Human Resources Committee on March 10th, 2017

[Donald Johnson]

That's since 1997. In 1997, when Paul Martin was the finance minister, they cut the capital gains tax in half on gifts of stock. In 2006, the rest of the capital gains tax was removed on gifts of stock.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

That $176 million is from 1996 to the present?

[Donald Johnson]

Yes. It's from 1997 to the present time, to 2016.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Okay. That's a lot of money.

As you know, we talk a lot about how governments can transfer wealth from the affluent to the less fortunate. Your proposal would allow that transfer to happen voluntarily and efficiently by effectively taking taxation off those voluntary philanthropic contributions. Right now, if a privately owned company were to give shares or the proceeds of shares in its company to a charity, a portion of that donation would be taken away by the government and diverted away from the charity, which seems to go against the universally accepted goal of encouraging more generosity.

You mentioned in your presentation that the donations that have resulted from removing capital gains tax from gifts of publicly traded shares are incremental, that is, they are not a replacement of cash donations that would otherwise have occurred. What evidence of that can you provide us with?

[Donald Johnson]

I think the people who have the capacity to give typically are not sitting with tons of cash in a bank account. Their wealth has been created by either starting a company and building a company or investing in real estate. I could give examples of that.

I'm rather reluctant to talk about my own charity giving, but I've donated, in total, about $25 million to charities. It's all been in the form of stock. If I'd had to pay capital gains tax on gifts when I transferred shares to charities, I would have given a tiny fraction of those amounts in the form of cash.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Right.

In terms of those donations, maybe Mr. Barata can talk about the value of that kind of philanthropy to his organization.

[Pedro Barata]

I'd be happy to. I also want to echo the comments about Mr. Johnson and his incredible leadership in philanthropy. It's made a huge difference in our city and region. In fact, with regard to his many contributions, I spoke about community hubs earlier. The real leadership in terms of helping us invest and leverage government dollars through an investment in community hubs has allowed us to do very special things in neighbourhoods that really need it.

Around this measure, and to your earlier question, what's been very encouraging is that alongside the increase in stock donations, the increase in the United Way campaign has also kept pace with those donations at the same level. Today, United Way Toronto and York Region is the biggest United Way campaign in the world. We live in a very generous city. It's about a $100-million campaign. If you average out the gifts of securities over the 20 years, they represent about 8% of our total campaign every year.

So I would say that the two go hand in hand. At the same time, the gifts of securities provide a very important foundation for our campaign. The other gifts in terms of money are also quite important, allowing us to invest in a network of 200 community agencies and initiatives to help people succeed.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

That would make $8 million on average in gifts of securities and then about $92 million in cash?

[Pedro Barata]

I'm doing just a straight calculation on $176 million over the past 20 years and what that works out to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

MP Long, please.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you to our witnesses this morning. That was very interesting testimony. We always prepare questions. Just listening to you, I could basically ask you questions all day.

First off, Mr. Johnson, I just want to congratulate you for the Order of Canada you received in 2004, was it?

[Donald Johnson]

Yes.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Congratulations for that. I didn't realize that. I'm honoured that you're here this morning.

I'll start with you, Ms. McConnell, with respect to your ideas on poverty reduction. I remember that I once got a call that my city of Saint John, New Brunswick, and Toronto were tied—with a headline in the National Post—but tied unfortunately for the lead in LI measurement and child poverty in Canada. It was a distinction for which neither of us wanted to be at the top of the list.

When you look at things like the different initiatives you've had—Breaking the Cycle in 2009 and 2013, Realizing our Potential in 2014 and 2018, and now TO Prosperity—it seems as though cities and provinces have all kinds of different initiatives, but what's disappointing is that the needle hasn't moved. It's not for a lack of trying. I just want you to comment on how important it is to have an alignment of the three levels of government in coming up with a national poverty reduction strategy.

[Pamela McConnell]

I would say it's essential. I don't think it works unless we're all collaborating together. We do yearly targets of initiatives in a work plan. We have 76 initiatives this year. I would say that approximately a quarter of them are in collaboration with other orders of government or with community organizations, such as you've heard today, and trades and business people—particularly business people, surprisingly, on Bay Street, who are employing 100 young people every year. We're in the fifth year. It was just a person who decided to do that.

If you don't have that kind of collaboration, you can't get through those lists and you certainly can't fund them. All of those lists this year are in the budget.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Are you able to give me an example of how misalignment, if you will, has hurt the City of Toronto?

[Pamela McConnell]

I am able to give you one of how it helped—

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Okay, that's fine.

[Pamela McConnell]

—and that would be with child nutrition. The province, the private sector, the City of Toronto, and the school boards have come together, and we have several hundred thousand children who are now being fed. We've upped the percentage not only of the children but also of the contribution. That's an example.

An example where it's not working at the moment, I would say, is in the housing field, where we have the open-door policy, which allows for taxation as well as a donation of surplus lands from our city. We have not seen that from the federal government yet.

The final one is one I underscored, which is our social housing. In Ontario it's very different, if I may say so, from that across the country. We are the only ones who have to deal with affordable housing on the tax base of the property, so it's a bit different. This is the problem right across Ontario. It's not unique to Toronto, even though we have a third of it.

Those are a couple of examples.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Barrera and Ms. Todorow, in Saint John—Rothesay, my office does a lot of work with the homeless and shelters. We deal with Outflow, which is the homeless shelter for men. Can you give me some ideas as to what more we can do from a federal perspective to help the shelters and those who are homeless?

[Mary Todorow]

We don't have a lot of expertise with shelters. Our advocacy is more on the permanent side.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Okay.

[Mary Todorow]

Shelters are just an interim measure. We think the housing first is really the way to go with folks in the housing shelters.

Most people actually don't remain in the shelter. It's the chronic residents there you want to target with the housing first program. What you need, definitely, are supports. You need a good system of supports to keep those people housed.

It's not always successful. It's working very well—the outcome of the pilot project—and that's why a lot of money is being invested in housing first.

I know that in Toronto—and maybe Councillor McConnell can talk about this—we have overcrowding in the shelters. I think a lot of that is because we don't have permanent affordable housing with supports for people who, generally, have a lot of other issues that keep them unhoused and on the streets.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bach, in your presentation you talked about extending social infrastructure to families. Can you elaborate on what you meant by that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Keep it very short, please.

[Michael Bach]

We have a kind of residual approach to broader social support. It relies on the family to be the lead. We have a growing number of families who, themselves, are caregivers. They can't provide the backup support, and they are burning out. We have a hugely disproportionate number of kids with disabilities in child welfare, etc.

Our approach to this is community-based support systems that provide backup to family caregivers. We need to provide support to families themselves to connect and to develop their own leadership in their own communities to drive change. We need respite systems that provide families with backup respite. We need families to have access to navigators in order to navigate the community.

I think there is a clear role for the federal government in supporting the key infrastructure that enables families to connect and provides those navigation systems. It's not just a social service. If families are going to be the social infrastructure that we increasingly rely on them to be, we need the federal government to invest in the capacity of communities to enable families to play that role. It's not a social service. It's a piece of social infrastructure. With regard to that piece that supports families being the caregivers and leaders in their communities around this issue, I think there's a really legitimate role for the federal government to play, and we have lots of models for that.