Finance committee  We have a different tax system. We have a higher tax rate, so people have different positions. Ultimately, you have to think about how charities behave. If you look at the U.S. and you look at Canada, what charities contribute towards fundraising and the dollars they get from private giving as a result of that is the same.

Finance committee  I would encourage you to look at what the U.K. is doing. They have the Gift Aid system, where high-income earners can get a tax credit. But if you're not a high earner, if you give to charity, the charity will ask you, “Are you a U.K. taxpayer?” The equivalent to the tax credit is given back to the charity.

Finance committee  There are differences in the tax credits, so effectively in the price of giving across the provinces. You could use both charity information returns, because you know the location of the charity, for tax-receipted giving, as well as individual tax returns, because you know the residence of the individuals, to explore the differences across the province.

Finance committee  I think one of the interesting things is that as people are using computerized tax services—so even if they're not using a personalized tax service to do their taxes—it's not uncommon for the software to ask you, “Did you donate? Are you aware of this?” That raises a very interesting thing about creating more knowledge for people.

Finance committee  Yes. Something that's coming out in all of this, which is being missed, is that there have been two events, the effects of which we could measure if we used individual tax returns. There's a longitudinal administrative data set through Statistics Canada that you could get private access to, so you guys could request that.

Finance committee  Thank you very much for inviting me to appear before this committee. My testimony is based on 20 years of research on charities and donations. I am a professor of economics and director of the Public Economics Data Analysis Laboratory at McMaster University. I have a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University and a law degree from Cornell University.