will be pleasantly surprised.