Sept 2022 Charity & NFP Law Update
Provisions in Draft ITA Legislation Could Affect Charities’ Trust Reporting Requirements
Charities should be aware of potential changes to the ITA that could create trust reporting requirements for incorporated charities as a result of draft legislation released by the Department of Finance on August 9, 2022. While not-for-profit corporations that are registered charities are currently exempt from filing returns of income for trusts (“T3s”) by virtue of subsection 150(1.1) of the ITA, the draft legislation released by the Department of Finance includes proposed changes that could result in incorporated charities having to complete separate T3 trust returns for each restricted charitable purpose trust held by the charity, such as endowments, research funds or scholarship funds. Further information on this concern about the draft legislation can be found in Charity & NFP Law Bulletin No. 515 at pages 7-9.
Those interested in providing comments to the Department of Finance regarding the draft legislation must do so by the deadline of September 30, 2022.
Portions of Québec’s Privacy Law Now in Force
Portions of Québec’s Act to modernize legislative provisions as regards the protection of personal information (“Bill 64”) came into force as of September 22, 2022, including requirements relating to the reporting of confidentiality incidents, and the designation of a privacy officer. As reported in the September 2021 Charity & NFP Law Update, Bill 64 received royal assent on September 22, 2021 and represents a major step forward in the development of privacy laws in the province.
Under the legislation in force as of September 22, 2022, organizations will be required to notify Québec’s privacy regulator and the affected individual following a confidentiality incident (such as unauthorized access to, use of or communication of personal information or loss of personal information) where there is a “risk of serious injury” to an individual. Organizations are also required to keep a register of confidentiality incidents and provide a copy of this register upon the request of the provincial privacy regulator.
Further, the legislation now mandates that the individual that has the highest authority within an organization shall be responsible for ensuring Bill 64 is implemented and complied with, though that individual may also delegate in writing all or part of that role to someone else. The information of the person in charge of the protection of personal information is required to be published on an organization’s website (or be made available by other appropriate means if no website exists).