On January 15, 2026, the Charities Directorate of the Canada Revenue Agency (“CRA”) announced in its Quarterly Update (“Quarterly Update “) that it will discontinue its practice of providing pre-approval or automatic reviews of proposed amendments to a charity’s purposes or activities. This is a significant policy change by the CRA, which will place greater responsibility on charities to ensure compliance when making such changes, as well as considerably increase uncertainty for the charitable sector in this area.
In the Quarterly Update, the Charities Directorate states that it will no longer provide pre-approval of proposed changes to a charity’s charitable purposes or activities “in the coming weeks” following the release of the Quarterly Update. As a result of this major policy change, the CRA makes clear that as a charity “grows and adapts,” it is the charity’s “responsibility to ensure it continues to operate exclusively for charitable purposes and carries out activities that further those purposes”.
To read the balance of Charity & NFP Law Bulletin No. 535, please click here.