Public Accounts committee  I think that's actually something on which we'll need to get back to the group in writing. It's not something that I've encountered to date.

Public Accounts committee  I don't have the list of penalties and the percentages with me today, but the amount of the penalty goes up if it's a repeat offence.

Public Accounts committee  There are certainly penalties and sanctions that are outlined in the Income Tax Act. A sanction could be the suspension of your receipting privileges, so for a period of a year, you would not be allowed to issue receipts for tax purposes. There could also be financial penalties that you would need to pay for some type of false receipting, incorrect receipting or not meeting your disbursement quota.

Public Accounts committee  With the charitable sector—

Public Accounts committee  No. It's really—

Public Accounts committee  Exactly.

Public Accounts committee  I think it's difficult to comment on this particular situation. The governance of charities is not within our jurisdiction. That's within the province's jurisdiction. We're always looking to the Income Tax Act. What is most important from a regulatory standpoint is this: Is the registered charity using its charitable resources to further its charitable purposes?

Public Accounts committee  I just wanted to add that after we receive a lead, in the end we might impose a sanction or have a revocation, and you might see it on the website, but it may not necessarily be related to that initial lead. We might go in and audit and find lots of different types of non-compliance.

Public Accounts committee  I just wanted to say that unless we are auditing a charity and looking at each receipt that the charity issued, we're only seeing aggregate information on the donations that a charity received.

Public Accounts committee  Charities can't carry out activities that are illegal. Depending on the particular facts of a situation, if there were an illegal activity, that is something that would be of interest to us from a compliance perspective. I also want to correct the record. I know that the name of the organization includes the word “foundation”, but this organization is actually registered as a charitable organization, which is generally a doer.

Public Accounts committee  Under the Income Tax Act, we have three different types of registered charities. We have the charitable organizations that are generally the organizations that are on the ground delivering services to charitable beneficiaries, and we have two types of foundations: public foundations and private foundations.

Public Accounts committee  There are certain rules that apply to private foundations that would not apply to other types of registered charities.

Public Accounts committee  —received to date from informants in charities. I know we have received leads from informants in charities before, but I don't know how many.

Public Accounts committee  I think the most appropriate venue for that type of information would be to submit it as a lead to the agency.

Public Accounts committee  We review all leads that come in that relate to registered charities, and we would look at it to see if there was some risk that was worth a deeper investigation.