For more than a decade, the owners of Canadian news organizations have seen a steady stream of the advertising revenues they need to keep their heads above water disappear, with most of it flowing instead to Google, Facebook, and other social media platforms. The depth of the economic shutdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic is…
Strategy: Legal and Regulatory
The recently released Report of the Special Senate Committee on the Charitable Sector, “Catalyst for Change: A Roadmap to a Stronger Charitable Sector,” puts broad charity law reform in sight. The Report – which is available online – provides a series of thoughtful recommendations touching on almost all the major difficulties with the existing federal…
Both inside and outside of elections we are bombarded with social media posts, television and radio ads, and articles telling us what to believe about the leading policy issues of the day. Perhaps now, more than ever, we are aware that the information we see may be intentionally false and manipulative. Yet the issues we…
McLachlin, Beverley. Truth Be Told: My Journey through Life and the Law. Simon & Schuster, 2019 ISBN 978-1-9821-0496-2 After 20 years as a law student, lawyer, and judge, Beverley McLachlin was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1989. She was 46, a widow, and the mother of 13-year-old Angus. In 2000, she…
During the 2015 federal election campaign, the Liberals made a sweeping pledge to “allow charities to do their work on behalf of Canadians free from political harassment.”[1] Later, in a 2018 statement, two senior government ministers said that charities play a vital role in Canadian society by providing valuable services. “We recognize the experience and…
Lors de la dernière campagne électorale fédérale, le Parti libéral du Canada a pris un engagement d’envergure, celui de permettre « aux organismes caritatifs de faire leur travail au nom des Canadiens, libre de l’influence politique »[1]. Dans son communiqué du 15 août 2018, le gouvernement mentionnait que « (…) les organismes de bienfaisance offrent…
Later this year, Canadians will vote in the 43rd federal election. Many non-profit organizations, networks, and coalitions see elections as a critical opportunity to raise relevant public policy issues. Recently, the rules for charities engaging in public policy have become a prominent source of debate and discussion in government and the sector. As we countdown…
Photo credit: Senate of Canada Just months after Ottawa set up an advisory body to look at the future of Canadian charities, a Senate committee this week released a 190-page report with a sweeping range of legal and policy reforms that, its members say, are necessary to ensure the health of a sector that generates…
Social Enterprise Law: Trust, Public Benefit, and Capital Markets, by Dana Brakman Reiser and Steven A. Dean. Oxford University Press. New York, U.S.A., 2018, ISBN: 9780190249786 How do you persuade social entrepreneurs and impact investors to trust one another’s commitment to impact? That’s the question Social Enterprise Law attempts to answer. Social enterprises (here defined…
Canada’s charitable and non-profit sector is the second largest in the world. More than 24 million Canadians — about two-thirds of the population — donated to a charity or non-profit organization in 2013. But, as generous as Canadians are, there are still underlying challenges in the charitable and non-profit sector, which is in danger of…