Here’s how each Canadian political party has promised to work with the social impact sector

Each of Canada’s major parties are thinking about the social impact sector during this federal election — you just need to sift through the details to find out exactly what they’re thinking.

Still, the non-profit, charitable, philanthropic, social enterprise, and social finance sectors are rarely a major focus in federal election campaigns and 2021 is no exception. With the exception of the WE Charity scandal, it is possible the entire 36-day campaign will go by without a mention of the sector on the campaign trail. But the incumbent Liberals, NDP, Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois, and Green Party all do have a place for the social impact world in their election plans.

The Conservatives, for example, are keen on partnerships with civil society organizations for mental healthcare and refugee sponsorship, while the NDP want to launch community initiatives focused on intergenerational trauma among Indigenous communities, and the Liberals want to include non-profits and charitable social enterprises in its Small Business Financing Program 

Here’s a breakdown of some of the more intriguing non-profit, charity, social enterprise, and philanthropic policy proposals from the major Canadian parties so far:

What’s on offer

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole previously promised to reform Canada’s ‘direction and control’ regulations for charities — a policy that showed up in his party’s latest platform. It doesn’t offer specifics but says any reforms will ensure “accountability for spending without requiring projects in developing countries to be directly controlled by Canadian charities.” This is a longstanding demand of Canada’s domestic and international development organizations. The NDP, Greens, and Liberals make no mention of direction and control in their platform, and it isn’t clear if the Bloc is considering reforms of its own.

Boosting the federal asset disbursement quota, a rule that requires Canadian charities to disburse at least 3.5 percent of their assets every year, is also on the table. Shortly before Trudeau called the election, his government said it would consult with Canada’s social impact sector on whether to change the quota, but the Conservatives want it bumped up to 7.5 percent to “unlock billions of dollars built up tax-free in foundations and put this money to work to help Canadians”. The NDP, Greens, and Bloc don’t mention the disbursement quota at all in their platforms. Many Canadian arts non-profits and charities are still in dire financial straits after four successive waves of COVID-19. 

Rebuilding the arts is a priority for the NDP. “New Democrats will be there to support with a dedicated re-building package for the performing arts, theatre, festivals and other arts that have been most severely impacted by the pandemic,” their platform says without offering additional specifics. The word ‘arts’ is not mentioned once in the Conservative platform. 

Over the course of the pandemic, the Liberal government estimates it gave $15.4 billion in wage and rent support to organizations, including non-profits, working in the tourism, arts, and cultural sectors. Their latest platform promises an Arts and Culture Recovery Program that would match ticket sales for performing arts to compensate for reduced capacity, start a transitional support program for out-of-work artists, and hold a summit within 100 days of forming a government on plans to restate Canada’s arts and culture industry. The Greens are promising $25 million in additional funding for museums and cultural organizations to help them re-open post pandemic. 

Helping Indigenous social enterprise scale up is a campaign promise of the NDP and Conservatives as part of their promises to foster economic development among Indigenous communities. Their platform also promises to prioritize federal procurement from Indigenous companies wherever possible. The Liberal platform adopted a policy in 2019 to spend 5 percent of its procurement budget on Indigenous businesses, although there’s no mention of social enterprise in its current platform. By contrast, the Greens and Bloc aren’t promising anything for Indigenous procurement, although the Greens do want a green procurement strategy. 

Reforming the CRA is on the Conservatives’ radar, and while their approach is mainly aimed at small businesses and middle-class Canadians, it could be helpful to the social impact sector. The Conservatives want to soften CRA fines for first-time offenders and launch a comprehensive review of the tax system to “improve competitiveness, bring down rates and simplify the rules.” As for the Liberals, their recent budget promises to “significantly increase” CRA resources to target tax avoidance, but this promise isn’t explicitly aimed at the social impact sector. Ditto for the Greens.  

The housing crisis is a major feature of all political party promises this election, but only the NDP are explicitly promising to work with social housing to build affordable units, as well as rental assistance for co-ops. Jagmeet Singh’s party promises to set up dedicated fast-start funds to streamline the application process for non-profit housing looking for federal money. Their goal is 500,000 units of affordable housing in the next 10 years. In the Greens’ platform, the party wants 300,000 units over a decade, but they’d all be non-market, co-op, and non-profit housing. In 2021, the Liberals are promising to “build or revitalize” 250,000 units over the next four years.  The Conservatives are championing the most ambitious target on housing — 1 million new units in just three years — but don’t say if they will need to be affordable or not. 

The Liberal government’s last budget promised $172 million over five years to help Statistics Canada collect disaggregated data on Canada’s population, including race-based data, but this proposal is missing from the party’s current platform. Social impact organizations looking to address race, gender, or sexual orientation-based inequities are keen on this information — and so is the NDP. In their platform, the NDP says it would prioritize race-based data collection on health, employment, policing, and other issues. It would also work with the provinces to help them collect their own race-based stats. No mention of ‘race’ or ‘disaggregated data’ exists anywhere in the Conservative plan, but it does mention mandating government departments and organizations receiving public funds to publish “more data in machine-readable formats using prevailing open standards.”

Last year, the Liberals promised to settle more than 30,000 refugees in Canada through direct government aid and private sponsorship from both civil society organizations and grassroots Canadian groups — and their current platform promises to resettle 40,000 Afghan refugees. The NDP and Conservatives have very different visions for how to do so. 

While the former wants to “get rid of the backlog” of refugee claims to Canada, the Conservatives are proposing to replace public assisted refugee spaces with more private and joint sponsorship programs — run by organizations partially funded by the government. Their platform claims privately sponsored refugees earn more and depend less on government aid for up to a decade after arriving compared to those sponsored by the Canadian government. “These changes will revolutionize the experience of compassionate organizations conducting private refugee sponsorship,” the platform says. “Sponsors will spend more time helping people in distress with more government support and less government hassle.”

The Greens have a novel policy proposal in their section on refugees — consider ‘environmental refugee’ a legitimate category in Canada. Their policy platform calls for Canada to also lead discussions at the international level on how to facilitate this new definition of refugee and commit to accepting “a proportional share” of the world’s refugees fleeing climate catastrophe. 

Stay tuned

It’s early days yet for the federal election campaign. With weeks to go, Canada’s social impact sector will have plenty of time to scrutinize each party’s platforms and proposals, ask questions, and potentially see them answered at either of the televised debates on September 8 and September 9.

Regardless of who wins the election, the sector will have a role to play in helping Canadians through another wave of COVID-19 and rebuild — from newcomer settlement services to economic development initiatives, supervised consumption facilities to elder care projects. At the moment, it appears as though all of Canada’s major parties understand that.

This story will be updated with more social impact policy as federal party leaders release their platforms and promises on the campaign trail.

Last updated Sept. 8 at 12:41 pm.

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