Finance committee  We also wanted to be focused, because you're trying to find tax measures that would help the sector. There's a variety of other things. There's the point about having a better relationship with all departments, having a way in which we can talk about other issues. Whether it's wi

Finance committee  I think it starts young. You start young, start in families, and start in school. There's the whole issue of starting with volunteerism. Now it's legislated in many provinces, but we're doing the same thing in philanthropy. In Quebec we have a comic book we've created, and we're

Finance committee  Perfect. Thank you.

Finance committee  They're fabulous.

Finance committee  Yes, actually. Right now, in the last couple of campaigns—

Finance committee  I think a really important one is the disability tax credit that Mr. Flaherty brought in about two years ago to allow families to make a long-term investment in their children. Disabled people are living longer and those mechanisms didn't exist. I think that has been a tremendo

Finance committee  Yes, that's absolutely critical now. We've been doing that for years and years; now it's even heightened, in two ways. The first is what they are doing that actually solves the broader community problems—not just continuing work as usual. Number two is what new patterns and part

Finance committee  Yes. For us also it's individuals, not corporations. Corporations make contributions and support their employees. But more and more, it's still, by and large, individuals. That's the first thing. For us, it's individuals. We don't follow those patterns so much in local communiti

Finance committee  Yes, they are.

Finance committee  We've actually given a lot of thought to your first question about how to engage youth, because that's the future. That's a great question. In fact, in every one of our major cities we now have Gen-Xer clubs. This is not about fitting them into the campaign so much—it's what fol

Finance committee  It's about impact, results, using Flickr, using Facebook, using clubs. It's about them coming together and finding out about the issues. It's about us finding better ways to engage them. We can't keep up. They are ahead of us. Our systems can't cope with what they want to do, whi

Finance committee  Thank you. I hadn't even thought about it. We do this; we do it very effectively. We tend to do it for very large donors; we don't do it for small donors. It works for large donors because they think that through leveraging they're getting a larger return for their investment or

Finance committee  I think for us the advantage is that a donation that comes in to us is actually unencumbered. I don't mean that we use it foolishly, but that we can actually be really strategic. So many other grants, so many other projects, and so many other resources that come in are very targe

Finance committee  Thank you. Basically we support that, because for us it's broadly based. It's a way in which we can actually change donors' behaviour. This is critical. This is a long-term investment. If we get donors, our experience is that once we get people engaged in volunteering, engaged a

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, we've been very active with Imagine Canada, and we also support the stretch tax credit. And obviously Len spoke before me, so as an organization, we do support this particular tax measure. I want to talk a bit about what's going on in the sector, bec