Elder Advice
Thinking Inside the Box - 152
Honestly. I leave you people on your own for a few days, and return to find this season of giving includes:
Federal Liberals giving Canadians a fiscally disastrous tax holiday…
Justin giving his Finance Minister the bum’s rush…
Chrystia pre-emptively giving Justin the finger…
An increasing number of the Liberal caucus giving Justin the cold shoulder and Mark Carney the nod…
and Justin giving himself a self-centred time out to consider his future…
That anyone in this country is expressing surprise at these events is astonishing to Elder Advice. The holiday tax holiday and cash giveaway trumpeted by a government that has racked up a $61 billion deficit, blowing past every financial guardrail, (including those it set for itself) in a painfully obvious 11th hour effort to buy our favour with our own money, is contemptible, and predictable. The sacking of the Finance Minister, whose apparent qualification for the job was a Masters degree in Slavonic Studies, and her belated condemnation of Justin and Canada’s financial mismanagement after years of support and oversight, respectively, is disingenuous, and predictable. The plea by a political party bereft of policies and principles to yet another wished-for-Prime Minister-in-waiting with a known name, to save it from electoral oblivion is desperate, and predictable. The fact we have a Prime Minister-in-hiding when the country needs leadership in the face of grave economic threats by the U.S. President-elect and his trolling about 51st statehood is reprehensible, and predictable.
Elder Advice could say: “I told you so, repeatedly,” but, of course, he is far too modest and self-effacing to do so.1 And far too wise to imagine that Justin will have an epiphany on January 6, or any other day, and give the back of his hand to his enormous self-regard and overblown sense of entitlement. And give himself the boot.
What appears to be the final giving way of the Trudeau government, a ten year triumph of form over substance, is welcome but untimely news. This is not the kind of “giving” Elder Advice imagined should end the mad clutter of 2024 and be the subject of his last scribblings before the New Year. So he has decided instead to give you a welcome respite from the political, and his two cents worth on the subject of giving.
One of my least favourite clients won $500,000 in a sports lottery last week and told me proudly that he had donated a quarter of it to charity. Knowing him as I do, he now has $499,999.75.
Elder Advice himself was stopped on the street this week by a young person with the omnipresent clipboard. “Can you spare a few minutes for cancer research?” she asked. “Certainly,” I said, “but I doubt we’ll get much done.”
This holiday season, some Canadians will donate their money or time to those in need. Most won’t. Elder Advice says that because earlier in 2024 Statistics Canada reported that, from 2018 to 2022 and across the board of charitable organizations, charitable giving has declined nationwide to a dismal 17.1% of Canadian tax filers. The same reliable data shows those Canadians who do give are donating a steadily declining share of their income - down to 0.50% in 2022. Meanwhile, the population of individuals in need of help, those experiencing “food insecurity” for example, has risen in the same period from 11.6 to 16.9 %.
To give some perspective, twenty years ago more than 25% of Canadian tax filers donated to charities and if even that unacceptably low ratio had continued, there would be $2.4 billion more than there is today in the coffers of those organizations supporting our neighbours with food, shelter, disaster relief, counselling and a myriad of other services. And we fare no better when it comes to volunteerism, with 65.3 % of non-profit organizations reportedly struggling to find volunteers.
“Things are different now,” Elder Advice is constantly told. Some things are. This is not. The science is in, and has been in for some time.2 Whatever appalling examples of self-interest are being set by those in our political class, the rest of us are happiest when we engage in “prosocial” behavior. We are most happy when we are of assistance to others.
Elder Advice? Surely our common goal is to ensure this country is a decent place we can pass on, without shame, to those who follow us. A place where principles matter, where duty and obligation are what animates, and where self-obsession is self- evidently wrong. So, before 2024 is in our collective rear view mirror, give a damn. And money. Because no charitable organization has ever been in a situation where having money made it worse.
Elder Advice 39, 58, 74, 78, 94, 117, and 136.
Nelson, S. K., Layous, K., Cole, S. W., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2016). Do unto others or treat yourself? The effects of prosocial and self-focused behavior on psychological flourishing. Emotion, 16(6), 850–861. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000178