Ottawa Looks at Rewriting Rules on Charitable Giving

Summary

According to the article "Ottawa looks at rewriting rules on charitable giving", the government of Canada had made some changes on the policy of charitable giving. The purpose of this change is to "ensure that organizations deliver promised social gains."(Curry, 2011).The new policy will allow charities to raise money through their side business, increase personal tax credits for charitable donation."The first step will be changes to traditional grants" (Curry, 2011).

Minister for Human Resources and Skills Development Diane Finley explains the differences between the old policy and the new policy. She argues that currently the government simply gives the money to the charities, and then asks them to do the jobs. However, the government will not check whether these jobs are finished or not. In the near future, the government will offer the money only if charities "achieve the objectives".

This announcement implies that Ms. Finley and her team are willing to cut their budget. The new plan is inspired by British Prime Minister David Cameron's Big Society experiment, which means the government wants the public and private sectors to take over the financial burden of financing non-profits and charities. Even if the implementation of this plan in UK causes controversy and confusion, it decreases the government expense significantly. Therefore, Ms. Finley wants to "test some of those ideas in Canada very soon".

Ms. Finley points out that the government may revise some tradition grants with a hybrid version-"a defined amount that recipients could increase by meeting agreed-upon targets" (Curry, 2011). Opponents believe that the government has made the change because it wants to transfer its responsibilities to charities and non profits. Moreover, by increasing the tax credit of charitable donation, the government is facing a problem of losing revenue. Proponents, on the other hand, believe that it is a good way to solve the problem of declining donation due to the recession.

Opinions

Pros

The new policy will be able to generate a sense of social awareness for charities. The government wants to let charities and non-profits to take more responsibilities, this is a good opportunity to educate these organizations about their responsibilities for the society. As a result, they would take their jobs more seriously. It may help eliminate the belief that social responsibilities are should be mainly handled by the government.

The government can also benefit from this new policy because it can help to reduce the budget during recession. By empowering the community to take more responsibilities "in areas including schools, libraries and hospital", the government can focus more on other areas such