Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill S-279, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (data on registered charities). Bill S-279 requires that every registered charity must, in its information return filed with the minister under section 149.‍1(14) of the Income Tax Act, indicate to the best of its knowledge how many of its directors, trustees, officers or like officials are members of each of the designated groups as defined in section 3 of the Employment Equity Act. Those designated groups include women, Aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities and members of visible minorities. Armed with this information, they must prepare a report for Parliament summarizing this information for the consumption of interested parties.

The rationale for Bill S-279 is clear, as the Honourable Senator Ratna Omidvar pointed out in her speech: Its aim is to provide evidence of the diversity and equity of governance structures within the charitable sector.

Bill S-279 was born out of the 2019 Senate report entitled Catalyst for Change: A Roadmap to a Stronger Charitable Sector, from a special committee on which I served. This is specifically from Recommendation 8:

That the Government of Canada, through the Canada Revenue Agency, include questions on both the T3010 (for registered charities) and the T1044 (for federally incorporated not-for-profit corporations) on diversity representation on boards of directors based on existing Employment Equity guidelines.

During testimony, we heard from Cathy Winter, Program Manager, DiverseCity onBoard, Ryerson University — now known as Toronto Metropolitan University — that:

There are over 170,000 non-profit and charitable organizations and hundreds of public sector agencies across Canada largely governed by boards of directors that do not represent the diversity of our nation’s communities. . . .

Christopher Fredette, an associate professor at the Odette School of Business, University of Windsor, further remarked that the importance of diversity on boards establishes that:

. . . the identification of needs, the setting of priorities, the making of decisions and the deploying of resources are undertaken by those who are legitimately reflective of their organization’s constituents and their communities; and, second, to ensure that the interests of communities and constituents are understood intimately. . . .

We also heard that more than half of charitable organizations do not have protocols to record this data.

However, colleagues, despite the good intentions of this legislation, I have some questions about whether it is needed and where it would lead. Charities currently have different methods for selecting their boards, such as appointments or a combination of elections and appointments, as specified in their constitutions and bylaws. Are we suggesting that the government needs to become involved in this process by stipulating diversity requirements? If so, how would this impact those charities?

I note that, by nature, the current diversity levels of the governance structures of many charities reflect the unique mandate of each charity. For example, a charity devoted to the needs of a specific ethnicity will often be governed by a board of representatives from that ethnic group. Would this be considered a lack of diversity?

Even though the bill specifically notes that the report prepared by the minister must not identify individual charities, directors, trustees or officers, the very presence of such a report would create a lens through which the diversity of the governance of charitable organizations is viewed. Perhaps we are looking in the wrong place; perhaps the diversity we are looking for is already present, as reflected in the diversity of charitable organizations themselves rather than in the governance structure of each individual charity.

Today, we are considering this legislation at second reading, which means we are deciding whether to approve it in principle and send it to committee. I admit that I am undecided about the principle, but I will support the bill going to committee for further study and look forward to having my questions answered there. Thank you.