Madam Speaker, certainly the government recognizes the motivation for the hon. member's bill and fully supports the principle of offering generous tax assistance to charitable giving.
In fact the government has provided additional incentives for charitable giving in four of the last five federal budgets. Some of the measures the government has put forward include lowering the threshold for eligibility for the 29% level of tax credit to $200 from $250, raising the annual income limit for use of charitable donations to most charities from 20% when the government took office to 75%, and reducing the income inclusion rate for capital gains arising from the donation of appreciated publicly traded securities to 37.5%. These initiatives have been recent and certainly the government is monitoring the impact to see if further changes are required.
The member should also recognize that the differences in the treatment of political contributions and charitable donations reflect the different policy intents of the two measures.
The design of the federal political contribution tax credit reflects the desire to encourage greater grassroots involvement by all Canadians in the political process. It is for this reason that generous tax assistance is given to small political contributions, that tax assistance is reduced for incremental amounts to the point that the federal tax assistance is zero for amounts contributed to federal political parties in excess of the $1,150 per contributor per year.