I'll try to answer that, just to avoid others having to.
I think Canadian charities are allowed to be involved in political activities. There are CRA rules on what's permissible. It's very important that charities be engaged in political activities. Also, the budget, although it had some bark about the issue, didn't really have much bite. I don't think there are any changes in this last budget that are going to have any negative impact on charities being involved with political activities.
There may be some people who want to give the impression that it's not appropriate for charities to be involved in political activities, and I would reject that. The fact is that money has been allocated to CRA. New powers have been given to them. My anticipation is that CRA will do more work in the area of educating charities, but there is no real change. CRA has always been monitoring the political activities of charities. If charities do partisan political activities, that's forbidden.
What I would anticipate is that after two or three years of CRA’s doing more information sessions on political activities, you will have more Canadian charities aware that they are allowed to do it, and there will probably be more doing it. However, charities do need to answer the questions on the T3010 more clearly and appropriately. Right now, only 500 are saying they do political...which is, in my mind, a very low estimate of the number actually doing it. In part, it just comes from the fact that it's one line on a nine-page form and they skip over it, or they don't know what “political” is.
But there will be more questions on the T3010, and it will go back to where it was in 2002—there will be more questions, people will answer, therefore it will be more clear to them what political activities are, and we'll have more compliance in that area.