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House Hansard - 53

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 5, 2022 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 53 - Apr/5/22
Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)
  • Apr/5/22 6:18:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today about some of the challenges we have seen with donation matching programs launched by governments in response to crises around the world. When there is some singular event causing massive destruction elsewhere in the world, one way that governments have provided assistance is through matching programs that match private donations up to a certain amount. I believe that, in general, matching programs are a very positive vehicle. They are a mechanism for encouraging private participation in humanitarian work and promoting the habit of private giving in general. Because matching programs are often time-limited, they can encourage individuals to make their donations in a timely way. These programs also reflect the important idea that governments and private actors can and should work together to advance international humanitarian objectives. However, there is one significant problem with matching programs. The risk is that, by offering matching opportunities to some organizations and not others, the government uses its financial and rhetorical power to direct private donations in a particular direction. People naturally want to give to organizations that are beneficiaries of a matching program, so that their contributions will be effectively doubled. Promoting donations to these organizations in particular is part of the point of matching programs. However, if people who might otherwise give to unmatched organizations instead choose to direct their donations to organizations that are the recipients of matching programs, these organizations who do not benefit from matching programs end up receiving less private money than they would otherwise. The government is picking winners and losers among humanitarian and development organizations when they construct matching programs that apply to a certain narrow set of organizations and not to others. This perverse outcome is something that should be avoided. I believe that when it comes to matching programs, the government should always cast a very wide net. The government could, for instance, establish a policy of matching donations to all charitable organizations that are responding to a particular crisis. In particular, it has seemed to be the tendency of government to launch matching programs with big, established multilateral humanitarian organizations with which the government has long-established relationships. This is the easy thing for government to do and it may also entail less of certain kinds of risks. As the saying goes, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. The problem is that there may be other good reasons to prefer matching programs with organizations other than big, well-known multilaterals. In many cases, smaller, local charities will have particular competencies and connections on the ground. The organizations best positioned to provide humanitarian relief in Lebanon may not be the same as the organizations best positioned to provide humanitarian relief in Ukraine. The easy way out for government is simply to work with big organizations that have some capacity to operate everywhere, but matching donations to smaller, local outfits may actually have a greater, real impact. These organizations may also be leaner and more efficient. A focus on large, multilaterals ignores the potential of uniquely Canadian-based and affiliated organizations, in some cases led by diaspora community members with particular connections abroad and in other cases simply Canadian organizations that are leveraging Canadian innovation and involvement. Imagine the experience of someone who starts a local Canadian not-for-profit organization, has a strong base of support here and suddenly finds that they are losing donations at a critical time because Canadians are instead choosing to donate to multilaterals that are benefiting from a matching program from their own government. This is not right and it is not fair. Now I have also seen how government matching programs often miss Christian and other faith-based organizations that are doing good development work in the service of all. A secular government should be neutral on questions of religion, which means providing matching opportunities for faith-based and non-faith-based organizations alike. This would be a neutral position, but by avoiding faith-based organizations in the matching program, the government is not taking a neutral position. My initial question was about matching in the case of Ukraine. Notably, in the case of Ukraine, Canadians have been extremely generous, donating far above the allotment for the matching program, and the level of generosity in this case means that the perverse outcomes of only matching donations to one organization may likely be less of a factor, but this is a larger policy issue that needs to be addressed by government and I hope it will be.
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