Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am happy to appear today before the Standing Committee on Finance.
Imagine Canada is the voice for the charitable sector in Canada.
Today I'd like to talk mostly about the stretch tax credit, which is the focus of our brief. I want to talk about it because we feel it's an innovative and exciting policy proposal that we believe will make a real difference for charities and for Canadians.
This is actually about challenging Canadians of all walks of life to give and to give more. This is about changing behaviour. At Imagine Canada we like to say that everyone can be a philanthropist.
In developing the stretch tax credit we had two broad public policy goals in mind. The first one was addressing the shrinking donor base, and you've heard about that in the hearing of last week. The stretch is about strengthening and broadening the donor base starting tomorrow morning, but also for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. This is about, as I said, changing behaviour.
But the second policy goal is also about promoting engagement because we do know there is a direct relationship between giving and volunteering, between giving and civic engagement. So this is also about Canadians taking ownership of their communities. We see this as a unique opportunity for broadening the donor base and building community engagement.
As you know well, when you develop new policy or you think of new policy, you ask yourselves a number of questions. We've asked ourselves a number of questions.
The first one is, is it affordable? Imagine Canada is very conscious that the federal government is in a deficit situation, that it wants to eliminate the deficit, and of course Canadians also support that. We are certainly concerned about that, but we feel this is a cost-limited proposal. The Parliamentary Budget Officer did the numbers in the brief—between $10 million and $40 million a year. What's interesting to also remember is that the tax credit, and so the government cost really, only kicks in if behaviour actually changes. So there's only a higher tax credit if there are more dollars going to charities, if people are actually changing their behaviour, and that, I think, makes it quite different from a number of other tax credits. It really only kicks in if that behaviour changes. So that was the first question we asked ourselves: is it affordable?
The second one is, is it equitable? We believe this is really for Canadians of all walks of life. Successive governments have done, I think, very good work in the last few years in terms of measures to help wealthier or affluent Canadians become good philanthropists, and that has made a huge difference in terms of the dollars coming into the charitable sector to support Canadians. Overwhelmingly, those dollars have gone to universities, hospitals, and large cultural institutions, and that's a good thing. But the stretch is actually about levelling the playing field to ensure that Canadians of all walks of life also hear the message that they can be philanthropists. It's also about ensuring that the dollars actually go to charities that are small, that are large, that are urban, that are rural. So there really is, I think, something very equitable about the stretch.
Finally, we asked ourselves: does it actually have the support of Canadians? We worked with Ipsos Reid, which did a survey of over 1,000 Canadians across the country; 82% of those surveyed said they were in favour and supportive of the stretch tax credit.
Essentially, low cost, equitable—it means the broadest number of taxpayers will benefit the broadest number of charities, and it has the support of Canadians. For all of these reasons, we hope the finance committee will be supportive of the stretch.
As charities look at broadening the donor base, they are also mindful to continue to deserve the trust and confidence of Canadians. This is about transparency, accountability, and governance. Imagine Canada will be launching two major initiatives in the next few weeks. The first one is called “Charity Focused”. This is going to be a one-stop portal where Canadians will be able to have easy, user-friendly information about the 85,000 charities that exist in Canada right now. This has come.