Charities and political activities (Budget 2012)

In Budget 2012, the Government of Canada provided the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) with more resources to help charities understand and respect the rules related to political activities. These rules have been in place for many years, and it has always been a part of CRA’s mandate to ensure that registered charities follow them.

Because of the nature of their work, charities make a valuable contribution to public policy in Canada. The law recognizes this by allowing charities to devote a limited amount of their resources to non-partisan political activities related to their charitable purposes. The CRA’s program for auditing the political activities of charities does not change these rules, which are outlined in the CRA’s Policy Statement (CPS-22) Political Activities, published more than 10 years ago in 2003.

The CRA’s education first approach also applies to the political activities audit program. Since 2012, the CRA has made significant investments in education and outreach for all charities to help them follow the rules on political activities, including information sheets, FAQs, and a self-assessment tool, all of which are available on the CRA’s webpage Resources for charities about political activities.

With the increased funding, the CRA will conduct 54 audits focused on political activities. These audits are being carried out over four years, from 2012 to 2016, and are in addition to the other 3,600 audits undertaken by the CRA through its regular audit program over the same period.

The process for identifying which charities will be audited for any reason is exclusively handled by the CRA alone, based on a fair and transparent process.

In particular, charities were selected for political activities audits when the CRA identified possible issues where the charity might not be following the rules. The CRA also made sure the charities that were selected included:

• charities from all four broad categories of charity (poverty, education, religion, and other purposes beneficial to the community); and
• charities from across Canada.

By following this process, the CRA identified the 54 charities for political activity audits. This group included:

• 2 charities with purposes of relieving poverty;
• 10 charities with purposes to advance education;
• 6 charities with purposes to advance religion; and
• 36 charities with other purposes beneficial to the community (including animal welfare, upholding human rights, protection of the environment, international development, promotion of health, and community development.)

Importantly, these audits include a charity’s political activities but also examine whether or not the charity is following all the rules for charities and is operating for charitable purposes. Some have already been completed and reveal a range of non-compliance problems related to both political activities and other rules for charities issues. The CRA will continue to use its education-first approach to help charities better understand all of the requirements for registration.

Any organization is free to decide not to register as a charity if it wants to pursue political activities that go beyond the limits required by the law. 

Date modified:

2016-01-20