Research Streams

Charity and Law in Canada

The renewed LCC’s first research project will address charity and law in Canada.

Charity is part of everyday life for people across Canada. Charitable behaviour, charitable giving, charitable interactions: all are understood to reflect human generosity and concern for collective welfare. Charity is central to an extraordinarily wide range of sectors, actions, commitments, and projects.

Charities are the organizations that make this possible. They too are part of everyday life for Canadians. From small to large, local to international, charities exercise significant responsibility in the governance and flourishing of a contemporary and diversified society. 

How does law in Canada - in multiple forms and at various levels - facilitate charity as a practice and support the functioning of charities?  The Law Commission of Canada proposes to explore a wide range of related questions within a project dedicated to charity in Canadian law and the law of Canadian charities. They reflect preoccupations and priorities shared by individuals, communities, and institutions with whom the Commission has already engaged and to whom the Commission will continue to listen and respond. They illustrate intersecting issues related to legal definitions, co-existing sources of authority and governance, and the effective regulation of an extremely complex and multi-faceted set of activities, needs, and functions. Related matters of law include those situated in taxation, national security, criminal responsibility, constitutional law, electoral governance, corporate structures, banking regulation, labour relations, estate planning, and civil liability.  

As the Commission develops this project, there will be room to identify places where repair may be needed, where better knowledge and understanding are possible, where communication and cooperation should be improved, and where we can look to the future of Canada and the precious role that charity and charities play in ensuring that future is bright.

Charity and Law in Canada - Report Titles and Abstracts

Charity Briefs

As part of its Charity and Law in Canada project, the LCC is holding a series of Discussion Circles with organizations and representatives from charities in different regions across Canada.

Each discussion circle features between four to six participants representing a range of activities and actors within the charitable sector. The goal of the discussions is to hear directly from individuals working on the ground to deliver the support and services on which individuals and communities depend.

Following each discussion circle, a Charity Brief is drafted collaboratively with participants and sets out some of the reflections, questions and challenges that were raised in the course of the exchange. The series of Charity Briefs will be compiled and later included alongside the research papers in the report submitted to Parliament as part of the charity project.

Each Charity Brief contains three sections highlighting key interventions and considerations raised by participants corresponding to the following themes:

• Living Charity: what should the Canadian public understand about the nature and needs of charities and the charitable sector in general?
• Pursuing Charity: what challenges do charities face in their work that might act as a barrier to achieving their mission?
• Renewing Hope: what are the possibilities for the future in the charity sector and how should its importance be conveyed from generation to generation of Canadians?

Prison Law in Canada

The Law Commission of Canada will commission a series of reports on selected topics related to law in the lives of incarcerated individuals in Canada.  This collection of critical papers will focus on specific issues and identify areas of, and paths to, reform.

Along with this collection, the LCC will host a series of focus circles. These focus circles will bring together individuals with varied expertise and experience related to incarceration and law. They will foster productive exchange, serve to enrich knowledge and understanding, and generate questions and issues deserving of attention and analysis.

Significance

Although the carceral system is central to our understanding of criminal justice, the spaces it occupies remain largely invisible to most Canadians; the justice systems that operate within detention centers, jails, prisons and penitentiaries are largely unseen and often not understood.

Through this project, the LCC seeks to illuminate these hidden spaces. It will do so by examining the meaning and effects of loss of freedom and conditions of incarceration, and the importance of hope to sustain incarcerated individuals both within the walls of their institutions and upon reentry into society.  Issues of access to education and mental health services, of maintaining connections to communities outside prisons, of humanity and responsibility in carceral institutions are all significant for Canadians who care about law and justice.

The LCC’s Focus

The effects of incarceration are felt by prisoners, certainly, but prisoners carry their experiences from within these institutions into the outside world. In this way, the experiences of prisoners are inextricably linked with those of Canadians as a whole. This project will consider questions relating to state accountability and good governance of carceral institutions, as well as the role that the carceral system and the law relating to that system play in creating a just, safe and secure society.

As the LCC meets with participants in the correctional system, we will identify areas of research to pursue. Meetings will take the form of focus circles with prisoners, criminal lawyers, academics, correctional services, law enforcement, relevant governmental departments, representatives of civil society, and others with a stake, expertise, and interest in the world of corrections. As we learn about pressing issues that call for interrogation, the LCC will assess where its input will be most beneficial, and commission reports on those issues. Our reports will be based on solid empirical and jurisprudential research, take into account a variety of relevant academic disciplines, and will provide critical analysis and paths to reform.

Both the reports and the focus circles will reinforce and build on connections between fact-based, cross-disciplinary inquiry and concrete impact on people, institutions and Canadian society. The aim of this process is to produce a unique collection of high quality, interdisciplinary, and practice-relevant reports on issues requiring attention, reflection and action now and into the future.

