I believe there are different data sources. The Canadian survey of voluntary giving and partnerships, which is run by StatsCan every three years, does quote that roughly 85% of Canadians give, and I think that's right. People have said, yes, they gave $5 to the Terry Fox run two weeks ago. The difference is it may not be receipted, and it may be very small. We're now at 23.1% of tax returns claiming a charitable receipt. That's been declining for 20 years; it used to be closer to 30%, so we're down almost a third.
This is people who have tax credits. They're smart enough to keep them and submit them. So we're probably talking about the bigger gifts and the wealthier people. But we need to know which ones we're tracking.
Yes, I can take my wife's donation and put it onto mine, and that explains maybe why it's lower. The median amount, which means half Canadians give more than this and half give less, in those claims is only about $250. So it's an extremely low percentage of the average household income. That $250 is relatively stagnant and not a big amount. So if I'm doing it for two, my wife and I, $250 is fairly petty. It's not a high number and that's our problem. It's not that Canadians don't give. It's that they don't know how much to be giving.
In an Ipsos survey, we asked Canadians if they knew how much they should be giving, and about 75% of Canadians said no.
Do all of you around this room know exactly what you should be giving to meet social norms? The people who know tend to give more. The people who had tithing, who were brought up to know what they should be doing, they give more.
So reason leads us to believe that teaching and defining works. We all have the same tax policy, so it's more than just a tax policy issue. It's a social, cultural, learned, mentored behaviour.
The same thing happened with recycling. Only 25 years ago, if you recycled, you were on the fringe and you were abnormal. In one generation if you don't recycle, there's peer pressure and you're a pariah. It was a multifaceted approach—teaching kids, peer pressure, and all these things made a fundamental change. It was the same with seat belts, drinking and driving, smoking. It takes time and it takes a multifaceted approach. That's what we're suggesting as a solution.