ABSTRACT
Canada is a strange paradox in its approach to regulation and government collaboration with the third sector: Over the past decade, so much and so little has changed simultaneously. On the one hand, successive increases in the level of the charitable tax credit, introduced by both Liberal and Conservative governments, have given Canadian taxpayers comparatively generous incentives for giving. A novel and much vaunted two year experiment in collaboration beginning in 2000 attempted to build more constructive relationships between the whole-of-government and the third sector, although these relationships were never institutionalized. Ongoing incremental change within the primary regulator of charities, the federal tax agency, has promoted greater transparency and communication. On the other hand, Canada has fallen far behind other countries in modernizing its policy, institutional, and regulatory architecture governing this sector.
