ABSTRACT
The primary purpose of the Charities Directorate of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the principal charity regulator in Canada, is to protect charities, donors, and the public from harm. In making decisions based on charity common law and by enforcing the terms of the Income Tax Act and its regulations, the Charities Directorate ensures that only those organizations that are charitable under common law, and meet the terms of the Act and regulations, are able to benefit from the tax provisions designed to help charities prosper. Government, meanwhile, has commonly focused on small ongoing changes to the Act to provide additional protections against potential harm. As a result, government and the sector representatives on the Joint Table had the freedom to consider broad-ranging system changes from a sector perspective, without focusing solely on the key driver of all charity regulation in Canada, on potential harm.
