Thank you, witnesses, for being here today and for making your recommendations, which of course are much more detailed than you have time to present here at the committee.
I want to begin by putting on the record that there are many people who donate but who are not recognized financially—who donate their time. I come from a community in which we have a huge volunteer base. People even of very modest means help out regularly and really support the community, for doing which they get no tax credit or recognition whatsoever. Certainly some of them don't make enough money to get a tax credit, but even those who do.... There are lots of ways to donate. Time is one way, and obviously money is another way.
I wanted to get that on the record, because I think it is an important factor that we haven't spent much time looking at throughout our deliberations. Of course, we are looking at the whole issue of fostering more charitable giving.
We have heard a different kind of idea from Mr. Carmichael. In terms of your “charity+” program, you mentioned that some other countries steer additional funding or encourage additional funding by giving a greater tax credit to some specific areas of greater need.
I have two questions on that.
Can you elaborate, describing what some of the specifics are in those programs and saying where you think the best model is?
Secondly, you talk about increasing the tax credit to 40%. Have you done any modelling, or have you crunched any numbers about what impact that would have upon our overall fiscal situation? Is it something you expect would have a large take-up or that would not have that big an impact?
Thank you.