ABSTRACT
Governments are growing more repressive. Not-for-profits are being told to keep their heads low, stay quiet, and stick to their knitting—or suffer the consequences. This chapter focuses on how these developments, and the consequences, are playing out in an unexpected country, Canada. It begins by defining key concepts, namely civil society organizations, charitable organizations, and the notion of an enabling environment. The chapter examines how the lines around doing good are being redrawn, followed by the steps taken to delegitimize and disenable nonprofit organizations in Canada, namely public vilification, defunding, and the use of tax laws to challenge Civil society organizations' (CSOs') charitable status. It discusses the implications for evaluators and the evaluation context that have resulted from the "charity chill" in Canada. The chapter describes three of the main concepts, namely civil society organization, charitable organization, and enabling environment. The measures discussed in this chapter have reduced the legal, financial, and political space available to CSOs.