The Law Commission’s prison law project will shine a light on incarceration in Canada as a place to examine living law, pursuing justice and renewing hope.

Prison Law in Canada - Report Titles and Abstracts

Beyond Tomorrow Reports

Law for Canada’s Next Generations

Note: The Law Commission of Canada is now accepting proposals for Beyond Tomorrow Reports on an ongoing basis throughout the year.

In early 2025, the Law Commission of Canada launched a series entitled Beyond Tomorrow Reports dedicated to exploring directions in law for Canada’s coming generations.

The Law Commission, an independent and non-partisan agency, is committed to engaging the people of Canada in the ongoing and dynamic evolution of law. Since its restart in 2023, the Commission has held "Listen and Learn" sessions throughout the country. The resulting "What We Heard" documents provide an overview of the preoccupations and projects of individuals and institutions as they imagine and construct responses to future challenges. We have learned from participants the importance of embracing complicated conversations, addressing breakdown of trust, contributing to common endeavours, and fostering constructive change. The Beyond Tomorrow Reports initiative extends our "listen and learn" approach by issuing an open invitation to scholars and experts across Canada to submit proposals within the Commission’s framework for engaging with law and shaping law reform.

Commissioned and published on a periodic basis, the Beyond Tomorrow Reports series will identify and address challenges and issues in law for Canada’s next generation and beyond. Authors will contribute to imagining, facilitating, and guiding the implementation of reform with lasting impact. Each report will draw on critical informed research to articulate constructive pathways and possibilities for law in the future. Collaborative engagement with community-based actors will be incorporated into the production of the reports. This signature combination of research, outreach and transformation underscores the Law Commission’s accountability to the people of Canada. We look forward to supporting and sharing these reports on law for Canada’s next generations.

Report Format

Beyond Tomorrow Reports will consist of: 

• a research-based text of 15,000 – 17,000 words in length (excluding notes) 
• a related outreach module (e.g., workshop, public presentation, community engagement) that includes at least one community-based actor or partner 
• a brief written description (approximately 1,000 further words) of the complementary public engagement component  

$20,000 CAD will be paid to the author(s) to support research and writing for each Report.

Parameters

Commissioned principal authors will be established scholars at Canadian universities either at a Faculty of Law or in a related academic Department and Faculty. Proposals that pair an early-career scholar with the principal established scholar will be considered.

Proposals consisting of the following elements should be submitted for consideration by the Law Commission of Canada at projects-projets@lcc-cdc.gc.ca: 

• A tentative title and 300-word abstract for the proposed Beyond Tomorrow Report; 
• A 1,000-word outline and summary of the proposed report; 
• A 250-word description of the complementary community outreach module; 
• A preliminary bibliography of between 5 and 10 pertinent sources for each author; 
• A current CV for the author (or for each co-author);  
• A list of up to 5 of the author’s (or of each co-author’s) publications relevant to this work. 

Selection Process

Proposals will be evaluated by a project-specific advisory panel of the Law Commission of Canada. Review will take place on a rolling basis, with the aim of commissioning Beyond Tomorrow Reports at least twice a year.   

Evaluation of proposals and the commissioning of Beyond Tomorrow Reports will be guided by the Law Commission’s framework, notably:  

• the Law Commission’s three-part raison d’être – living law, pursuing justice, renewing hope;  
• the four-point compass of the Law Commission’s work – “Dream, Repair, Build, Share”; and  
• the Law Commission’s “Intersections” framework for law and law reform, shaped by co-existing and interacting substantive domains, structures, systems and jurisdictions. 

To be considered, a proposal to contribute a Beyond Tomorrow Report should demonstrate: 

• Ambition and capacity to explore underexamined issues and sites in law. 
• Embrace of complexity of the issues at stake and an ability to explain and work with that complexity (including dimensions along a spectrum from global to local). 
• Research methodology that integrates multiple disciplines, sectors and/or legal traditions. 
• Commitment to articulating reform pathways in the ongoing evolution of law. 
• A plan for public engagement in the form of a partnership or outreach activity including at least one community-based actor.

For further context on the LCC, potential contributors are directed to Part II (Rebuild, Resituate, Reimagine) of the Law Commission Reflection Paper: Recall to Reimagine: (Re)Creating the Law Commission of Canada – Se souvenir pour réinventer : la (ré)création de la Commission du droit du Canada (Ottawa: Law Commission of Canada, 2024).  

The LCC aims to notify applicants of its decision within 6-8 weeks of receipt of a submitted proposal.

Upon being commissioned to produce a Report, authors are expected to submit a complete draft to the LCC within six months.

All published Beyond Tomorrow Reports will be publications of the Law Commission of Canada in which the Law Commission of Canada will hold copyright.  

Questions may be addressed to: projects-projets@lcc-cdc.gc.ca.