Trust – Twenty Ways to Build a Better Country, David Johnston. Penguin Random House Canada, Toronto, Canada, 2018, ISBN 9780771047152 Old academic habits die hard. I read the first pages and the last pages of this text before settling down to assess the whole work. The prospects looked enticing with the author beginning with the…
Summary: The previous two issues of The Philanthropist, 23 (4) and 24 (1), featured an article prepared by Blake Bromley for the Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India Flight 182 in support of his personal testimony in Ottawa on October 26, 2007. The following is the final installment: the text of…
Spirited Commitment: The Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation by Roderick MacLeod and Eric John Abrahamson Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press; 2010. isbn: 978-0-7735-3710-1 Yves Savoie An acorn illustrates the jacket cover of Spirited Commitment: The Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation recalling the phrase from a poem by David Everett “Large streams from…
Introduction One of the distinguishing features between the civil law and the common law is the role played by the courts in each system. In civil law jurisdictions the courts traditionally have determined the legal rights and wrongs between litigants, and only exceptionally responded to a party’s request for a “declaration” as to the state…
Abstract: Difficult times and an increasingly competitive charitable sector are forcing some nonprofits and charities to consider organizational changes and collaborations. For some, a merger, the most integrated form of cooperation, is the most appropriate option. Unfortunately, many nonprofit mergers are handled poorly and the costs of the merger are far greater than expected; the…
Introduction In 1991, John Carver’s Boards That Make A Difference: A New Design for Leadership of Nonprofit and Public Organizations was published in the United States. Not since then has a book on nonprofit governance generated so much interest as Richard Chait, William Ryan, and Barbara Taylor’s Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit…
Introduction This article provides a brief overview of the draft policy entitled Guidelines for the Registration of Umbrella Organizations (“Guidelines”) that was released by Canada Revenue Agency (“CRA”) on July 29, 2005. The Guidelines discuss the eligibility of umbrella organizations for charitable registration and are available on CRA’s Web site at <http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tax/charities/ consultations/umbrella-e.html>. What is…
Introduction The state of the law in Ontario2 respecting the liability of directors and officers of charitable and nonprofit corporations3 is unsettled and unsatisfactory. On the one hand, the Public Guardian and Trustee (PGT) has taken a public position that would, for all intents and purposes, assimilate the role of directors and officers of charitable4…
Better Together: Restoring the American Community By Robert D. Putnam and Lewis M. Feldstein with Don Cohen Published by Simon & Schuster, 2003, 318 pp. US $41.95. REVIEWED BY YVES SAVOIE Executive Director, Family Service Association of Toronto Robert Putnam sparked a broad debate about the state of community with the publication, in 2000, of…
(1) Developments in Respect of the “Director-Trustee Dilemma” One of the issues that has plagued the area of charitable corporations law in Ontario is whether, and to what extent, the directors of such corporations are “trustees” of corporate assets. In a number of Ontario cases (discussed herein) courts have held that, at least for certain…