VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – You may toss a few coins in the kettle, add a $1 for a children’s charity to your grocery bill, maybe give a few bucks to your favourite Christmas cause, so when you think about it, how much have you donated this year?
A new report suggests charitable giving has hit a 10-year low across Canada, with BC near the bottom of the pack.
The 2016 Generosity Index compares donations to registered charities in Canada and the US, as measured by what people claim on personal income tax returns.
The report comes from the Fraser Institute and lead author Charles Lammam says both the percentage of Canadians claiming donations and the amount they are giving as a share of their income are the lowest they have been in a decade. “We find that Canadians are also much less generous than their American counterparts,” adds Lammam, the right-leaning policy group’s director of fiscal studies. “Americans donated a share of their income that was more than two-and-a-half times the rate in Canada, so there is significantly more generosity in the US compared to Canada.”
The report finds 21.3 per cent of Canadian tax filers claimed charitable donations in 2014, the last year of available data, down from 25.1 per cent in 2004. By comparison, 24.5 per cent of those who filed taxes in the US claimed charitable donations in 2014.
Moreover, the size of Canadians’ charitable donations in 2014 — 0.56 per cent of their income — also shrunk to a 10-year low, down from 0.78 per cent in 2006, the peak over the past decade. “We calculate that if Canadians had donated to charity at the same rate as they did in 2006, our charities would have an extra $3.6-billion of resources, significantly more than the $9-billion they actually received,” Lammam tells NEWS 1130.
When you break down the numbers by province, territory and US state, British Columbia sits very close to the bottom of the rankings. “We find that BC is 54th overall out of 64 jurisdictions in Canada and the US. Our counterparts in Alberta were just slightly ahead of us, ranked 50th overall in generosity. The really unfortunate news for Canadians is that Manitoba is the highest ranking Canadian province, but it only ranks 37th. Almost 80-percent of the US jurisdictions are ahead of our top-ranking Canadian province.”
Lammam says the holiday season is a time to reflect on giving, and with Canadians becoming less generous every year, he believes it is unfortunate that charities face greater challenges to secure resources to help those in need.