This is interesting and strange. Even with your caution about double counting, it does seem like a whole lot of money sloshing around the ecosystem—just this little corner of it!
What does this part mean: “In fact, a lot of that money was paid out to charities for the execution of core functions of government”? One of your examples is hospital budgets? The government pays charities (hospital foundations?) to do those budgets for them?
At this point, my working assumption is that no level of the Canadian government has a good handle on where or how this money is being spent. Is that fair?
I would actually suggest that there are some controls and oversight on the formal program spending (public school systems etc). There's definitely a ton of waste happening, but it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that it's completely out of control.
However, I'm less confident about some of the grants awarded to NGOs...
A municipality thinks that there should be an after school program in a particular community so it finds an NGO to operate said after school program and funds it so that there can be staff engaged, various operating costs, etc.
An independent society organized as a charity might provide schooling to some children. Perhaps the children have a particular type of disability or there might be other issues. In Alberta, those children are required to have an education so Alberta Education would pay a per capita sum to the particular school which provided the education to those disabled kids.
In my life before retirement I was an independent CPA. From time to time I might be asked to audit the charities which offered such programs. I did not specialize in such work but I knew CPAs who did and the variety of programs that are funded by different levels of governments is truly astonishing.
The broad numbers cited provide an indication of the scale of charitable activities in Canada but require context for those who will react simply to those numbers, as evidenced by some of the comments.
Government support for most charities rarely comes in the form of handouts. It can be fee for service (delivering programming that governments would otherwise have to provide), activities that are complementary to government priorities and programming (educational campaigns in the health case field) and other programming/activities that align with the public interest. All usually require fairly rigid application, screening, reporting and auditing procedures.
Further, all charities are NGOs but not all NGOs are charities. Charitable NGOs are severely restricted in the amount of resources that they can devote to lobbying and they certainly can't undertake activities that are overtly partisan. NGOs that aren't charities can do anything they like with their contributions, within the law.
As per my earlier comment, it's difficult to draw conclusions based on numbers alone. These days, anyone who wants to meet with a senior bureaucrat or politician to discuss issues should be registered as a lobbyist. Some of those recorded meetings would be associated with work that the Pembina Institute was doing with government funding. There's nothing to stop charities from lobbying - all have to do so to some extent to advance their charitable objectives. The issues are how much of their charitable donations are used to support lobbying activities and whether they are engaging in partisan activities (lobbying the government of the day is not partisan). There's no evidence in your article that lines were being crossed.
In truth, I just cannot begin to think how long you put into these various analyses. I can see many things that I would like to understand better from the over views that you have provided. It seems to me that there SHOULD be a way to disaggregate some of the information but "should" is not all the same as "could." In other words, just because something should be possible doesn't mean that it IS possible.
In my non-retired life as a CPA I found that a lot of data SHOULD lead to something or other but so, so frequently "should" actually led to "Dammit, this is contradictory, triple counted and includes garlic and zebras but is missing the seahorses!"
My question is as ever, "okay, and - ?" I look forward to some infographics and to some analysis in a future column.
There is nothing suspicious per se about environmental charity work (I guess unless you regard the environment as bad or 'steeling mah Jerb!'), though I note your reader comment above calling democratically decided taxation 'involuntary looting'. To wit, it would be nice and useful if everyone stays honest in their and rigorous in their questioning. As ever, I'd look to a columnist calling himself 'The Audit' to stay on the bright side of that line, and without prior assumptions of any political colour. Is this an efficient use of public dollars?
And, great points on the double counting. Thank you David.
The "okay, and..." for this article happens to be there, although it's limited to just the final paragraph. i.e., we need regulatory change to increase transparency.
I would agree that, from what I've seen, there's nothing *more* suspicious about environmental charities than about any other category in the charity sector. But any time there's so much "free" money flying around I would be reluctant to assume there's no grounds for suspicion.
Government funding de-facto "non-registered lobbyists" (NGOs) is a form of political kick-back and I would add the media as another. The use of the word "charity" doesn't come to mind when it involves the redistribution of involuntarily confiscated loot (taxes).
Local governments often offer grants in lieu of property tax exemption for organizations like churches, service clubs, and arts groups for example, an accounting exercise with no exchange of funds.
I use charitydata.ca often - they're using the exact same CRA dataset that I have in the backend. But they're particularly useful for looking up individual charities.
Prodigious effort here, David. Thank you for shining your light on these sorts of expenditures.
Astounding to see such mountains of public money spent with no apparent impact.
This is interesting and strange. Even with your caution about double counting, it does seem like a whole lot of money sloshing around the ecosystem—just this little corner of it!
What does this part mean: “In fact, a lot of that money was paid out to charities for the execution of core functions of government”? One of your examples is hospital budgets? The government pays charities (hospital foundations?) to do those budgets for them?
