Oh what a difference a year makes. Or does it? Around this time last year, the federal government had formalized its budget cuts to the voluntary sector, indicating that it wanted to find close to $1 billion in savings, some of which would come at the cost of the voluntary sector.
Not surprisingly, a huge outcry arose from nonprofit organizations across the land, as a funding crisis of epic proportions loomed large. In fact, the Canadian Volunteerism Initiative (CVI) was wiped out completely from Heritage Canada, to name one casualty. Many smaller charities and nonprofits needed to re-evaluate their respective budgets and cost-cut down to the bare essentials for operational purposes, while some of the larger ones sat down to take a good, hard look at what to do next.
Back to the future
Last year, the Canadian Council for Social Development (CCSD) published Funding Matters…For our community, authored by the CCSD’s VP of research, Katherine Scott. It’s a comprehensive 22-page report on how the sector could best prepare for the new budgetary scenario and find new ways to generate revenue in “response to broader social and economic constraints.” One of the report’s main conclusions was that there was little willingness on the part of funders, namely provincial governments, to “tackle funding challenges in a cohesive fashion.”
Meanwhile, last August Imagine Canada was busy disseminating its outline of the government’s March 2006 announced budget cuts, breaking them down for sector colleagues into the four broad categories that the government used to evaluate where and why it would slice. For many readers, this recap will no doubt rekindle the feelings of shock upon first seeing this breakdown. Government rationalizing shook out in these groupings:
- Value for Money: Programs that the government concluded were not providing good value for money for Canadians;
- Unused Funds: Eliminating funds that have not yet been spent within programs that are no longer supported by the government;
- Efficiencies: Savings from streamlining select federal programs; and
- Non-core programs: Savings from eliminating programs that the government does not find core to its priorities or does not find to be the most effective way of achieving those priorities.
(Note: CharityVillage ran a more comprehensive cover story on the issue last year; suffice it to say that many of the “non-core” programs referred to the voluntary sector.)
Reliving the past
At the time, Teri Kirk, vice president of government relations and public policy with Imagine Canada, wrote that her organization was saddened by these cuts and eloquently recapped just how colossal and necessary the voluntary sector had become.
“Canada has one of the largest and most vibrant community nonprofit sectors in the world: $9 billion in donations; 2 billion hours of volunteer time; 22.2 million donors; 11.8 million volunteers; over 2 million fulltime equivalent workers; 750,000 unincorporated community organizations; 81,000 nonprofit corporations; and 80,000 registered charities,” she wrote. “This depth and breadth, extending horizontally across regional and provincial borders into even the smallest of Canadian communities and vertically into hundreds of activity-based sub-sectors, such as the arts, sports, international aid, heath charities and many others, weave a rich tapestry of community organizations, registered charities, incorporated not-for-profits and grassroots organizations, created by Canadians to address the issues that they care about most.”
What about now?
In the aftermath of the budget announcement, many sector organizations have communicated among themselves for support and unity, and with the ruling Conservative government, seeking a renewed dialogue and increased aid for much needed social programs, and the CCSD has been a loud voice in this narrative.
To its credit, the government established a Blue Ribbon Panel to evaluate how best to serve the community, and maintain accountability and transparency of grants and contribution mechanisms through its new Federal Accountability Act. The panel submitted its final report in December 2006, imploring the government to streamline “the current web of rules governing grants and contributions” over the next 18 months and then “seek to harmonize federal, provincial and municipal information, reporting and audit requirements for grants and contributions” over the next three years. The government is still deciding what to do with and how best to implement those recommendations, among others.
In April this year, Marcel Lauziere and Wayne Helgason, respectively president and board chair of the CCSD, wrote a letter on social investments to Finance Minister James Flaherty, indicating their hope that the government would use the pre-existing Canada Social Transfer (CST) mechanism, which in the 2007 budget amounts to a $16.3 billion, seven-year investment program, to help ease the growing financial burden on the voluntary sector.
The government defines the CST as “a federal block transfer to provinces and territories in support of post-secondary education, social assistance and social services, and early childhood development and early learning and childcare.” But the CCSD has advocated for the CST to have an expanded impact.
“The CCSD recognizes that the Canada Social Transfer, in and of itself, will not resolve all of Canada’s social challenges. But it can – and should – be a key instrument that addresses some of these challenges,” wrote Lauziere and Helgason. “The steps taken announced in Budget 2007 provide the beginnings of a process which will shift attention from endless negotiations to tackling the challenge of getting things done in communities.”
Looking out for the future
Among its requests, the CCSD asked the government to consider reshaping the CST in the following major ways:
- Split the CST into two parts for social programming and post-secondary education, for better accountability and transparency.
- Increase funding to the CST and guarantee stability through an escalator mechanism.
- Find common principles through broad engagement with Canadians.
- Measure and monitor outcomes, and share innovation and best practices.
Flaherty strikes back
The Finance Minister answered Helgason and Lauziere a month later, replying that his government understood “that major federal transfers, such as the CST, are important to ensure adequate support for shared priorities that foster a strong economic union and equal opportunities for all Canadians. CST funding touches the lives of every Canadian, supporting provinces and territories in delivering social assistance and social services that reduce poverty and protect vulnerable Canadians, helping our universities and colleges be among the best in the world, and creating early childhood development programs and flexible child care spaces for the benefit of our youngest Canadians.”
While the CST will continue to filter monies back through the provinces, it seems there’s still a long way to go to fill the funding voids left behind from last year’s budget fallout.
A new hope
Still, according to Imagine Canada, the government seems to be responding positively and with more of an open mind to sector organizations’ pleas for loosening of the national purse strings to help its communities.
In a bulletin released by Imagine this past March, Kirk writes that her organization is, “pleased that the government restated its commitment to reform current grant and contribution programs in accordance with the report of the Blue Ribbon Panel. We ask that the Government’s commitment to reducing the administrative and paper burden on small and medium enterprises by 20% within specified time frames apply equally to small and medium community nonprofit organizations.”
Imagine has also taken time to recognize the “good work” that the CCSD and others have done to help strengthen the sector financially.
Time will tell how the federal government will respond. But hope springs eternal.
Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf is president of WordLaunch professional writing services in Toronto. He can be reached at andy@wordlaunch.com.
