Thank you, monsieur le président, mesdames et messieurs, députés.
Imagine Canada appreciates this opportunity to appear before this committee on the important issue of cuts to both funding and advocacy activities by Canada's community non-profit organizations.
Many of you will be familiar with the work of Imagine Canada. We are largely supported by 1,100 members that are themselves charities and community organizations drawn from diverse communities--from sport, to Christian charities, to health charities. We also work with corporate Canada through our Imagine Caring Companies program. We work with companies like EnCana, Bell, and the Royal Bank, which, as some of Canada's largest and finest corporate citizens, commit to giving 1% of their earnings back into our communities.
Many of you, I know, are very familiar with the depth and breadth of this sector. Defined most broadly, it is truly Canada's third sector, so it captures economic activity that falls outside the direct scope of business and public service. What always enchants me most about the sector--and this is data collected by Statistics Canada--is that 22.2 million Canadians make donations into this sector every year. With a population of 35 million Canadians, that's virtually every adult Canadian voluntarily making contributions to support their churches, sports organizations, and charities.
I'd like to address the issue that's being raised today and is increasingly raised. I think the federal government doesn't have an active role vis-à-vis this sector. When one looks at western democracies around the world, they're generally characterized by a public-private partnership vis-à-vis this sector. Even countries like the United States have a more generous culture of giving to their community non-profit sectors than we do here in Canada--more corporate contribution, more individual contribution. In the U.S., the state contributes more than 50% toward the cost of maintaining a vibrant third sector, this set of activities.
In particular in Canada, many of the activities of the sector fall very squarely within the jurisdiction of the federal government. They relate to immigrant settlement. They relate to reintegration of criminal offenders back into the community so our communities can be safe. Therefore the relationship of the sector to the federal government is indeed a very important one.
I'd like to address specifically the question of the cuts. Those in the sector understand it's very complex for government to make difficult financial choices and measure balanced spending versus taxation. We very much appreciate the government's tax measures in budget 2006 to support capital gains exemptions, which have indeed brought forward significant new giving in select public charities.
On behalf of our 1,100 members, I can say there was upset with the cuts, as one can imagine. They felt the process was at odds with the accord that the sector negotiated with the Government of Canada. Many of these organizations financed themselves to come to Ottawa to work over a two-year period with the Government of Canada to say how they will partner with the federal government to make sure this sector remains viable and strong in Canada.
We're not a federal department and we're not businesses, but we do have a special kind of partnership with the government. We would like to work constructively with you in negotiating very significant policy changes. That's important to the sector. We felt the changes to the important research and public policy role that sector organizations feel they carry out was done outside the scope of that kind of partnership.
Secondly, the language that was used was certainly clear, but it did offend many. Many in the sector are people who volunteer their time and work at below-market rates to help carry out these activities in their community. To have the spending described as having a lack of value or being redundant offended many in the sector. We'd like to work with the committee, work with members of Parliament, work with the government to try to repair some of the damage that has been done to that important partnership.
In that spirit, the sector feels that the maturity of the sector now in Canada--its importance to the day-to-day quality of life of Canadians--does merit a view. It's not clear where accountability for this bundle of activity, which employs 2.2 million employees and accounts for 8.6% of economic activity, of GDP in Canada, really lies and therefore it tends to be disproportionately subject to cuts. We'd like to work with government to have a clear view of what the nature of the partnership with the sector is. We can be a very viable alternative service provider to governments in many instances.
John Howard is a viable alternative to help criminal offenders reintegrate into their communities as an alternative to using the Solicitor General or the Department of Justice, for example. These are viable alternative service delivery models that can be used very effectively. Canadians say over and over again that they trust charities and non-profit organizations to deliver these services in their communities more than they trust governments to do so.
We're not asking for a big, new department, or a lot of spending in order to do this. We like the blue ribbon panel. We think it had, on grants and contributions, which was struck by Treasury Board, three excellent people working at a dollar a year. We had to encourage the government to strike that kind of longer-term committee to look at a new partnership and some new ways in investing in this sector.
Thank you very much.