Pre-budget Submission
Every year, the House of Commons Finance Committee asks organizations and individuals to provide it with advice as it decides on its federal budget recommendations to the Minister of Finance.
This year, the Committee set a very specific theme for its pre-budget recommendations, asking for briefs relating directly to climate change and how Canada can best meet its international commitments in that regard.
At Imagine Canada, our charitable purpose doesn’t allow us to get into environmental or climate issues. And even if we could, we’d leave those issues to the experts.
However, we can speak to how charities and nonprofits as organizations are often not fully included in the government’s thinking, or in new initiatives the government establishes. This was also recently recognized by the Special Senate Committee on the Charitable Sector, which recommended that the federal government make charities and nonprofits eligible when it develops new programs.
To that end, our submission makes three recommendations:
- That charities and nonprofits be fully eligible for any new initiatives the government might implement aimed at helping organizations reduce their environmental impact;
- That charities’ and nonprofits’ eligibility be explicitly communicated, both to the sector and to government program officers, so that organizations know what might be available to them; and,
- That the cost-sharing models in any new program take into account the realities facing charities and nonprofits – both in terms of their ability to access funds, but also the restrictions that might exist on how they can use the funds available to them.