Jan­ice Lear­mond-Criqui

The de­vel­op­ment of the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry On­line Sys­tem (CROS) has come a long way, and as some­one who reg­u­lar­ly files statu­to­ry doc­u­ments, I can cer­tain­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the dif­fer­ence it has made.

Be­fore CROS, fil­ing a doc­u­ment meant typ­ing the re­quired forms, leav­ing your of­fice and mak­ing your way to the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al De­part­ment (RGD)—rain or shine. Then came the lines: one to get to the counter, an­oth­er to pay the $40 fil­ing fee, and yet an­oth­er to col­lect your copy of the reg­is­tered doc­u­ment.

Even now, when fil­ing in per­son, there is the in­ter­est­ing process of get­ting the doc­u­ment stamped, cur­rent­ly in­volv­ing three stamps: a date stamp, a reg­is­tered stamp and an “Un­ver­i­fied Pend­ing Re­view” Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al stamp. So, yes, I wel­come CROS.

The on­line sys­tem has made it pos­si­ble to con­duct a grow­ing num­ber of trans­ac­tions with­out phys­i­cal­ly vis­it­ing the RGD. Most im­por­tant, in my view, is the abil­i­ty to file an An­nu­al Re­turn on­line. Any­one who has spent hours trav­el­ling to and wait­ing at the RGD can ap­pre­ci­ate what these on­line ser­vices mean in terms of time and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

But there are still gaps.

One ser­vice that ap­pears to be miss­ing from the on­line process re­lates to Form 6, which is re­quired as part of the an­nu­al fil­ing re­quire­ments for non-prof­it en­ti­ties and is filed along with Form 29.

At present, Form 6 has to be com­plet­ed and sub­mit­ted man­u­al­ly. What con­cerns me is what hap­pens af­ter it is filed. The counter clerk ac­cepts the form, but there is no sec­ond copy stamped as re­ceived or reg­is­tered for the per­son fil­ing it. When I sub­se­quent­ly checked the doc­u­ments record­ed for the NPO, I could not find Form 6 re­flect­ed in the data­base.

So here is the ob­vi­ous ques­tion: What proof does the per­son fil­ing Form 6 have that it was ac­tu­al­ly sub­mit­ted? You will get the re­ceipt but not a stamped copy of Form 6.

The RGD “love notes”

RGD has start­ed reg­u­lar is­su­ing of query no­tices when some­thing needs to be cor­rect­ed. You may re­ceive a no­ti­fi­ca­tion ad­vis­ing that an oc­cu­pa­tion has not been en­tered, or a per­son’s na­tion­al­i­ty is miss­ing. I call these no­tices the RGD “love notes.” They are es­sen­tial­ly say­ing: We have looked at your fil­ing. Some­thing isn’t right. Please fix it.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, the query it­self does not car­ry a date; the date ap­pears on the ac­com­pa­ny­ing email. For prop­er record-keep­ing and au­dit pur­pos­es, the no­tice it­self should be dat­ed.

Ed­u­ca­tion could solve many of the prob­lems

I must com­mend the com­pli­ance staff on Floor 7 for the pa­tience they dis­play when as­sist­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic who need help cor­rect­ing their fil­ings.

But how much of that as­sis­tance could be avoid­ed through greater pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion about statu­to­ry fil­ings and CROS?

The RGD has ac­cess to a large au­di­to­ri­um. Why not pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly of­fer pub­lic in­for­ma­tion ses­sions ex­plain­ing statu­to­ry doc­u­ments, com­mon fil­ing mis­takes, CROS re­quire­ments and how to cor­rect queries? Some­times the most ef­fec­tive way to solve a prob­lem is to start at the ground lev­el.

And then there is the in-per­son fil­ing process.

A re­cent de­vel­op­ment is the in­tro­duc­tion of two forms - an in­ter­nal form and a cus­tomer form. The con­cept makes sense. The in­ter­nal form as­sists with track­ing doc­u­ments re­ceived from the cashier down­stairs, while the cus­tomer form cap­tures in­for­ma­tion that may not ap­pear on the re­ceipt. Good idea. The prob­lem is the process.

The cus­tomer form can be tak­en away to be com­plet­ed, but the in­ter­nal form is dealt with at the counter. Hav­ing cus­tomers stand­ing at the counter com­plet­ing in­for­ma­tion in­creas­es the wait­ing time and frus­tra­tion of every­one else in the line. The so­lu­tion seems sim­ple: give cus­tomers both forms to com­plete be­fore they reach the counter.

De­spite these is­sues, I sup­port the move to­wards on­line fil­ing.