The charitable and non-profit sector is bracing for what could be seismic change in Ottawa. But those who have steered foundations and charities through various changes in government warn against apocalyptic assumptions.
It doesn’t take a degree in political science or a deep dive into the electoral tea leaves to sense that change appears to be on the way.
Poll after poll, like single snowflakes becoming a blizzard, has shown Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives leading Justin Trudeau’s Liberals by double digits in federal voting preference. Trudeau has not led in a nationally recognized poll since February 2023, and most polls show Poilievre sits in majority territory with an election set for autumn 2025 – if not sooner.
The charitable and non-profit sector is bracing for the change. Leaders are engaging with those who have been insiders in previous Conservative governments, looking for insights in dealing with what could be seismic change. Is this a freight train bearing down on the sector? Should leaders be girding for the onset of the Dark Ages in which their best work will be devalued? How should it prepare for change?
There’s no denying there is angst out there, but those who have steered foundations and charities through various changes in government warn against apocalyptic assumptions and are confident that no change in government will get in the way of good work being done for the vulnerable. They cite past examples of breakthroughs – some quite surprising – under Conservative governments that have defied stereotypical expectations. There is a need to be vigilant but no need for high anxiety, they say.
A lot of the work done with government is below the political radar . . . It’s not like suddenly everything falls off a cliff.
Alan Broadbent, Maytree
Instead, says Maytree founder and chairman Alan Broadbent, do your homework: know who you are dealing with and plan accordingly. “A lot of the work done with government is below the political radar,” he says. “You’re working with departments that are equally committed to serving the people as you are. They are also advocates, and you don’t need to dig very deep in government to find them. And they will be skilled enough in the political arts to get things done. They just may have to work a little harder to get there. It’s not like suddenly everything falls off a cliff.”
Broadbent says the sector’s commitment to its core mission of providing for those in need cannot waver. But he warns against organizations rebranding to cater to a different political outlook in Ottawa. “You might try to characterize your work in a slightly more agreeable way,” he says, “but trying to do any type of workaround to make it sound like it’s a ‘Conservative idea’ or a ‘Poilievre idea’ is not likely to work. People see through that.”
Most charities are not funded by the federal government, but there is this weird fixation on everything federal.
Kevin McCort, Vancouver Foundation
Kevin McCort, president and CEO of the Vancouver Foundation, believes the sector puts too much stock in the political bent of the federal government. “They control charitable registration and a lot of the regulatory environment, but the bulk of the funding comes from the provincial government or the public. Most charities are not funded by the federal government, but there is this weird fixation on everything federal.”
Statistics Canada confirms McCort’s view. In its National Insights into Non-Profit Organizations, Canadian Survey on Business Conditions, 2023, StatsCan found that the most prominent sources of revenue for the non-profit sector in 2023 were individual donations (21.7%), membership fees or dues (17.7%), and transfers from provincial or territorial governments (10.5%). The largest contributions from provincial and territorial governments went to non-profits working in healthcare (43.6%) and social services (42.5%). The survey was conducted in January and the first part of February 2024.
In its Sources of Funding Received by Non-Profit Organizations 2023, StatsCan reported that federal funding accounted for only 4.5% of non-profit revenue last year, the largest recipient being larger organizations (20 to 99 employees) and those serving the arts and culture sector, which reported 10.8% of its funding from the federal government.
That doesn’t mean there will not be change, because at the very least the federal government sets the tone and it is Ottawa that transfers the funds to provinces that eventually end up in charitable coffers, says Pamela Uppal-Sandhu, the director of policy at the Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN).
The Stephen Harper years brought cuts to funding, Uppal-Sandhu says, and the arrival of Trudeau meant a focus on feminist policies, a gender-equal cabinet, funding for 2SLGBTQIA+ spaces, the endowment for the Foundation for Black Communities, and the fiscal taps being turned on to help during the pandemic. “A lot of money has been put on the table,” she says.
We have to build relationships, we have to find alignment, we have to connect, we have to educate, and we have to do the government relations and advocacy work, no matter what.
Pamela Uppal-Sandhu, Ontario Nonprofit Network
Uppal-Sandhu worries about some steep ideological differences with a Poilievre government, concerned about advances in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community being rolled back and real damage being done to the vulnerable as the political pendulum swings back. “The reality is we have to engage if we want to survive,” she says. “We have to build relationships, we have to find alignment, we have to connect, we have to educate, and we have to do the government relations and advocacy work, no matter what.”
Yet there have been sector victories – often unexpected – when governments appear to be acting against character, sector leaders say.
Harper committed more than $6 billion over five years to maternal and newborn child health in countries where they were most vulnerable, telling the United Nations in a 2014 speech that the issue was “closest to my heart.” In providing billions of dollars to international charities, the former prime minister authored an undeniably productive moment during his years in office, McCort says.
Before that, Broadbent points to the Registered Disability Savings Plan championed by the late finance minister Jim Flaherty. It allowed money to be put aside by parents of a child with a disability (or the disabled person him or herself), allowing the investments to accrue tax-free, much like a registered retirement savings plan. Flaherty had been approached in 2006 by the British Columbia–based Planned Lifetime Advocacy Network, which was lobbying for financial security for children with disabilities. The program was up and running by 2008. One factor in Flaherty’s championing of such a program was that he and his wife, Christine Elliott, had a developmentally disabled child who had contracted encephalitis as a child.
The success rate may not be what you want, but sometimes you can hit an alignment, regardless of the stripe.
Alan Broadbent
“It can be one-off surprises, but that is the way a lot of stuff gets done, even in progressive governments,” Broadbent says. “You’ve got to make sure you put in the work in order to deal with the people you have to deal with. The success rate may not be what you want, but sometimes you can hit an alignment, regardless of the stripe.”
