Philanthropic Sector ‘Relieved’ With Key Victory at Commons Committee

This excerpt from The Philanthropist Journal discusses Senator Omidvar’s Bill S-216 and the House of Commons finance committee’s decision to amend stringent qualified-disbursement conditions in the budget implementation bill.

Canada’s charitable and philanthropic sector won a major victory Monday, May 30, when the House of Commons finance committee voted unanimously to eliminate wording in the budget implementation bill that had been described as “‘direction and control’ on steroids.”

It had been the most contentious language in a bill the sector had been told would embrace the “spirit” of legislation – Bill S-216 – that had passed the Senate and was at second reading in the House of Commons. Conservative MP Philip Lawrence (Northumberland-Peterborough South), who sponsored Bill S-216, moved the amendment at committee to do away with language that he said could bring some charitable work to a screeching halt.

The committee decision was a victory for Senator Ratna Omidvar, whose original bill passed the Senate before it was adopted by Lawrence in the House of Commons.

“I think we can all raise a glass of wine tonight,” Omidvar told The Philanthropist Journal. “I am hugely relieved. Mission accomplished.” Omidvar paid tribute to the concerted lobbying effort for amendments mounted by the sector.

Liberals on the committee, however, blocked other amendments, including one on “directed giving,” that would have made it easier for charities operating internationally to contribute to pooled funds directed to a specific donee. The language in the legislation, according to legal analyses by lawyers in the sector, could make a donation offside, for example, if money donated to the United Way was specifically earmarked for work in Ukraine. Omidvar said that in her discussion with government officials she had been assured they would not be “heavy-handed” in their enforcement of that provision, but that work remained to be done.

The sector, initially buoyed by the April budget when language was promised to protect the spirit of the progressive S-216, was set back on its heels when presented with implementation wording. It was alarmed particularly by the rigid concept known as “qualified disbursements,” which prescribed a series of regulations for charities working with organizations that were themselves not qualified charities, known as “non-qualified donees.”

The sector was unanimous in its view that a system already seen as paternalistic and colonial was made even more so with that wording.

Read the full article in The Philanthropist Journal