Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to have you here.
According to my sources, the CMA, the organization of management accountants, and Mr. Papillon and Mr. Morin, two authors on tax matters, if I, Alain Giguère, donated $1,000, as a Quebecker I would be entitled to a tax refund of $494 according to current tax regulations, that is to say if I added up the federal and provincial tax returns. If we applied the improved tax credit regulation, according to these same sources, for a $1,000 donation I would receive a return of $574.
My question is quite simple. What is the point of giving to these charitable organizations, substituting ourselves for the government, if the administrative and funding costs of these campaigns to obtain charitable donations are over 50% or close to it?
The second obvious problem is the following. If, for instance, the government reduced its support for healthcare by a billion dollars, even if there were $1 billion dollars in gifts to charitable organizations, that amount would not necessarily be used to compensate the loss of health care services.
Indeed, that billion dollars could be allocated elsewhere, for instance to political or pseudo-political or religious organizations. It would not necessarily go to the sector where the government has withdrawn its support.
Ms. Laforest and Ms. Payne, could you answer that question?