Why don’t we know who the government consulted on the disbursement quota?
Public consultations: thumbs up or thumbs down? More often than not, I find them grossly inadequate, paternalistic and not thought through.
I must admit, it’s quite fascinating to check in on the federal government’s public consultations website from time to time to see what Canadians are being consulted on — and it’s broad, everything from international trade controls on elephant ivory in Canada to introducing a 3-digit dialing code for mental health crisis and suicide prevention to improving community volunteer virtual income tax clinics. Sure, these are all worthwhile issues for Canadians to weigh in on, but what grade would Canadians give these consultation processes?
I participated in a local public consultation recently, which had to do with updating and revitalizing a park in my neighbourhood. I took time out of my evening to participate because that park is an important community asset — my children play at this park, we’ve had picnics there, and I believe it has lots of potential and lots to fix. For one, there were no accessible play structures.
But if it wasn’t for seeing a few folks I know in the neighbourhood there, I would’ve likely walked out. The explanation of the process was confusing, with no clarity on what happens after the consultation, and ultimately who gets to decide what’s in and what’s out. I live in a mixed race and mixed income neighbourhood, and there were whole sets of people missing. Not to mention, why were there only three children there (one was mine)? I had asked what the plan was to ensure that voices not in the room were captured, and the response was, “we don’t have much time for many consultations. And those who cannot make it here can email their feedback to us.” Until when? That was unclear. How did they plan to tell people who weren’t there to email? Also unclear. Did they have a sense of who was missing in the room? No.
Are these the makings of a disastrous process? Yes. And not to trivialize this neighbourhood asset, but this is just a small park. What about that significant federal government consultation that’s currently open on the 3-digit dialling code for mental health crisis? Fingers crossed, and hope for the best.
So, that’s where we are — and it explains at least in part the growing apathy and distrust in our institutions and government officials. According to the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer, Canadians’ trust in government dropped 11 points in the past year alone, currently hovering around 55 percent. Not the best starting conditions for “building a resilient future,” no matter how much this government uses that tagline.
Let’s get into one of the consultations that I’m following closely, one that matters to the social impact world. Called “boosting charitable spending in our communities,” the federal department of finance sought input on potentially increasing the disbursement quota — the amount of money philanthropic organizations are required to spend on their charitable programs or to give to charities each year.
Affectionately called the DQ, if you’re not yet familiar with it, this has become one of the most polarizing agendas in the social impact world. There have been debates, panels, op-eds, and a ton of moral policing on social media. The current minimum requirement is to disburse 3.5 percent of endowed assets. Future of Good reporters Brennan Doherty and Gabe Oatley are in the middle of an extensive special report on the DQ and the Advisory Committee on the Charitable Sector (ACCS), Finance Canada’s main engagement body on this topic.
In Budget 2021, the federal government announced it would consider increasing the disbursement quota, which could theoretically unlock billions of dollars and boost support for charitable organizations and the people they serve. Merely increasing the DQ, however, doesn’t guarantee that the dollars will flow to the right places, at the right time, and in an equitable manner. But the DQ is the linchpin. And more changes will have to follow.
Finance Canada ran a consultation process on the DQ from early August to late September 2021. Give5 couldn’t get 100 signatures for their campaign to raise the DQ to five percent but Finance Canada received more than 100 submissions to their DQ consultation. That’s right — more than 100 people and organizations took the time, resources and energy to share their point of view. It’s extraordinary. I don’t know if Finance Canada expected this breadth of responses or positions on DQ. And now they are in deliberations. Not dissimilar to other public consultations, or frankly, grant application processes across the country, the DQ submissions have gone into a black box. Where does it go from here? It’s a guessing game. According to the consultation website, “Feedback received through this consultation will be considered alongside input from the Advisory Committee on the Charitable Sector to help inform decisions on potentially increasing the disbursement quota and updating enforcement tools.” It’s one heck of an opaque process.
No one seems to know who submitted, exactly how many submissions there are (our reporters have asked Finance Canada to release the submissions list but they declined), how the submissions are being evaluated, how the ACCS is involved, and whose voices have dominated the submissions and who is missing from the table.
Why are public consultations so opaque?
To get some insight into this, I turned to my friend Peter MacLeod, one of the most respected thinkers and innovators in the field of public consultation. His organization MASS LBP is internationally recognized for its work to popularize citizen engagement processes and has led more than 40 Reference Panels and Citizens’ Assemblies contributing approximately 55,000 volunteer hours to policy-making in Canada. He believes that transparency is an important democratic convention and that submissions to consultations should be made public, consistent with the practice of open government and open by default. I probed him more on the question of diverse voices, and he mentioned that submissions contain vital information, not only on the perspectives but the identity of the proponents — and transparency would allow civil society to better understand who the government is listening to and hearing from who it isn’t. Terrific point. This isn’t a new idea, MacLeod pointed out that one of the oldest citizen advocacy tools: petitions, which can be tabled in Parliament, have always had names and signatures on it. His bottom line is that most governments today don’t meet the reasonable expectations for good and accountable public processes, and in order to make public policies that benefit the public, they should not be withholding information. I concur.
At Future of Good, our editorial team is trying to get a hold of these submissions from Finance Canada (with no success to date) and has reached out to people and organizations to invite them to share. We’re working on a detailed comparative analysis, and for this we need a decent cross-section of submissions to find patterns. We want to uncover what types of organizations, working on which causes, from which geographies dominated the submissions, and whose voices are missing from the table.
The more these patterns are highlighted, the more forward-looking and equitable the policy outcome. If your organization made a submission, please get in touch. Increasing the DQ and potentially unlocking billions of dollars is one of the most significant moves the social impact world could undertake — and if done thoughtfully, could fundamentally shift the power, trust and resources between funders and social purpose organizations, forever.
Vinod Rajasekaran
Publisher & CEO
Tell us this made you smarter | Contact us | Report error
