On the first issue of the single credit, there are other people making that submission before the committee. There's certainly something to be said for it. I don't think it's going to solve the revenue dilemmas that charities are currently facing, although it does have the benefit of simplifying the law. The other potential concern is that if you look at what that actually does, depending upon the value of the credit, donors are receiving more back in the form of a credit than they're actually contributing, which currently goes on, to some extent, depending on the tax bracket you're in.
That causes me some concern in terms of how we actually approach charities from a policy perspective. Are charitable funds public funds? Are charities public? Are they different from the government? That causes me some concerns, because it'll have impacts on how the government regulates charities. What hangs in the balance there is whether or not we actually lose some of the innovative potential of the sector if it's regulated too rigidly on the theory that this is all public money. I think that's a relevant concern.
On the other topic on unintended consequences, the big potential unintended consequence is regulating abusive donations. One of the advantages of the ambiguity of existing law is that regulators always have in their back pocket the ability to say that if you participated in an abusive arrangement you lacked “donative intent”, and because of that you made no gift. In theory, “donative intent” has no relevance. It's just something that's out there in the case law to give courts and regulators a safety valve to pull the plug on those schemes. But there has been some published literature on better ways to target them.
So there are concerns, but they're answerable, and they're answerable in a way that is better than the current way.