Mr. Speaker, I have to say, being a critic of special interest groups, that I occasionally ruffle feathers. I have for a long time been expecting to hear knocks at my door. When royal assent happened it was a great pleasure to realize that it was not yet another special interest group but the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod. I am deeply grateful for that.
I was talking about special interest groups. I should like to take the opportunity to explain to the House a distinction that needs to be made in the context of my remarks. There are two basic types of special interest groups. There are those that provide services to the public. The government is very interested in seeing that happen. Many of them are charities and non-profit organizations. There is another category, the special interest group that is basically an advocacy group or a lobby group which pushes its own agenda.
The development of guidelines for ministers to cut funding to special interest groups is a brave move on the part of the government. It will require considerable courage on the part of cabinet ministers. They will be reviewing organizations wherein it is sometimes difficult to discern the difference between a group that is providing an important service to society and group that advocates for a particular category of society. There will be reaction.
Many ministers who try to ensure that limited government funds go where they will be most effective will be subject to a lot of criticism. Politicians do not generally like criticism. This is one of the reasons preceding governments never tackled special interest groups. The government is prepared to take that criticism and do what is right. That is very important.
Sometimes it is very difficult to know where best to cut funding to groups that provide services which may no longer be effective. Cabinet ministers will be confronted with the situation where occasionally they will issue orders, funds will be cut back by bureaucratic decree and some groups that deliver very important services to the community may be injured.
This is where the individual member of Parliament comes in. We on all sides of the House should help the ministers to cut spending in interest group areas and ensure the spending is cut in such a way that the groups which are doing good work in society are preserved. Certainly MPs know better than the bureaucracy who is most deserving in their ridings. Basically that is the responsibility of an MP.
I wish I could report that each ministry has issued a report or a description of its plans for cutting funding. This is not the case because the ministers are approaching a problem that has been in existence for a very long time. It will take a while to bring it under control. In some ministries it will be more difficult than others.
For example, the industry minister has moved very swiftly. Within weeks of the budget coming down he produced a paper showing a great number of groups that had traditionally received Industry Canada money for community programs. They may be businesses but they are still community programs. He moved very swiftly and many of the programs are slated to be discontinued. I look down his list and empathize with the minister. It is very difficult to cut some programs. However it has to be done and we can see that the minister has done it wisely and well.
Health Canada is a ministry with an enormous infrastructure for funding special interest groups of every sort, lobby groups, care groups, service groups: anything we would care to think of. It will take about three or four months before we really see what the health minister is doing in that regard. However I have good news. The health minister has moved to cut the funding of the
anti-smoking promotional campaign from $180 million to $64 million.
This is a fine example of a minister moving in the spirit of the budget. We are all in agreement that smoking is bad for our health. However we are not in a position any more where we can afford to fund essential promotional campaigns that are nothing more than advertising and propaganda exercises which may be better done by our schools. This will release millions of dollars in Health Canada for programs that deal directly with the health of Canadians. The health minister has shown courage, has done what is right and would get the support of most Canadians.
Turning to foreign affairs, I cannot give details but I know that the minister is moving very responsibly on the program. We will see limited funds for foreign affairs, for helping the disadvantaged in other nations. We will see the funding being done with a great deal more care and a higher percentage of our taxpayers dollars going to people who can most benefit by them.
I will comment on human resources development, one of the hardest ministries in terms of implementing this program. The minister understands the absolute necessity of ensuring that limited dollars get to Canadians who need them most, Canadians who are suffering and will directly benefit. We should watch the minister very carefully. I am confident we will see changes in the ministry that will result in a far better use of the taxpayers dollar.
However, it will be difficult for the minister because he will come under a lot of criticism. We should get behind him and support him as best we can. It is a very difficult job. I do not envy what he has to do.
This exercise is very worthwhile. Canadians have long perceived a large problem with respect to government funding of interest groups, be they advocacy groups or service groups. I regret to say there has not been the accountability that is necessary, particularly in a time when we do not have the money. It was all right maybe 15 years ago. Maybe governments felt they had much more to spend then, but right now we have to make sure that we spend wisely and well. This is a situation in which there has been very poor accountability.
