Finance committee  I don't have a specific recommendation, but I would pay attention to the shrinking civic core and the implications of that.

Finance committee  The data I have from Statistics Canada is that the number of tax filers has increased and the number of donations has increased, but the actual.... From Imagine Canada, the trends in individual donations show that the number of donors has actually declined. I'm not sure.... I'm a

Finance committee  Yes, please.

Finance committee  In fact, in practice, the organizations do not have many tools to find other resources. I think that that explains in part why they are very favourable to the idea of what is called in English the stretch tax. Indeed, this would give them a tool that would allow them to promote s

Finance committee  Yes, but eventually, if that's the way you go, with their further aging they will stop contributing. If you are just shrinking your base, it can topple over very quickly, because you are relying on just a small number of individuals for the greater good.

Finance committee  I'm sorry, can you tell me what that chart is again?

Finance committee  My first comments were not about charitable donations. I was asked about government funding of voluntary organizations and the trend in terms of how they support voluntary organizations. Within that I was talking about a decline in the practice of funding. The defunding of advoca

Finance committee  I'd like to say something. One of the dangers is that we keep squeezing the minority of people who already make a lot of donations, and we just rely on them for the future of our charitable sector—

Finance committee  The civic core is shrinking. There has always been a civic core, and Paul is an expert in this area. The civic core is made up of the people who are engaged in contributory behaviour in the civic sphere in multiple ways. We are seeing that the civic core is itself shrinking, so t

Finance committee  I knew that Paul would give you a comprehensive answer, because that's his area. The one thing I would flag is the fact that the pre-1945 generation is slowly becoming disengaged. I think it's really problematic, because they have a particular ethos. They have a particular way o

Finance committee  As they get older, whether they're giving a higher donation?

Finance committee  I don't have that data.

Finance committee  You come from Quebec. The Quebec reality and Quebeckers' perceptions regarding these matters are very different from those elsewhere in Canada. I've had the opportunity to work with Paul. We interviewed people who make charitable donations. We asked them why they made those dona

Finance committee  Do you mean in terms of funding cuts?

Finance committee  That started in the early nineties with the program review in the first restructuring of the federal government, and then there was a gradual shift in the system of grants and contributions. A blue-ribbon panel studied and assessed the fact that government funding is less functio