Six most generous nations: Canada #3

Yay for us.

This actually means our gov't is generous with taxpayers money rather than private individuals giving money to charities. The Americans still lead Canadians when it comes to giving out of their own pocket to charities. In Canada most people think if there's a problem(poverty/homelessness/natural disasters) the government will take care of it and we needn't bother.

I have never thought that? My family always donates themselves to charity, infact I don't know anybody that thinks the Canadian government is compentant enough to do it themselves. This article is news to me.

I think I could agree with that one, the government (as well as the people) of Canada tend to treat the CF like charity workers.

Really, the difference between an average of 55 (USA) and 56 (Canada) is relatively negligible.

I have no problem with our government helping out those less fortunate.

It's a reflection on Canadians in general and I'd far rather see our tax dollars go to helping out those less fortunate than on corporate welfare or on the creation and maintenance of a massive military establishment(the US is far ahead of us in both those areas).

Anyways, if the government didn't have programs to give funding to charities (usually programs that match private donations), then it would need to create a bureaucracy to deal with those issues as well.

Thank you. For some reason the rest of the world only counts charity done under the auspices of government. The US government has always done little in the way of charity because the American people already do the job quite well, thank you.

Some of us also support non-tax deductible (and not reported) foreign charities and non-profits. Not to toot my own horn here, but what I give to the Canadian Legion, the Red Crescent in Indonesia, Romanian State Orphanages, or CKA has never been tax deductible for me. And I am certain that I am not unique in this.

Just where do you think the money the govt is giving comes from in the first place?

I don't see the Americans taking care of poverty/homelessness any better than we do, in fact worse.

My congrats people

Statistically, the deviation between the two numbers falls well within the range of error anyways, with the smallest in the entire study being +/- 2.6% for India and the highest being + / - 5.6% for Lithuania. . So bootslegga is right -- the results are negligible, and would be if the two countries were 5.2% apart at the very least. Reading the results from the study here, at least the top 7 countries were within Canada's degree of error alone. Sorry if I'm being a buzzkill. Here's the (Warning, PFD) to the report this journalist likely got -- the word "error" could not be found in it.

However, there is a significant difference between the front runners (especially the top 10 or so) and many other countries, so I'm quite happy that we're that high up -- it reflects well on Canada and what I would think many of us believe to be part of the core identity of Canadians. A nice break to the generally more downcast monotony that is the daily news.

Individual Americans reported 223 billion in donations on their taxes in 2009.

Individual Canadians reported 8.9 billion in donations on their taxes in 2009.

There are 307,006,550 Americans as reported in 2009.

There are 33,311,400 Canadians as reported in 2008 we are currently in the process of a new census.

So doing the math.

For the Americans $726.37 per person. Honestly much higher then I would have thought. I'm betting though that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have much to blame here and I applaud them for it


For the Canadians $267.18 per person. About what I would have expected.

I would have to say that the recent billionaire challenge posed by some of the higher earners in the states is working like a charm. Well done guys.

If you do the math you'll find that the billionaires account for a modest fraction of the donations in the USA.

Also, do be sure to separate what the billionaires have pledged in a given year from what they actually give in a given year.

Just where do you think the money the govt is giving comes from in the first place?

I don't see the Americans taking care of poverty/homelessness any better than we do, in fact worse.
Canadian tax payers have zero say how and where their money is spent. People who pay from their own pockets to private charities are making a concious descision on where the money goes. I'm sorry but the American people tend to give more from their own pocket than the average Canadian does. I've already said it once and I'll say it again because you missed it. In Canada, individuals tend to give less because they think the government will take care of it.

What are they basing that on ? The 40 bucks we collected for Pakistan?

Here's the rest of the list if you're interested.

The top 21 most generous countries, in order, are:

1. Australia
1. New Zealand
3. Ireland
3. Canada
5. Switzerland
5. United States
7. Netherlands
8. Britain
8. Sri Lanka
10 Austria
11. Lao People’s Democratic Republic
11. Sierra Leone
13. Malta
14. Iceland
14. Turkmenistan
16. Guyana
16. Qatar
18. Hong Kong
18. Germany
18. Denmark
18. Guinea

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/ ... ?src=busln

What I found interesting was that Laos was ranked higher than Germany or Denmark and Qatar was the only one of the Oil rich middle eastern states that made the list.