Get legal advice before revising your charitable purposes

Registered charities are facing a material shift in regulatory risk

In January 2026, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) quietly changed how it oversees amendments to charitable purposes and activities. The CRA announced that it will no longer pre-approve or automatically review proposed changes to a charity's purposes or activities before those changes are adopted.

While this change may appear to simplify the process, it in fact places greater legal responsibility — and exposure — squarely on individual charities and their boards.

Historically, charities were strongly encouraged to seek advance feedback from the CRA before amending their charitable purposes, particularly where it was not readily apparent that the new charitable purpose would be exclusively charitable at law. That process provided a measure of regulatory certainty, particularly for charities seeking less traditional charitable purposes. 

The comfort of that safety net is now gone. 

Charities must now:

• Independently determine whether revised purposes are exclusively charitable at law

• Amend governing documents without advance CRA confirmation

• Submit changes to the CRA after adoption, knowing they may be reviewed later

• Bear the full risk if the CRA later determines the purposes are not exclusively charitable at law

  
  

If the CRA concludes that a charity's purposes are not exclusively charitable — or that its activities fall outside its purposes — the consequences can be severe, including:

• Compliance agreements

• Financial penalties

• Suspension of receipting privileges

• Revocation of charitable registration
  

In other words, mistakes will no longer be caught early. They will be caught later, often in the course of CRA audits or compliance reviews.

What effect will this change have?

The rationale for this shift is clear. It spares the Charities Directorate the work of supporting Canadian charities in ensuring their evolving purposes are exclusively charitable. The burden of that analysis now falls entirely on charities themselves, which means either retaining legal counsel or taking on that risk unassisted.

Without the comfort of pre-approval, we expect to see fewer established charities willing to expand operations into the edges of what is charitable at law. Innovation in the Canadian charitable sector is already unnecessarily stifled. Our provincial governments have shown little interest in exercising their jurisdiction to modernize the definition of what is charitable, and judicial guidance on the topic remains rare (a topic deserving a much longer article).

We also expect that smaller charities may simply expand their purposes without proper consideration, potentially unaware that they have installed a time bomb for future board members to inherit.

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This is general information, not legal advice — and it may not reflect the current law. If you need support with changing your charitable purposes and activities, book a consult. Our team would be happy to help!