The first half of 2026 saw a spike in Canadian charity revocations for serious violations, at least doubling the total for the same time period of every year for the last decade.

In all, 40 charities lost their status between January and June after an audit by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), according to an analysis by the IJF. That’s more revocations in six months than have been recorded in most full years in the recent past.

CRA spokesperson Sylvie Branch told the IJF the numbers will vary from year to year depending on the facts of each case.

"A priority of the CRA, through its risk-based approach, is to address high-risk non compliance, which has a severe negative impact on the charitable sector. These repercussions can also ultimately impact charitable donors, beneficiaries and Canada’s tax base," Branch wrote.

"The CRA focuses on enforcement in these instances and employs its audit resources to identify and to address the full extent of suspected intentional, repeated and/or aggravated non-compliance."

Charities based in Ontario have accounted for the highest number of revocations so far this year, with 15, but B.C. is close behind at 13. About half of the revoked charities were classified as “other purposes beneficial to the community,” which can include everything from animal welfare organizations to health-related services.

The number of revocations after an audit has been on a mostly upward trend since the pandemic. For a period in 2020, the CRA closed its offices and paused all audit activities — there were just two recorded for the entire year, and none in the first six months.

Charity lawyer Mark Blumberg is calling for more CRA resources to be put into audits and speedy enforcement action against serious rule breakers in the sector.

“CRA completed only 220 charity audits in 2024-25, despite regulating more than 85,000 registered charities. It is encouraging that the Charities Directorate appears increasingly willing to move more promptly in serious cases, but substantially greater audit and enforcement capacity is still needed,” he wrote in an email.

These revocations for violations uncovered by auditors make up just a small fraction of the total number of charities that lost their status in the first six months of 2026.

A total of 894 charities had their registration revoked between January and June for failure to file their annual information returns. Another 373 were voluntarily revoked. The CRA considers applications for voluntary revocation when a charity ends its operations, achieves its stated purpose or runs out of money.

As of Aug. 27, there were 85,360 charities registered in Canada.

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