Finance committee  Yes, that is correct.

Finance committee  When an audit is being conducted, these types of questions may be asked by the audit team once they are on the premises and auditing the activities of an organization. However, this is not done in every case, for all income tax returns.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, they must submit information returns, rather than tax returns. Each year, they have to submit an information return within six months following the end of the fiscal year. Those returns are available for the public to access on our website. We can certainly provide com

Finance committee  We conduct approximately 800 audits every year.

Finance committee  Last year, of the almost 800 audits we conducted, we revoked 41 charities for cause, for a variety of reasons. The most common reason for revoking a charity last year was for their participation in abusive tax shelter gifting arrangements. There would also have been false receipt

Finance committee  Unfortunately, Mr. Chair, I don't have that precise information, but I could go back to—

Finance committee  Unfortunately, the information that is provided in the return and posted on our website is the information provided by the charity. If the charity has made a mistake, since we are not able to review all of the returns, it is possible. I've taken note of it, and we will review t

Finance committee  The provision currently proposes to amend an existing provision, which we currently use and rely on to disclose information that's on the website now. I think I would leave it to the committee to determine whether that particular language should be changed, but we do value the pr

Finance committee  The annual information return was revised last year, taking into account all of the information that we'd been hearing--in particular from small and rural charities--about how to reduce burden on charities, and this was done internally within the CRA.

Finance committee  We don't actually use the term “investigation”. We conduct audits.

Finance committee  Our expectation is to audit approximately 1% of charities every year. These would be full audits in which we would look at whether the activities of the organization were still charitable, and also at the financial statements and financial aspect.

Finance committee  Again, I'm not aware of this as being a trend. The law is very clear: a charity must devote all of its resources to its own activities and to charitable purposes. So in what you've described, depending on what the details would be, a charity would not be able to share its resourc

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  Mr. Chair, I think you may be on to something. We hadn't had a chance to see the amendment. But certainly the information return, as its currently drafted--the components of it--are not set out in legislation. It is within the minister's discretion to determine what should be o

Finance committee  I don't know that for a fact, but if the chairperson of the committee felt it would be helpful, we would certainly attend if we were invited.