The Advisory Committee on the Charitable Sector was formed in August 2019 as a consultative body for the federal government to create an ongoing channel of communication between the federal government, the overseeing Canada Revenue Agency, and the charitable sector. The committee met for the first time in-person at the end of December of 2019, largely picking up where a similar committee left off (formed under Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government and scraped under the following Conservative government).

“There is no shortage of ideas about what should be discussed,” says Bruce MacDonald, committee co-chair, and President and CEO of Imagine Canada. “If you look at the Senate report, there are 42 recommendations there – let alone any other ideas that people may have to improve the operating environment,” he adds, referring to a 190-page report by a Special Senate Committee in June 2019 that laid out a roadmap and a set of recommendations to improve regulations for Canada’s charities.

The objectives of the committee are to evolve the relationship between the federal government and charities, which has been a source of frustration for many organizations over the past 10 years. “We need to have a modernization, not just a ‘loosening up’, because that gives the wrong impression. [It] sounds like we’re asking not to be regulated — and we’re not saying that at all,” explains Hilary Pearson, co-chair, philanthropy consultant, and member of the Order of Canada. “We’re just saying that the rules really need to be brought up-to-date to the 21st-century.” 

Short-Term Action is Top of Mind 

Though the committee is still in its early days of planning, some routes for shorter-term resolutions have already been identified. “There are probably a number of things that the government is interested in working on, and so are we at the same time. Likely, there will be ones we move on more quickly,” says MacDonald. This may include restructuring the tight regulations around charities partnering with non-profits, or election time restrictions on charities and so-called ‘political activities’. 

“We’re also cognizant that we are in a minority government, so picking something that has a four-year timeline might not make the most sense right now,” adds MacDonald. “It’s certainly not committee policy, but there are things that we can demonstrate progress on [so that if], in six months, a new government is established of any political stripe, they would look at this committee and think, ‘Okay, let’s keep it going.’”

Creating Two-Way Communication 

The committee is dedicated to being a two-way channel, not only in dialogue with the federal government, but also in continuing conversations within the sector. As Pearson explains: “It’s meant as a way for us to communicate back to charities in the sector what we are hearing from the government, and what we are hearing from the agency, so we can avoid having a breakdown in communication and the [resulting] frustration that charities have felt [in the past], because they didn’t have the ability to communicate on a regular basis.”

Modernization of Government Oversight 

With no liaison between the federal government and the charitable sector, the sector has accumulated what has been described as a ‘micro-management of charities’, slowing progress and creating roadblocks for social service. Now, with a committee in place, it’s important to reflect on the ways in which the sector has changed, and how to best respond to these changes. “I think there is both continuity and newness,” says Pearson, reflecting on the past 10 years with no committee. “Continuity in the way that charities have been speaking with the government for 30 or 40 years — but charities are [still] worried about the ways in which the government has increasingly monitored [the charitable sector] around our activities, and not our purposes.”

The next in-person meeting is to be held in March 2020, where more action-based progress will likely be made. “I’m hoping that the sector, to use a good baseball analogy, will look for lots and lots of singles as opposed to only being happy with home runs,” says MacDonald. “Public policy, or legislation, or even guidance — it’s a slow journey, and what we want to do is make things better all the time.” 

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