Court of Appeal Upholds Common Law Exclusion in Termination Clause
School Board Liable for Student’s Fall from Roof
Ottawa Region Charity & NFP Law Seminar Materials Available
Feb 2018 Charity & NFP Law Update
The Ottawa Region Charity & Not-for-Profit Law Seminar, hosted by Carters in Ottawa, on February 15, 2018, was attended by over 400 leaders from the charity and not-for-profit sector. The Honourable Justice David Brown of the Court of Appeal of Ontario, and Tony Manconi, Director General of the Charities Directorate of CRA, were guest speakers. The Seminar was designed to provide practical information to assist charities and not-for-profits in understanding and complying with recent developments in the law. All handouts and presentation materials are now available at the links below:
- Introduction, Agenda and Speaker Details
- Essential Charity and NFP Law Update by Jennifer M. Leddy
- Remuneration of Directors of Charities: What’s New? by Ryan M. Prendergast
- Critical Privacy Issues Involving Children’s Programs by Esther Shainblum
- Recent Changes in Corporate Law Affecting Federal and Ontario Corporations by Theresa L.M. Man
- The Impact of Bill 148 on Charities and Not-for-Profits by Barry W. Kwasniewski
- Governance Disputes Involving Charities and Not-for-Profits: A View from the Bench by The Honourable Justice David M. Brown
- Corporate Documents and Procedures to Help Avoid Governance Disputes by Esther S.J. Oh
- The Expanding Investment Spectrum for Charities, including Social Investments by Terrance S. Carter
- Challenges in Regulating the Charitable Sector: Looking Back and Going Forward by Tony Manconi, Director General
Anti-Terrorism/Money Laundering Update
Feb 2018 Charity & NFP Law Update
Reviewing Canada’s Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Regime
The Department of Finance Canada published a discussion paper entitled Reviewing Canada’s Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Regime (the “Paper”) on February 7, 2018. The Paper will support Parliament’s study of the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (the “Proceeds of Crime Act”), as well as its consideration of money laundering and terrorist financing issues. The Paper also suggests it will assist Parliament’s larger investigation and study into how to advance the efficiency and effectiveness of Canada’s anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regime (the “Regime”) to ensure that private and public sector resources are better aligned to current technological, business and threat realities.
The Paper outlines potential policy measures that would improve the Proceeds of Crime Act to better support the Regime and to enhance Canada’s legislative framework. These policy measures are organized around five key themes, namely: Legislative and Regulatory Gaps; Enhancing the Exchange of Information While Protecting Canadians’ Rights; Strengthening Intelligence Capacity and Enforcement; Modernizing the Framework and its Supervision; and Administrative Definitions and Provisions.
Beyond these broad themes for policy measures, the Paper makes specific reference to key tensions that exist in legislating and implementing the Regime, including the fact that while reporting entities play an important role in detecting and deterring money laundering and terrorist financing, there is an outstanding need to minimize the Regime’s compliance burden and cost. The Paper also notes that the Regime should involve a risk-based approach wherever appropriate, focussing more attention, time and resources on higher risk transactions and parties, and less on those with lower risk.
The Department of Finance Canada is seeking views on its potential policy directions. The Regime has been developed and expanded, particularly in the past 15 years, and careful attention is required to its further development and changes. The Regime is not only about collecting ever-increasing amounts of information (personal and business), but also establishing and streamlining information sharing both domestically (between agencies and departments such as the RCMP, the CRA and FINTRAC) and internationally. The Paper is open for input from stakeholders until April 30, 2018.
FATF President Delivers Anti-Terrorist Financing Briefing to United Nations
Santiago Otamendi, the President of the Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”) delivered a briefing to the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee (“UNCTC”) on December 14, 2017, discussing the importance of preventing and disrupting financial flows to terrorist organizations and briefing the UNCTC on the FATF’s risk-based approach to fighting terrorist financing. The FATF and the UN work in close partnership, with the FATF charged with finding effective ways to implement and reinforce obligations set out by the UN, and its standards complementing resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council.
Looking to the past, Mr. Otamendi discussed the FATF’s consolidated terrorist financing strategy set out in 2016, which aims to “cut-off the financing of terrorism, particularly for serious terrorist threats such as ISIL and Al-Qaeda, to reinforce safeguards that will deny terrorists access to the financial system and prevent them from exploiting vulnerable countries as safe havens, and to ensure that financial intelligence is effectively used.” Of particular interest to charities and not-for-profits in implementing this strategy, the FATF has produced a Best Practices Paper on preventing terrorist abuse of the not-for-profit sector, as discussed in Anti-Terrorism and Charity Law Bulletin No. 42. The FATF has also revised Recommendation 8, which sets out best practices on combatting the abuse of non-profit organizations, which is discussed in greater detail in Anti-Terrorism and Charity Law Alert No. 46, in order to more broadly implement the risk-based approach.
Looking to the future, Mr. Otamendi stated that the FATF is considering a new set of actions to ensure a continued understanding of the evolving terrorist threats. This includes looking at new technology for providing financial services and for meeting regulatory requirements. This also includes working with the FinTech and RegTech sectors to raise greater awareness of both the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing and of the FATF requirements, as well as to help with integrating risk management into their services. The FATF has also begun holding workshops for judges and prosecutors in order to help countries effectively use criminal justice tools to combat terrorist financing and money laundering.