Finance committee  I am wondering why a private foundation would do more charitable work if it were a shareholder in a private company. We have to ask ourselves that question. If shares are transferred from a private company to a private foundation, in what way would that allow the private foundati

Finance committee  No, I don't think it's a question of evaluation, it's a question of what this private foundation will do with these shares of private companies in real life. So even if it's $34 million we're talking about, or $34 billion, if the organization won't do any charity with it....

Finance committee  Apart from the issue I already mentioned, I think we need a system that encourages people to give to charitable organizations. In the upcoming years, depending on whether the government withdraws from some services or not, charitable giving is going to become more and more necess

Finance committee  I cannot really answer that question because I have not studied that area sufficiently. Since I have been in this field, I have concentrated my work on private foundations only. I can tell you a great many things about private foundations. There are many rules.

Finance committee  The solution to the problem is to avoid offending donors. It is not a good idea to fool around with tax credits for charitable giving. I have studied many different countries' systems. And in all my books, I have a chapter on private foundations. By increasing, on an annual basis

Finance committee  We could talk about that for a long time. When we look at our democratic systems we can see that they are working. This is true and we can say so. If we look at the process from beginning to end, we can see that one thing leads to another and that all is well. A problem arises wh

Finance committee  Yes, thank you. Mr. Burrows was saying that large private foundations were actually donating over 3.5%. I have no personal knowledge of any study on that subject. However, if we look at the annual reports produced by large private foundations, in almost every case, it's always r

Finance committee  With charitable organizations, there are technical issues linked for example to whether they are well run or not, or whether the rules are appropriate. We talked about that today. Because of all these technical issues, a good number of charitable organizations—and we have all hea

Finance committee  There are 85,000 charitable organizations and 40 tax auditors for all of Canada.

Finance committee  Absolutely. It is shocking that there are only 40 tax auditors. And I am not alone in saying this. Charitable organizations are important in that they have the capacity of reducing what Canadians pay in taxes. For our system to remain on the up and up, as is the case now, Canad

Finance committee  Actually as I was saying earlier, the rate is currently 3.5%. With that rate of compulsory expenditures for charitable purposes, if one compares the tax savings given to the founder of the foundation with what the foundation has to give back to society, one realizes that the Cana

Finance committee  We are talking about tax relief for businesses, more specifically lowering their tax rate. But, in those cases where there have been tax cuts, economic theories do not tell us clearly whether it is the shareholders, the employees or the clients who benefit. I have yet to see a st

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ladies and gentlemen, the tax regime applicable to charities has several flaws. For example, the 2010 Auditor General of Canada's report noted that, in 2010, out of 41,000 Canada Revenue Agency employees, only 40 auditors had been assigned to audit 85,000 c

Finance committee  Should I continue my testimony or start over?

Finance committee  I shall continue. The most obvious and most easily understood flaw with regard to the tax system for charities was highlighted in one of the comments in the 2010 Auditor General's report. That report indicated that there were only 40 auditors for the 85,000 charities across Cana