Finance committee  Good afternoon. Thanks for the invitation to present here. We at Charity Intelligence are a charity, but we are a different type of charity. We work for donors. We research and analyze Canadian charities; we are the 1-800 hotline that donors call. We do our best to answer their

Finance committee  I think that debate matters. I think what Canada has to be very proud of is its free debate. I believe that organizations, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, should be engaged in that debate. The donors we work with do support political parties, do support not-for-profit organ

Finance committee  We didn't do the surveys. The submission has the resources, so we've pulled together all the different surveys that we've read and found.

Finance committee  Absolutely. When they ask donors, there are many reasons for why people give. Maybe it was a hospital that helped them, but at the bottom of the list every single time is tax incentives.

Finance committee  They were Hedac and Malvern Rouge, which was a hijack situation, where individuals come to a local charity...and it went from $140,000 in donations one year to—I haven't got the number—about $60 million the next year. It's a hijack situation.

Finance committee  Both of them have had their charitable status revoked. I do not believe the individuals who were running this pyramid scheme have been charged. It will be like Whack-a-Mole, and we'll see the individuals pop up somewhere else in the near future.

Finance committee  No. I think the CRA needs more resources. I'm taken aback by the size of—

Finance committee  It is, and I think it's growing. I think the landscape has changed. Just by the nature of the operations, it's difficult to quantify. You don't know how many are out there, so I don't have any hard facts. I would suspect it's a growing problem, and it's going to need tougher acti

Finance committee  No.

Finance committee  What I've seen the courts and the CRA do—and I'm not an expert—is come down on the individual donors, the donors who were involved in funding these tax schemes. In our experience, and as I provided in our submission, we are a tiny charity. We're unknown. We have worked with two d

Finance committee  No.

Finance committee  Like with chocolate bars.

Finance committee  That's another can of fish, a completely different can of fish. That's where you have for-profit corporations using charities logo branding, and they will raise money on behalf of the charity. The deal is made between the charity and the for-profit marketing organization calendar

Finance committee  There's no disclosure because they are for-profit, privately held corporations.

Finance committee  I feel passionately about this. Can I just jump in? I think that having a sliding scale is really critical. If you are a small church congregation with revenues of $35,000 a year, you should not be held to the same standards of transparency and accountability as a World Vision b