A Fraser Institute study has shown once again that Manitobans are the most generous of all Canadians. But a spokesperson for the Vancouver based think-tank has no answer for why.
“We don’t get into particular reasons as to why there are differences (between provinces),” said Charles Lammam, a policy analyst.
The institute released its annual Generosity Index in December, which showed that 27.3 percent of Manitobans donated to a registered charity based on tax filing data. Manitobans gave 1.02 percent of their aggregate income to charity, higher than second place Saskatchewan, where residents donated 0.86 percent of their income.
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Quebec ranked last among the provinces, with 21.0 percent of tax filers claiming charitable donations and donating 0.33 percent of their income.
It was the 10th year in a row that Manitoba ranked highest in the institute’s Generosity Index, but Lammam was reluctant to speculate on why.
“There hasn’t been a comprehensive study, to my knowledge, looking at the whys,” he said.
Instead, Lammam and his colleagues at the Fraser Institute focused their attention this year on the giving habits of Americans versus Canadians.
“There’s a commonly held notion that Canadians are more generous than Americans, but this is clearly not true,” said Niels Veldhuis, Fraser Institute director of fiscal studies.
According to the institute’s data, Americans gave 1.6 percent of their personal income to charity, compared to 0.73 percent of Canadians.
Utah was the most generous of all the states, with 33.7 percent of tax filers claiming for charitable donations. If Manitoba were lumped into the U.S. data, the province would be the 33rd most generous state.
Lammam said the gap between Americans and Canadians could be connected to a number of factors.
It could be differences in the amount of religious activity, the level of taxation or the way citizens view the role of government, he noted.
“(It) could be related to the perception people have of government and government fulfilling a charitable role,” he said. “If people think the government’s doing that job, they’ll scale back their own private donations.”
Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, concurred that the public’s attitude toward government partly explains the gap in charitable donations between the two countries.
“Canadians don’t have the same innate hostility to government that Americans do,” Schafer said.
He said it’s likely that Americans receive higher tax credits for charitable donations, which allows the wealthy to control the giving agenda.
If a government provides higher tax breaks for donations, it means that individuals, not society as a whole, decide who to help and who not to assist, he said. That leads to an ethical question.
“Whether we as a community should be funding (a social cause) collectively, or whether we should give high tax credits so wealthy individuals, who have a lot of discretionary income, can then decide where their charitable donations are going to go.”
While Americans may prefer to decide as individuals, which causes and charities to assist, there isn’t a huge difference between the tax credits in the two nations. For donations above $200, Canadians receive a federal tax credit of 29 percent of the amount, according to the Canadian Revenue Agency website. In the U.S., people in the highest income tax bracket, currently at 35 percent, receive a tax deduction at the same rate.
