Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairperson. Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to appear this afternoon on Bill C-470. I am Cathy Hawara, the director general of the charities directorate within CRA. With me is Bryan McLean, the director of policy, planning and legislation divisio

Finance committee  The cap that has been presented in the amendment by Ms. Guarnieri...or not the cap, but the threshold, in terms of—

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 remar

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 $250,00

Finance committee  No, they are not.

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

Finance committee  That information is not being collected right now.

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

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 ca

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 or

Finance committee  That's right.