Yes, I can take that question. Thank you very much.

There are 86,000 registered charities in Canada today, more or less.

In order to be registered as a charity in Canada, you have to meet a few requirements. First, you have to have exclusively charitable purposes. Charitable purposes are actually not defined in the Income Tax Act. We have to look to what the courts have said. There are four broad categories of charity: charities that relieve poverty; charities that advance education; charities that advance religion; and then another catch-all with charities that advance other purposes beneficial to the community as a whole. You'll find lots of different kinds of organizations in that last category, including health organizations and animal welfare organizations.

When we receive applications from organizations that want to be registered, we have to satisfy ourselves that they have exclusively charitable purposes and activities that will further those purposes. As part of that analysis, we have to assure ourselves that they will be delivering a public benefit. Those would be the main requirements to be a registered charity in Canada, to get in the door, as opposed to a non-profit organization. Oftentimes the two types of organizations are mistaken one for the other.

A non-profit organization is defined in the Income Tax Act as being a club, association, or society that is organized to carry out activities that relate to civic improvement, recreation, pleasure, etc., for any purpose other than profit. That is essentially the definition of a non-profit organization. They cannot have a profit purpose. They are limited in the kinds of activities they can undertake that generate some income, although it is not impossible, by any means.

The difference between the two in terms of obligations is that, first of all, charities are registered; NPOs are not. Charities have to file a public return that is made available to the public through our website; non-profit organizations do not.

Those are the kinds of distinctions between the two.

Our directorate is focused exclusively on registered charities. I don't deal with non-profit organizations.

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