From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

By Jay Goldberg

Are political parties more valuable than charities?

You’d be hard pressed to find a single Canadian that thinks so, but that’s how they’re treated under today’s tax system.

The way tax credits are handed out in Canada needs to be revamped. The system is broken, both federally and provincially. It’s time to stop giving big tax credits for political donations. Instead, let’s give tax breaks to folks when they donate to charity.

Consider this present-day scenario.

Last year, Sally donated $250 to the Conservative Party of Canada and another $250 to Save the Children. Jim donated $250 to the Ontario Liberals and another $250 to the Make a Wish Foundation.

When tax time came, the federal government let Sally use both her donations to lower her tax bill.

But one donation counted a lot more against Sally’s tax bill than the other. And it’s not the one that you might think.

For the Save the Children donation, Sally’s $250 donation netted a $44.50 credit towards her tax bill. The province added in another $15.90. That means she will get $60.40 back at tax time.

How about her political contribution?

Because it was a federal political party donation, Sally only received a federal tax credit. But the feds will give her back $187.50 when she files her taxes.

In other words, the amount Sally gets back from donating to a political party is three times as much as her donation to charity.

For those paying income tax, the tax credit situation for a $250 donation, both to charities and political parties, is identical at the provincial level.

Jim gets $60.40 back at tax time from his charitable donation and $187.50 from Queen’s Park for his provincial political donation.

That means the money Jim gets back from his provincial political donation, like Sally’s at the federal level, is three times larger than what he gets back for donating to charity.

On what sane planet should both the feds and Queen’s Park be giving out tax credits for political donations so much more generous than tax credits for making donations to charity?

Making a terminally ill child’s wishes come true should be valued more than helping politicians pay for political attack ads.

Canada’s provincial and federal governments should take funds that go toward tax credits for political donations and reallocate them to tax credits for charitable donations. Credits for political donations should be scrapped.

Tax credits exist to try to encourage behaviour. The whole idea behind it is that if you give folks a bit of a financial incentive to make a donation, they’ll be more likely to do so.

That makes sense when it comes to charities. It’s a worthy policy goal to have a tax credit in place to encourage Canadians to make donations to organizations that work to make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.

But why should taxpayers be incentivizing donations to political parties? Why encourage Canadians to shell out money that will end up paying for leaflets, lawn signs and attack ads?

Some try to justify the tax credit regime by arguing that because political parties can’t take corporate or union donations, they need help encouraging individuals to make donations.

But ask anyone on the street, and they’ll tell you it’s charitable donations, not political ones, that should be encouraged.

If political parties can’t raise as much money without the tax credit, they should just spend less money. No one is going to shed tears over seeing fewer attack ads on television.

The sole goal of a political party is to get themselves elected. Why should they get credits of up to 75 per cent while charitable donations get trivial treatment?

It’s time to stop treating political parties like charities on steroids. That means putting political donation tax credits on the chopping block. Instead, the same money can and should be used to supersize tax credits for charitable donations.

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

“We see a pattern of not following legislation, a pattern of not following regulation, and frankly we can’t just continue to do education to those folks if they’re directly repeating stuff that we’ve brought to their attention”

Ontario euthanasia regulators have reportedly tracked 428 cases of potential legal violations, but failed to refer a single case to law enforcement. 

According to leaked information published November 11 by The New Atlantis, the Ontario Office of the Chief Coroner has counted 428 cases of non-compliance with Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) regulations since 2017, “ranging from broken safeguards to patients who were euthanized who may not have been capable of consent.”

“We see a pattern of not following legislation, a pattern of not following regulation, and frankly we can’t just continue to do education to those folks if they’re directly repeating stuff that we’ve brought to their attention,” Dirk Huyer, head of Ontario Office of the Chief Coroner, said in the documents.  

When MAiD was first introduced in 2016, it was initially only available to those who were terminally ill, and those killing the patients had to follow a series of steps before administering the lethal drugs. Later, in 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government expanded the deadly practice to be available to those who are not at risk of death but who suffer solely from chronic illness.  

The New Atlantis’ report cites documentation from 2018 which shows that Huyer, despite admitting regulations are routinely ignored, still stood by the MAiD regime, attesting  that “[e]very case is reported. Everybody has scrutiny on all of these cases. From an oversight point of view, trying to understand when it happens and how it happens, we’re probably the most robust in Canada.”  

However, in the summer of 2017, just a year after MAiD was legalized, Huyer co-authored a paper which talked about the high rate of non-compliance among euthanasia providers, a trend that only seems to have continued.

“The MAID regulations require clinicians to notify the pharmacist of the purpose of the MAID medications before they are dispensed,” the paper noted, adding that only 61% of the physicians followed the rule. 

Additionally, many physicians disregarded the 10-day waiting period between requesting MAiD and receiving the drug. Doctors argued that they expedited the process due to “persistent requests” or an “inconvenient timing of the death in relation to other familial life events.” 

By 2018, the problem had developed into what Huyer described as “a pattern of not following legislation,” causing him to implement a new system “to respond to concerns that arise about potential compliance issues.” 

But in 2023, his office raised concerns for a quarter of all euthanasia “providers” in Ontario. Concerns included offering MAiD to dementia patients and those with cognitive impairment.

In 2023 alone, the office found 178 compliance problems, an average of one every second day. Now, the total number of compliance issues sits at 428. 

While the first cases of non-compliance were brought to light in 2017, the police have never been contacted according to The New Atlantis. In fact, the numbers are rarely made public, and when they are it is often through the quiet publishing of data in obscure reports.   

As for the MAiD providers who failed to follow the regulations, instead of being reported to police by regulators, they received an “informal conversation” or an “educational” or “notice” email.   

As disappointing as it is that euthanasia providers’ disregard of patients had little to no consequences, it is in keeping with the culture of death created by legalizing MAiD in the first place.  

Since there can be no such thing as “moral” euthanasia, it comes as little surprise to pro-lifers that regulations are not followed. Indeed, in July, euthanasia provider and abortionist Ellen Wiebe  enthusiastically revealed that she has killed over 400 patients under Canada’s permissive regime, a statement that drew international headlines with people concerned about the seeming nonchalant treatment of human life.  

However, there are some doctors who have realized the dangers of MAiD and have questioned the morality of the practice, at least in certain cases, with some physicians noting that many patients  choosing euthanasia are doing so principally because they are impoverished or lonely.

The most recent reports show that MAiD is the sixth highest cause of death in Canada. However, it was not listed as such in Statistics Canada’s top 10 leading causes of death from 2019 to 2022.    

When asked why MAiD was left off the list, the agency said that it records the illnesses that led Canadians to choose to end their lives via euthanasia, not the actual cause of death, as the primary cause of death.  

According to Health Canada, in 2022, 13,241 Canadians died by MAiD lethal injections. This accounts for 4.1 percent of all deaths in the country for that year, a 31.2 percent increase from 2021.