Finance Committee on May 3rd, 2012

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I will remember your comment.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Howlett, I'm curious because the name of the organization is Canadians for Tax Fairness. Who are these Canadians?

[Dennis Howlett]

So far more than 3,000 Canadians have signed on in support of our organization, and we're associated with other groups, provincial groups, that have also been campaigning on tax fairness issues since before we were established. Generally, they are Canadians who are concerned about trying to deal with the deficit only on the spending side, rather than looking at the revenue side as part of the solution.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Are these members of the organization? Is there a fee to join?

[Dennis Howlett]

We have donors and we have people who have just signed up in support—both.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

How do you fund your activities?

[Dennis Howlett]

We are funded by donations from individuals. We are not a registered charity, precisely because a lot of our work is advocacy and we wouldn't qualify as a charity. But we also receive funding from development NGOs and labour unions.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Okay.

[A voice]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[Adler]

It's Thursday afternoon and I ain't going there! I'm giving you a break today.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Patrick, I'm very curious about what you've done, and I have to commend you for it. Where is the genesis of all this? Where did it all come from? Could you give me some of the background?

[Jim Patrick]

Sure.

The Mobile Giving Foundation was established in the United States a few years ago. They approached us, I'm going to say in 2009, and asked if we would consider being the Canadian host for this organization. They set it up at precisely the right time here, because literally within a week or two the earthquake in Haiti happened, so we had a trial by fire. Not to compare our trials to theirs, but we had the program up and running within a matter of days. We raised $400,000 in five-dollar donations, which turned out to be more in that first month than was raised in the United States through the entire first year—not in per capita terms but dollar for dollar—and that's where we really appreciated the potential of this.

The head of the Mobile Giving Foundation in the U.S. remains involved with us. It's part of the Mobile Giving Forum, I believe, today in Toronto, and we remain in close contact with them. But to date, Canadians have taken to this platform in a greater way than Americans have, even though it began in the U.S.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Have you been able to break down the demographics, in terms of what age group is giving as opposed to others, or what gender?

[Jim Patrick]

It's not to say it hasn't been done, but I haven't seen those demographics. I will check, and if we have them I'd be happy to file them with the committee.

We do public polling every year, and this year we ran a survey, hired a company called the Quorus Consulting Group, that ran what we call the “consumer attitudes on mobile giving”. To the question earlier of whether we're eating the lunch of existing charities, importantly 87% of donors who used this mobile platform did so in addition to donations they made through traditional means.

In terms of age or income, if we have that information I'll file it with the clerk. But we do poll our users regularly.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Did the polling information also show anything to do with whether they give exclusively via the phone?

[Jim Patrick]

Only 8% reported that text donation would replace their traditional means; 90% of mobile users said they'd do it again; and 83% said they'd recommend that someone else do it again. But only 8% said they saw it as replacing their traditional means of making donations.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Okay.

Do they choose what charity they want the money to go to? How does that work?

[Jim Patrick]

There's a keyword associated with the charities. I'll give you an example.

A hospital in Toronto wanted to use this platform to run a campaign. We went to the Toronto Raptors, who put the five-digit short code up on the screen, along with the keyword, which might have been “hospital”. Our president and CEO, Bernard Lord, who can be a persuasive guy, made an on-screen appeal and I believe they raised over $20,000 with that one exposure.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

At a game.

[Jim Patrick]

At a Raptors' game.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Oh, really. Okay.

Now, you talked a bit—

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peggy Nash]

Mr. Adler, you have about five seconds.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Okay.

You talked earlier about political donations and that in Canada we can't use this method at the moment.

[Jim Patrick]

It hasn't be set up that way. We would have to engage Elections Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency and, potentially, provincial agencies, before we could. We may have the U.S. experience to draw from, given that yesterday, as I said, the Federal Elections Commission in the U.S. received a similar petition.