Finance committee  Again, the rules are very clear: charities' resources have to be devoted to charitable purposes. We certainly do take any information from the public and, where warranted, follow up as appropriate.

Finance committee  Indeed, as it currently stands, the act does not distinguish between the organization that renders the services and the foundation that collects donations. That is the state of the current legislative framework. The bill would therefore apply to both types of organizations.

Finance committee  That question touches on the legislative framework. Unfortunately, that is somewhat beyond the scope of my duties.

Finance committee  In fact, public awareness is one of our key mandates. That is why I am happy to answer your question. We spend a lot of time and money to inform the public on our role, as the regulatory agency, as well as on how Canadians can make informed donations, do the research into the organizations they would like to support financially, and avoid fraud.

Finance committee  They used to have to disclose their top five salary earners, not by name and precise salary, but by indicating within which salary range they fell. The salary ranges that were provided to them went up to $120,000. In 2009, we increased the ranges to reflect the fact that there were higher salary earners, greater than $120,000, and now we require that charities identify the top 10.

Finance committee  That's right.

Finance committee  The bill could require it, and if it did we would implement it. I only wanted to make the point that currently the salary ranges aren't prescribed in law; they are prescribed by the CRA in the annual information return.

Finance committee  There are specific provisions in the legislation around sanctions for providing undue personal benefit to any individual, whether within or outside the charity. For a first infraction, the penalty would amount to 105% of the undue benefit. If there were a second infraction within a five-year period from the time the first infraction occurred, the penalty would then be 110% of the undue benefit and could be accompanied by a suspension.

Finance committee  It depends on the nature of the undue benefit. Our best way of going in and finding out what is happening in a charity is to conduct an audit.

Finance committee  The agency has an audit program. To give you an idea of the scope, we conduct approximately 800 audits a year. We have audits that target what we consider to be potential risks in specific areas of the charitable sector. We also carry out random audits. Some of the 800 audits can also be initiated following public complaints, media reports, etc.

Finance committee  No, they are not.

Finance committee  I'm certainly not saying it should be increased to $250,000, no. Again, as Mr. Williams said, my remarks unfortunately didn't take into account the fact that amendments were being worked on and presented to the committee today. When I talked about the $250,000 in my opening remarks, I was referring to the initial proposal in the bill that would see the salaries capped at $250,000, or at least give the Minister of National Revenue the discretion to revoke a charity if they paid a salary above that range.

Finance committee  I could speak to that, Mr. Chair. The information currently available on the website is, first of all, if a charity is remunerating individuals. If they have full-time employees, they are to identify how many employees they are remunerating on a full-time basis.

Finance committee  If I could just continue, in terms of what is required to be disclosed currently, for the top 10 salary earners, each charity must disclose the salary range in which those organizations fall. So, for example, a charity that remunerates two individuals between $200,000 and $250,000 would have to indicate that there are two people in that salary range.

Finance committee  If that was required by the legislation, that information could be collected by the CRA.