Thank you very much for the question.
My name is Blaine Langdon. I'm the director of the charities section at the Department of Finance.
The measure we're proposing here is effectively designed to facilitate the ability of charities to work in partnerships with others.
To explain the existing rules, currently registered charities are able to use their own resources in one of two ways: either on their own charitable activities or as gifts to qualified donees. Then they can work with non-qualified donees, such as organizations internationally if they so choose, but under the current rules, they would have to enter into structured agreements with these organizations and exercise a level of direction and control over the intermediary such that the activity could be considered their own.
Therefore, what we have proposed here, in response to the concerns of charities that these rules were too onerous, is to allow charities to engage in a third type of activity, which would be to make grants to non-qualified donees in certain circumstances. This would facilitate their ability to make a grant to a foreign entity or to a domestic entity that is not a qualified donee, provided that the grant were made in furtherance of the charitable activity of the charity; that the funds were, in fact, applied to charitable activities; and that the organization followed certain accountability measures that are spelled out in the BIA.