Finance committee  I think the Globe and Mail had an article on this yesterday, and it got the whole thing wrong. Basically, this has nothing to do with foreign funding of Canadian charities. This has to do with the issue that there is a category of foreign groups that will be considered qualified donees.

Finance committee  I wouldn't characterize it as interference. I would say—

Finance committee  —we live in a democracy and people are entitled to have their views. Some people don't have much money and aren't able to really express those views very much. I think it might even be helpful to have a level playing field that anyone who wants to—

Finance committee  I would just say that CRA revised the T3010, the main form, so that for the average charity they're probably only filling in four pages. If they do other things, like foreign activities or they have employees or revenue over $100,000, then they'll fill in additional schedules. But I would point out that if you look at the U.S. form 990, just to take an example, World Vision would file, say, 20 pages in Canada and 350 pages in the U.S.

Finance committee  You would have to know the details. If a charity is, for example, buying magazines for $3 and selling them for $3.25, and it costs the company that is producing them 10¢ to produce, then—

Finance committee  CRA has come out with a new fundraising guide since April 20, so just a couple of weeks ago. It definitely says that CRA will be scrutinizing groups any time most of the money ends up going to for-profit companies and not to the charities. They will be scrutinizing that, if there's a high ratio of costs.

Finance committee  Charities can run Tim Hortons if they want to. If they do it all volunteer, that could be okay. Also, if they're going to do it, for example, in a hospital, it could be a related business. There are avenues for charities—quite a few, in fact, for them to do business activities.

Finance committee  We can always learn from the examples of other countries, but I would point out that in some other countries, they have more liberal rules for business activities by Canadian charities, but they also tax the activities. I think you could have a very broad system where you allow charities to do anything, if it's taxable.

Finance committee  You know what? My take would be that—

Finance committee  Well, money comes from abroad. I believe CIDA spends a lot of money doing stuff around the world. Some people don't like some of the things that CIDA supports, like equality for women and other things. But people abroad also give to Canadian charities and things like that—

Finance committee  I don't have any problem with disclosure and transparency. For the environmental charities that are being accused of all sorts of things under the sun, I don't think even those would have a problem. If you look at the U.S. tax returns, the 990s, you can see how the money is flowing to Canada and being used for various types of initiatives and activities.

Finance committee  Actually, just go on your computer. You go to GuideStar. It takes five minutes, and you can pick out any foundations you want and read their tax returns, which are much more extensive than what Canadian charities have to file, and you'd be able to find out that information. I think the political thing is a little bit of a red herring.

Finance committee  I think people, parliamentarians, senators, and cabinet ministers should be more careful when they talk about the charity sector, when they make allegations and things like that. I think that would probably be more helpful than more tax incentives, in terms of encouraging public trust in charities.

Finance committee  I think what you'd have to do is look at the charity application. I doubt it had any of that stuff in it. That's the first thing. So I don't think you should blame CRA, because 20 years earlier someone put in a nice application saying they were going to help starving people abroad.

Finance committee  They can audit them as a non-profit. If they're very profitable, they could turn them into a non-profit and they could have to pay a little tax, yes. That's hardly much of a situation. I think the better thing would be that non-profits that have to file these T1044s...that those become public, and people can at least get an idea of how much money is going in and what it's being spent on.