Friday, July 25, 2014

Canada and Charity

Oxfam Canada filed papers with Industry Canada to renew its non-profit status explaining its purpose as  as a charity is “to prevent and relieve poverty, vulnerability and suffering by improving the conditions of individuals whose lives, livelihood, security or well-being are at risk.” But the submission to Industry Canada also needed the approval of the charities directorate of the Canada Revenue Agency. Agency officials informed Oxfam that “preventing poverty” was not an acceptable goal.  Legal precedents mean charities cannot help people not already impoverished from falling into poverty. Purposes that relieve poverty are charitable because they provide relief only to eligible beneficiaries, those in need. The courts have not found the risk of poverty as being equivalent to actually being in need. Therefore, as the courts have indicated, an organization cannot be registered with the explicit purpose of preventing poverty.”

“Relieving poverty is charitable, but preventing it is not,” the group was warned. “Preventing poverty could mean providing for a class of beneficiaries that are not poor.”

 Purposes that relieve poverty are charitable because they provide relief only to eligible beneficiaries, those in need. The courts have not found the risk of poverty as being equivalent to actually being in need. Therefore, as the courts have indicated, an organization cannot be registered with the explicit purpose of preventing poverty.

The Harper government has targeted charities since 2012 for engaging in “political activities.” It is currently auditing some 52 groups, many of whom have criticized the Harper government’s programs and policies, especially on the environment. The list includes Amnesty International Canada, the David Suzuki Foundation, Canada Without Poverty, and the United Church of Canada’s Kairos charity. Pen Canada, a Toronto charity that advocates for freedom of speech, is the latest to join  the ranks of the audited. Auditors have the power to strip a charity of its registration, and therefore its ability to issue income-tax receipts, potentially drying up donations.

Meanwhile in the real world of poverty millions still live in poverty and even those who have gained the security of the middle-income bracket could relapse into poverty due to sudden changes to their economic fortunes in South Asia, revealed the latest annual Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) .

“In South Asia 44.4 percent of the population, around 730 million people, live on 1.25−2.50 dollars a day,” said the report. Globally, some 1.2 billion people live on less than 1.25 dollars a day, and 2.7 billion live on even less.

 In Sri Lanka, categorised as a lower middle-income country by the World Bank in 2011, the poorest seemed to getting poorer. Sri Lanka, reflecting global trends, is home to large numbers of poor people despite the island showing impressive growth rates.

The World’s poor are finding it hard to climb up the earnings ladder. The International Labour Organisation estimates that there were 50 million more working poor in 2011. Only 24 million of them climbed above the 1.25-dollars-a-day income poverty line over 2007–2011, compared with 134 million between 2000 and 2007. Many people only increased their income to a point barely above the poverty line so that “idiosyncratic or generalised shocks could easily push them back into poverty. 12 percent of the world population lives in chronic hunger, while 1.2 billion of the world’s workers are still employed in the informal sector.

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