Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
Imagine Canada looks into and out for Canada's charities and not-for-profit corporations. We're pleased to bring forward four recommendations to this committee. They've been developed in collaboration with, and formally endorsed by, some of Canada's best-loved national charities, known to all the committee members and to Canadians more broadly: the United Way of Canada and Centraide Canada; YMCA Canada and YWCA Canada; the Salvation Army; the Sport Matters Group, which was here earlier today; the Canadian Conference of the Arts; the Canadian Council for International Cooperation; Community Foundations of Canada; the Inuit Women of Canada; and the national charities and not-for-profit law section of l'Association du Barreau canadien and the Canadian Bar Association. These organizations work throughout the year to develop consistent positions to present to this committee that are concerns of charities and non-profits in Canada.
Of the four recommendations that we unanimously present to you today, members, two relate to tax policies that are already in place but that in our view have become unduly complex or are unclear and are therefore not achieving the tax policy objectives that they set out to achieve.
It's our recommendation that clarification of the charitable remainder trusts and the streamlining of the charitable donation tax credit would result in improved use of these important tax incentives for charitable giving. Details of those recommendations are in recommendations 2 and 3 of our brief.
Our two other recommendations, committee members, propose new measures to stimulate giving by Canadians to the charities of their choice.
Donations received by organizations in the sector from 22 million donors amount to $9 billion every year.
About 22 million Canadians donate $9 billion a year to charities. Tax policy is a critical foundation that underscores any society with high rates of giving, as we experience in Canada. We've all seen the creative and positive impact of the full deductibility of capital gains exemptions on gifts of stock. That was very welcome by the sector and had a stimulative effect on giving.
Other recommendations that we feel would be beneficial to Canadians were presented by Philanthropic Foundations of Canada when it appeared before this committee. They recommend that donors and other funders should be able to invest in and lend to charities as well as to donate and give in grants, and they should receive favourable tax treatments when they do so.
From the recipient organizations' point of view, charities should be able to access a full range of funding instruments, much like venture corporations, particularly when they're trying to raise significant funds of donated community-based capital to take on very significant causes such as disaster relief or building child care centres and so on.
Mr. Chair, I think I have a minute or so left. Do I?