It is worth noting that Poilievre and his wife, Anaida Galindo, have an autistic daughter, Valentina. Poilievre chose not to run for the party leadership in 2020 for fear his absence would have an adverse effect on the girl.
Marcel Lauzière, who recently retired from the Lawson Foundation, capping decades in the sector, was at Imagine Canada when Harper came to power. “I remember a number of our members saying, ‘We can’t talk to this government, they don’t believe in what we’re doing,’” he recalls. The sector pushed for a home in government under Harper, but his office made it clear that was not going to happen, so Lauzière says the sector changed direction rather than banging its head against the wall, pushing for something it couldn’t get. He, too, mentions the maternal health benefit and points to Harper pioneering the practice of government matching sector donations for crises dollar-for-dollar.
Looking back to 2009, Lauzière recalls the support building for a Liberal MP’s private member’s bill that would have capped compensation in the charitable sector, making Canada the only country to do so and making it difficult to attract top talent. When the sector fought back, they found their only allies among Conservatives, who viewed the proposed legislation as a form of wage control. “On that issue, which I believe would have been disastrous for the sector, the Liberals were the problem, not the Conservatives,” Lauzière says. The bill died when Parliament was prorogued that year. In recent Liberal years, he says, most sector advances were won in the courts, not in the political arena.
“We certainly don’t have to take for granted that Conservatives will usher in the Dark Ages [for the sector],” Lauzière says. “Things are never that simple – it depends on the issue.”
We certainly don’t have to take for granted that Conservatives will usher in the Dark Ages [for the sector].
Marcel Lauzière
Poilievre’s office ignored a request for comment from The Philanthropist Journal, but the party’s international development critic, Alberta MP Garnett Genuis, provided encouraging words. “Conservatives recognize the critical value of the charitable sector,” Genuis says in a June Facebook video forwarded by his office. “Governments cannot solve every problem. Private philanthropy assists people who otherwise would fall through the cracks. A Conservative government would work to unleash the charitable sector.”
Genuis says a Poilievre government would work to empower charities by removing red tape and would not “politicize” the charitable sector by denying funding to organizations that do not align with a government’s philosophy. That is a reference to the Liberal decision to make pro-life organizations ineligible for charitable status. “Schools, Catholic hospitals, summer camps. These are some of the institutions that are at risk,” Genuis told The Catholic Register in 2022. “It is a much broader attack on the charitable status of organizations with a pro-life orientation.”
But Genuis was an outspoken proponent of ending the so-called direction-and-control strictures placed on the sector, and his Conservative colleague, Northumberland-Peterborough South MP Philip Lawrence, was the House of Commons sponsor of a bill to eliminate direction and control introduced in the Senate by Ratna Omidvar. “The best practices in international development are really focused on empowerment,” Genuis told the Commons during debate on the bill. “It is not about having donor countries controlling the activity that is happening in another country. Rather, it is about that donor coming alongside, partnering with, but seeking to support, empower, and give control to the organization that is on the ground, the people who are responsible for their own development.”
The prospective prime minister’s most notable dive into sector issues was as the Conservatives’ lead attack dog, as finance critic, on the WE scandal, a bid to discredit Trudeau more than a verdict on Poilievre’s views on the sector generally. At the time, Poilievre said he had an obligation to aggressively delve into the waste of Canadian tax dollars. “I did my job,” he said.
We outlive governments. The left and right both value the charitable sector, but for different reasons.
Kevin McCort
Conservatives tend to see their relationship with the sector as transactional rather than philosophical, sector veterans say. “We outlive governments,” McCort says. “The left and right both value the charitable sector, but for different reasons. One sees it as a way to amplify government work; the other sees it as a way to replace government work. As the charitable sector navigates those two rather simplistic world views, they can navigate with both governments.”
Broadbent agrees: “[Conservatives] are not opposed to the charitable sector because very often conservatives like the idea of charity as opposed to government intervention. They don’t see it as a duty for the government to do something, so the community, through its charitable and religious organizations, can pick up the slack.”
If your work is important, don’t feel discouraged if your work doesn’t seem to be as valued as it once was.
Alan Broadbent
As the co-founder of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy, Broadbent looks back fondly on the days when Liberal finance minister Paul Martin read a Caledon report on the child benefit and a couple of years later it was government policy. “It was almost magic,” he says. “You don’t expect that thing is going to happen when a more conservative government with a different approach is in . . . and it didn’t.” He adds, “But the work still needs to be done, so you have to stay with it. Don’t get thrown off stride. If your work is important, don’t feel discouraged if your work doesn’t seem to be as valued as it once was.”
The involvement of Genuis and Lawrence points to another point stressed by Broadbent: get to know individual MPs and find alignment. He recalls attending an event when the late Hugh Segal (a Progressive Conservative) was working on a poverty eradication plan and Broadbent talked to a handful of new Conservative MPs, three of whom were from Alberta. All the MPs had come to politics via the United Way or other charities and had an understanding of the issue at hand. “They didn’t have the monolithic Conservative point of view,” he says. Genuis, for example, has a grandmother who survived the Holocaust, and his wife’s parents were born in the Christian community in Pakistan; his initial access to the sector came through learning those life stories. Lawrence dealt with charities in his law practice, before his election, giving him practical knowledge of the sector.
There can be no doubt that challenges await the sector, and there is no underestimating the impact of fundamental change. And some angst is inevitable. “This will shape our sector over the next decade,” Uppal-Sandhu says. “It’ll be a decade, and there will be another shift . . . but I’m concerned about the toll these shifts take over the longer term. What do we lose slowly that we don’t even notice until it’s too big?”
The sector can’t shut down – it’s got to be hopeful, she says. “Otherwise, how am I going to do my job?”