At this point, my working assumption is that no level of the Canadian government has a good handle on where or how this money is being spent. Is that fair?
I would actually suggest that there are some controls and oversight on the formal program spending (public school systems etc). There's definitely a ton of waste happening, but it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that it's completely out of control.
However, I'm less confident about some of the grants awarded to NGOs...
Two examples, Sad Mom.
A municipality thinks that there should be an after school program in a particular community so it finds an NGO to operate said after school program and funds it so that there can be staff engaged, various operating costs, etc.
An independent society organized as a charity might provide schooling to some children. Perhaps the children have a particular type of disability or there might be other issues. In Alberta, those children are required to have an education so Alberta Education would pay a per capita sum to the particular school which provided the education to those disabled kids.
In my life before retirement I was an independent CPA. From time to time I might be asked to audit the charities which offered such programs. I did not specialize in such work but I knew CPAs who did and the variety of programs that are funded by different levels of governments is truly astonishing.
Thank you! I didn’t know this.
That’s where you’ve found that some of the money can end up in unexpected places, right?
Yup.
The broad numbers cited provide an indication of the scale of charitable activities in Canada but require context for those who will react simply to those numbers, as evidenced by some of the comments.
Government support for most charities rarely comes in the form of handouts. It can be fee for service (delivering programming that governments would otherwise have to provide), activities that are complementary to government priorities and programming (educational campaigns in the health case field) and other programming/activities that align with the public interest. All usually require fairly rigid application, screening, reporting and auditing procedures.
Further, all charities are NGOs but not all NGOs are charities. Charitable NGOs are severely restricted in the amount of resources that they can devote to lobbying and they certainly can't undertake activities that are overtly partisan. NGOs that aren't charities can do anything they like with their contributions, within the law.
I mostly agree. However, any on-the-book restrictions on charities that lobby government are completely ignored, as I've written: https://www.theaudit.ca/p/ottawas-professional-lobbyist-industry
As per my earlier comment, it's difficult to draw conclusions based on numbers alone. These days, anyone who wants to meet with a senior bureaucrat or politician to discuss issues should be registered as a lobbyist. Some of those recorded meetings would be associated with work that the Pembina Institute was doing with government funding. There's nothing to stop charities from lobbying - all have to do so to some extent to advance their charitable objectives. The issues are how much of their charitable donations are used to support lobbying activities and whether they are engaging in partisan activities (lobbying the government of the day is not partisan). There's no evidence in your article that lines were being crossed.
Wow! Truly an outstanding error, Sir.
In truth, I just cannot begin to think how long you put into these various analyses. I can see many things that I would like to understand better from the over views that you have provided. It seems to me that there SHOULD be a way to disaggregate some of the information but "should" is not all the same as "could." In other words, just because something should be possible doesn't mean that it IS possible.
In my non-retired life as a CPA I found that a lot of data SHOULD lead to something or other but so, so frequently "should" actually led to "Dammit, this is contradictory, triple counted and includes garlic and zebras but is missing the seahorses!"
My question is as ever, "okay, and - ?" I look forward to some infographics and to some analysis in a future column.
There is nothing suspicious per se about environmental charity work (I guess unless you regard the environment as bad or 'steeling mah Jerb!'), though I note your reader comment above calling democratically decided taxation 'involuntary looting'. To wit, it would be nice and useful if everyone stays honest in their and rigorous in their questioning. As ever, I'd look to a columnist calling himself 'The Audit' to stay on the bright side of that line, and without prior assumptions of any political colour. Is this an efficient use of public dollars?
And, great points on the double counting. Thank you David.
The "okay, and..." for this article happens to be there, although it's limited to just the final paragraph. i.e., we need regulatory change to increase transparency.
I would agree that, from what I've seen, there's nothing *more* suspicious about environmental charities than about any other category in the charity sector. But any time there's so much "free" money flying around I would be reluctant to assume there's no grounds for suspicion.
I would note that, while Canada's tax system is legal and binding, it can hardly be called "democractically decided". After all, as I've written (https://www.theaudit.ca/p/the-hollow-emptiness-of-canadian and https://www.theaudit.ca/p/should-we-all-have-equal-representation), heavily skewed political representation means that only a tiny minority of Canadians get a meaningful say in how the rest of us are taxed.
Government funding de-facto "non-registered lobbyists" (NGOs) is a form of political kick-back and I would add the media as another. The use of the word "charity" doesn't come to mind when it involves the redistribution of involuntarily confiscated loot (taxes).
Local governments often offer grants in lieu of property tax exemption for organizations like churches, service clubs, and arts groups for example, an accounting exercise with no exchange of funds.
This is another useful source for Canadian charity data: https://www.charitydata.ca
I use charitydata.ca often - they're using the exact same CRA dataset that I have in the backend. But they're particularly useful for looking up individual charities.
You're right -- good for examining individual charities in a user-friendly manner.