Ding Dong C-470 is Dead

by Adam Aptowitzer

While many Canadians are bemoaning the onset of another election (the fourth in seven years), the charity sector is overjoyed. As it turns out, the opposition parties in their eagerness to defeat the Conservative party did unintentionally what they could not be convinced to do directly. The result is that bill C-470 has died on the order paper and would have to be re-introduced in the next Parliament to become law. This is doubly fortunate given that the sector originally had mixed feelings about the bill's intentions but found it difficult to marshal arguments against Bill C-470's transparency provisions. Even the parts of the bill that united the sector in opposition were given short shrift (if not outright hostility) from the Parliamentarians to whom the sector made representations.

As Bill C-470 was proposed by Liberal Member of Parliament Albina Guarnieri - who is not running for re-election - it would require another MP to propose the bill in the new Parliament. While this is not impossible the bill has not yet arisen in the context of the election and was hopefully just a pet cause of this one MP. With luck we will not see this bill proposed again anytime soon.

Of course, the other benefit of the defeat of the government is that the government measures contained in the budget (as discussed in our previous article - available here) were also defeated. Unfortunately, given that these proposals were policy oriented and politically based it is likely that they will be proposed regardless of who forms the next government, and just as likely that they will be enforced retroactive to the date of their original proposal by the Conservatives.