It's an amazingly simple number that you would think you should be able to get.
Part of it, if you think about it, is that in tax return data, not everybody identifies that they have been giving to charity. Plus, not all giving is tax-receipted. If you attend a gala, is that a donation? It's not tax-receipted, but you are giving. You are supporting that charity. Or you give $5 to somebody in the subway who is collecting money for a charity. I think the better source is to actually look at the charities, the registered charities, and ask them how much they are bringing in. Even then, you're not able to value the volunteer time.
Nobody has really done anything to ask, if we look across all the charities in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. for stuff like that, how we compare. In the U.S., if you're a religious organization, you don't have to file a tax return. If you're a charity that has a low level of revenue, you don't have to file a tax return. Canada is the only one that requires all charities that issue tax receipts to file. That's in part why Canada actually has really good data to study this. To make us comparable is very difficult.