Over the last 12 months there have been a significant number of legislative and common law developments at the federal and provincial level that impact how charities operate in Canada. The intent of this paper is to provide a brief overview of some of the more important developments in the last year, including changes introduced through the 2016 Federal Budget, changes to the Income Tax Act (“ITA”) involving estate gifts, new publications from the Charities Directorate of the Canada Revenue Agency (“CRA”), corporate updates under the Canada Not-for-Profit Corporations Act (“CNCA”) and the Ontario Not-for-profit Corporations Act (“ONCA”), other federal and provincial initiatives, as well as recent court decisions affecting charities.
The balance of the paper on this topic that was presented at the Law Society of Upper Canada on November 4, 2016 can be found here.