Canada – Scholars Propose New Charities Council to Replace CRA

The C.D. HoweInstitute recently released a new paper by Adam Aptowitzer, Bringing the Provinces BackIn: Creating a Federated Canadian Charities Council.  The paper proposes replacing the CanadianRevenue Agency [CRA] with a “Charities Council” as the primary regulator ofcharitable organizations in Canada.  Theproposed structure of the Charity Council borrows certain aspects of theCharity Commission of England and Wales, but the paper acknowledges the impossibilityof wholesale adoption in Canada due to constitutional difficulties.

The paper offers two primary arguments against the CRA’s continuedrole as the national regulator of Canadian charities; one based onorganizational mandate, the other based on history.  It asserts that the regulation of charitiesis directly at odds with the CRA’s mandate to protect the tax base because thenature of charities is to reduce the tax base through donation taxcredits.  Additionally, the CRA is thecurrent regulator as an accident of history. The CRA’s role was a response to a failure of the provinces to provideregulation that was their Constitutional responsibility.  The result has been a rigid regulatory systemthat impedes the formation of new charities and that favors the principles oftax law over those of the charitable sector.

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