Public Money not for Donations

Part of what lawyers do is participating in reforming laws to suit our changing world.  What follows is my opinion of an area that needs reform.  It won’t be popular with everyone. 

Recently, Ontario Power Generation announced a $10 Million donation to the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.  It was splayed all over the media as a good news story.   It annoys the heck out of me.

I see a line on my hydro bill where I pay an amount each month to retire the debt of the old Ontario Hydro.  OPG is one of the babies of the old Ontario Hydro. 

OPG is basically operated by public money.  If it makes a $10 million donation, we will pay for it in the cost of electricity.  Of course, the cost of electricity is regulated in Ontario.  That means one of two things:  OPG is operated at a loss (in which case it is increasing the total debt to taxpayers) or it is charging too much (in order to have an extra $10 million to make a donation). 

No matter how you look at it, you and I just made a donation to UOIT.  Are we getting a tax receipt?  I don’t think so. 

Recently, the Region of Durham committed to donate money to local hospitals.  Excuse me?  Those are my property tax dollars (which I pay after tax) that were used to make a donation and all I got was a lousy tax increase.   I thought health care was within the Province’s jurisdiction.

I’m not in favour of over-regulation, but there should be a prohibition against these kinds of things.  Any organization or legal entity that is directly or indirectly publicly funded or is meant to be not-for-profit should not be making donations to other causes (no matter how worthy) with the money that they are able to extract from their users or constituents. 

The fundraiser types will be having conniptions by this point in the column, but I don’t apologize. 

Education and health are the responsibility of the province.  If UOIT needs another $10M, then it should be distributed by the province and paid for in taxes.  OPG should not be allowed to take it upon itself to effectively tax us by making donations with our money.  We don’t elect OPG and it is not accountable to us. 

Similarly, the Region is not allowed to tax us for health care.  How then, is it getting away with using our tax dollars to fund hospitals?  It’s not like they have the extra money:  our taxes go up every year.  Even if they had the extra money, extra money only means that they overtaxed us and we should pay less the next year.

I like UOIT.  I am prepared to support it.  I don’t like being forced to.  I am prepared to pay my share of taxes.  What I am not prepared to do is to allow organizations using public money to decide where my charitable donations should go.