I could talk at great length about where special interest groups have used their money unwisely, but let me just deal with one particular area, the area of fundraising. I have done quite a bit of study on special interest groups. I have had to focus primarily on charities because non-profit organizations do not have to fill in a return that I can track and charities do. The charity information return will at least give some hard data on what particular special interest groups are doing with respect to accountability of public funds, be it money they received from government or money they raised from private donations.
It is very instructive. I will just take members through a few of them. For example, the Canadian Council for Multicultural and Intercultural Education is an organization that is basically trying to get the message out with respect to race relations and ethnic relations. It calls itself an educational service. I am sure it is a very worthy cause.
However, let us look at the council's charity information return which I have here. We would think the organization has the potential to attract funding from many groups in society, not just ethnic groups. We see that it received absolutely no private donations whatsoever in 1993. When we read its information form further we discover that it received $191,915 from government.
This raises serious questions. Why cannot an organization like this one raise some of the money on its own? This is the type of thing the new guidelines are addressing and the type of question the guidelines raise. If it has a constituency why does it not get money from that constituency?
Let us try another one. The Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law is an organization that raised some private donations. It raised $4,058, not a large sum. However from federal and provincial grants it received $420,874. The organization is promoting knowledge and appropriate implementation of laws affecting children. We would think such an organization could do better than raising $4,050 in private donations. Yet we see it is not there. I am not saying it is not a worthy organization but surely if it is that worthy, it ought to be able to get some funding from the public at large.
Moving right along, there is the well known charity Kids Help Phone. This charitable organization is designed for 24-hour phone counselling for teenagers, crisis lines. Backing it up is a foundation which is the fundraising arm of the charity. There are parallel charities, one an organizational charity and one a foundation. We have to combine the two.
The total in donations this organization received from the public was $3,615,000. Then I look down and see in the forms which I have here that it spent $1.55 million on its actual charitable activities. In other words, of the private donations it raised, only 43 per cent actually went to its charitable activities. In other words, 57 per cent, $2,061,000 went to management, administration and fundraising. For every dollar people donated, 57 cents did not go to the actual charitable endeavour.
This is a very good organization in its purpose. I do not want to indicate that I do not approve of what it is doing. However, Canadians demand a better fundraising effort on the part of the charities they are supporting than what we see here.
When we start examining these things we can take quantum leaps. I will now take a quantum leap to look at another charity, Wildlife Habitat Canada. This charitable organization is dedicated to improving wildlife habitats anywhere in the country and even in Britain.
This organization has managed to raise $9,601 in private donations. In provincial and federal government donations it received $2,711,000. It is important to keep these figures in mind: $9,000 in private donations and over $2 million in federal grants. It did raise funds, the $9,000, and in fundraising costs it spent $85,211. There is this incredible situation of an organization principally funded by government which spends $85,000 on fundraising and raises only $9,000. That is $8.75 spent for every $1 raised.
Canadians have good reason to question that type of activity. The average, ordinary taxpayer donated over $2 million to that charity which obviously has a fundraising problem of a very high order. And so it goes, unhappily.
There is another one, the Canadian Ethnocultural Foundation. It actually spent $14.40 for every $1 it raised. It is not a very effective fundraiser either.
I could go on at great length. I would not want to do so because it is late in the afternoon and I fear I would depress you, Mr. Speaker. There are many hundreds of organizations like these that have problems.
Let me conclude my remarks by reading from a letter. This campaign is something I have taken a specific interest in and there has been a little news coverage from time to time. I have received over 250 letters from Canadians who agree that Parliament should be carefully examining how we fund all interest groups.
The spirit of that was captured in this one letter from an organization which states: "We are a registered charity ourselves. However we do not accept funding from any level of government. This has meant that funding has been lean at times, particularly in 1991 to 1993. But if one is doing anything worthwhile there are always citizens and foundations willing to support your work. This is perhaps the truest test of the value of a non-profit body".
Nowhere along the line does this government, nor do I as an individual, propose cutting funding absolutely from all interest groups. Many interest groups have an important role to play. They can do things that government cannot do. They can reach out to people in society because they are out there in society. However we have to make sure that those groups we do support are the ones which can most effectively represent the interests of Canadians.
