Federal mandate letters updated

The world has changed in so many ways since the federal government first issued mandate letters to its ministries in December 2019. Those letters have now been updated as of Jan. 15, 2021.

Here’s the new letter for the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, which has much relevance to our sector. The minister is Hon. Ahmed Hussen, who was first elected in his York South-Weston riding (Ontario) in 2015, and was previously the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

We’re curious in particular about this bullet in the mandate letter to Hussen: “Continue to work across government to ensure that charities and non-profits have the tools that they need to modernize as they emerge from the pandemic to support the Government’s overall agenda in a manner that responds to the needs of Canadians in every region.”

There’s no further explanation clarifying that vision, but we’d love to know more about what they mean by “modernize.”

Imagine Canada remains such an important source of information and advocacy for the non-profit sector at the federal level. Their September 2020 analysis of the federal Throne Speech emphasized that the tremendous work of the non-profit sector still goes largely unnoticed by the federal government.