Charity ends at home

In the 1990s, Statistics Canada started keeping figures on charitable giving, and noted that Newfoundland (as it then was) had the highest median charitable donations as reported at income tax time.

Newfoundlanders have never forgotten this fact.

Not even when it long ceased to be true.

Actually, technically it was never true to begin with: StatsCan has calculated the figures retroactively to 1997, and among all jurisdictions, Nunavut came out on top. Newfoundland (as it then was) was tops among the ten provinces.

However, since the late 1990s, the province has slid lower and lower in the rankings, a slide which has picked up pace since 2007. According to the latest StatsCan figures, released last week, Newfoundland and Labrador now ranks sixth among provinces for median charitable donations. Nunavut still leads the country, while Alberta leads among provinces.

The median donation figure in Newfoundland and Labrador has also been stagnant for the five most recent years of data, even declining slightly year over year (along with the other Atlantic provinces) in 2011.

And this, at a time of supposed unprecedented economic growth that is the envy of the entire country.

What’s up with that?

[Data source: CANSIM Table 111-0001]