The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Deputy Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Christian Council President Delton Fernander said the organisation would have preferred to police itself when it came to financial regulations, but will ultimately have to trust the government.

The Non-Profit Organisation Act was passed along with four other financial services acts in the Senate yesterday.

Bishop Fernander acknowledged the act was less intrusive, adding the organization will work with the framework it was given, and monitor how the BCC is handled moving forward.

He said while the BCC put forth its own recommendations, the version of the Act passed was the best “compromise” that could be met.

“We met with the Attorney General and we were in negotiations now from (former president Ranford) Patterson’s term under the former AG and two years under my leadership and there is substantial difference than what we started off with,” Bishop Fernander told The Tribune yesterday. “It is the best we could have negotiated and wait to make sure that the government comes through with this lighter touch and not a strong one. So we’ll be watching.”

Asked if he felt churches should be exempted from the provisions of this Act, he said: “That was our initial argument and we felt that there should be a special category for churches. We weren’t able to win that battle and subsequently the bill is passed and so we will see how the church will be treated and we will respond in kind.”

“Well we have to trust the government,” he also said, “This is where we are. The council will just wait to see how the government enforces it.

“What we have understood it to be is it is not intrusive any more accept if something comes up untoward and that is what we were fighting for that accept you have something going on in churches, that you know we shouldn’t be treated like we have already committed crimes of any sort.”

“We would have preferred that the Christian Council do the policing of the churches and we still wait to see how that will be handled because the bill does give some leeway that some things can be done and we want to see after its enacted what takes place and that’s when we really can say where we go from there,” Bishop Fernander said.

In the Senate yesterday, Attorney General Carl Bethel said it was not generally accepted that NPOs are wide ranging. He said there were different risks posed by different entities.

Mr Bethel said: “To have the same regulatory framework for all NPOs there was a failure to recognise the enormous diversity of the NPO sector whether it’s purely charitable matters, whether it’s a mix, whether it’s advocacy, whether it’s just social groupings that do their own thing and occasionally have a charitable aspect, etcetera.

“There is a total mix right across the board and the basis of regulation has moved from a one-size-fits all approach to the principle of what they call risk based regulation,” Mr Bethel continued.

“That principle is that regulators have to be empowered by the law to be intelligent enough to say this type of activity causes a far less risk of harmful activity than the other type.

“So, for example. one could say that unlicensed gaming could pose a quite high risk of all sorts of things and therefore one would see that in the gaming bill we have now given the gaming board authority to take quite harsh measures in respect to unlicensed gaming since we have a framework that permits regularised and regulated gaming. Therefore the hammer should fall on those who continue to breach the framework because there is an avenue for them to be regulated and registered.”

Opposition Senator Fred Mitchell added that he believed political parties and churches should have been excluded from the NPO’s provisions.