On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 4:21 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net> wrote:

Jeffery Nichols wrote:
> That said, I think our current statement of purpose on meta looks
> pretty good (at least compared to the examples from the old law)

It's still a matter of tax law rather than corporate law, and most
lawyers still run the other way when you say there's a tax issue. The
problem with the Revenue Canada information line is that they are not
bound by anything they say. It's a little early to talk about funding a
court case when we haven't even been rejected yet.

The main issue about the purposes is that they must show how Canadians
will benefit from the charitable monies that we spend. Verbs like
"encourage" and "promote" sound good but can be done without spending money.

What is the actual yardstick that the charitable status request is measured against?
I'm not sure if other functioning charities have to disclose their applications, but it might
help if they do to review that.

Also, I'm guessing that RevCan has some set of rules that they apply to orgs that already
have status to determine if they are allowed to keep it.

I know that some of this is a bit fuzzy, but the less fuzzy we make it the easier it will be to make some decisions going forward. We should be able to look at existing orgs with charitable designation to get ideas of what has worked until now.

I do think that WM Canada will probably break new ground as an org, but the truth is that we should probably avoid it during the startup phase with the government, as it'll make the job harder all around.

Gerald