Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to contribute some thoughts to this debate on Bill C-240. It is a bill that seeks to give the same treatment to private shares in real estate as is currently enjoyed for public shares when they are donated to a charity, and specifically to give a break on the capital gains tax for those assets when they are donated to a charity.
I want to start by recognizing the tremendous culture of giving we see in Canada, but I want to particularly single out Manitoba, as it is a province where people are known for their charitable giving and for sustaining charities that do all sorts of good work in our communities. This is particularly true when we are talking about the pandemic and the serious problem of homelessness, which existed before the pandemic, to be sure, but has worsened significantly during the pandemic. That is just one example of an area where charities do an incredible amount of work. Whether it is Siloam Mission, Just a Warm Sleep or the Main Street Project, Winnipeg certainly has benefited from the work of those organizations, which receive some government funding, but also depend, really, on charitable giving to sustain themselves and do the good work they do.
I think of L'Arche in Elmwood—Transcona. It operates in many places but traditionally has had a very strong presence in Transcona that goes beyond the support of housing for its clients. It includes social enterprises like the L'Arche Tova Café on Regent Avenue in Transcona, which is not far from where I live. It has been a wonderful gathering place for the community and helps build life skills for the folks who are part of the L'Arche community.
I could go on and talk a lot about all the various organizations that benefit from charitable giving, but I want to spend some time talking about the bill.
With respect to the bill, we on the NDP side of the House are concerned about the fact that there are already many ways for the wealthy to direct their wealth to causes they support. We are in a time when there has been a need for massive public expenditure to meet the needs that are faced by many Canadians. If we are to do that best, it means trying to coordinate behaviour. It means trying to make sure that when we are talking about wealth redistribution, we are doing it in a way that allows us to ensure the services people genuinely need, particularly those offered on a universal basis and on a basis of need, are adequately funded.
Frankly, this is an issue about which reasonable people can disagree, but we are in a moment when the thrust of our work ought to be on how we manage our resources collectively and well through democratic processes. Our time is not best spent figuring out how to make it possible for the wealthy to direct their personal wealth toward causes they think have value. Often members have heard the New Democrats talk in this place about the need to redistribute wealth, and we should do that by ensuring that the wealthy are paying their fair share.
If it were the case that the things we need in this moment were already adequately funded and that the wealthy were already paying their fair share, then I could see a pathway to a conversation about how we make it easier for them to donate directly to charities of their choosing. However, we are in a moment when, if we take seriously the question of public finance and the role the government needs to play in the pandemic recovery and facing down the challenges of climate change, it is not the best time to be talking about how to promote more complexities within the tax code that give tax breaks to individuals who are fortunate enough to have the kind of wealth in the first place to be able to donate.
It is not the typical donor who is donating in these ways. Often when we think about giving to a charity, we think about supporting different kinds of drives, like food drives for food banks, picking up a bit of food at the local grocery store or buying perogies. There is a church on the corner of Munroe and Watt that is currently doing an excellent fundraiser. It is mobilizing the great expertise in the faith community to make delicious perogies to support the people in Ukraine who are in desperate need of help. That is often what we think about when it comes to charitable giving. This is a select group of donors who may have a lot to give, but our conversation should be centred on how we redistribute wealth and how to do it fairly and democratically without creating more opportunities within the tax code for the very wealthy to direct their wealth to things they choose rather than to things we deliberate about in this place and in other appropriate places.
As I said, there is room for this kind of conversation, but for us it is not a priority of this Parliament to get it to committee to delve further into it. We believe there are other priorities the finance committee should have in this Parliament that very much bear on the kinds of supports and services that Canadians need. We would be better off talking about those directly and ways to finance them than talking about modifications to the tax code to allow the wealthiest among us to make those decisions for themselves.