As the validity of same-sex marriage for non-residents is thrown into question and striking workers outside the Ottawa Booth street Salvation Army fall out of the mainstream media, you begin to wonder: how do you get reliable, alternative information about these and other important issues? This week at the toolkit we're holding politicians accountable, for their policies, for inaction on our history and for systemic oppressions.

On Oct. 19, the Ontario government passed Bill 65. In this bill, they have done something absolutely tremendous. They have recognized "commercial activities" and opened the door for social enterprise to thrive in Ontario.

Now, there are a couple of things that we would still like them to do. See here for more information. But we kind of suck at recognizing our successes and I think that we need to take a moment to celebrate what we have done and how we have successfully worked with the government of Ontario to transform a system and create an enabling environment for social enterprise to thrive.

Working in partnership with members of the Ontario Social Economy Roundtable and the Ontario Nonprofit Network, Centre for Social Innovation (CSI) is pleased to present our briefing to the Provincial Partnership Project. In this paper, we are inviting the province to clarify and assist in scaling up Community Bonds.

Most of you know that CSI is hard at work promoting our Community Bond offering -- 4% return for a five year -- held inside your RRSP -- but once you buy a CSI bond, wouldn't it be amazing to be able to have your whole portfolio holding local social enterprise investments? Equally tantalizing, wouldn't it be amazing if non-profits and social enterprise could leverage their greatest assets -- their communities -- to build community infrastructure?

Non-profit regulation and legislation are so complex that even senior third sector leaders – apart from a handful of charity law lawyers – don’t understand it well, according to a new report published by the Wellesley Institute in Toronto.

“Senior third sector leaders may be familiar with certain regulatory issues, but not the whole picture,” said authors Lynn Eakin and Heather Graham . “This is a problem, since most of the sector does not have access to specialized charity law lawyers.”