Barbara Grantham, President & CEO, Care Canada, joins the Hon. Lisa Raitt to discuss the importance of the charitable sector to the overall growth of our economy, Giving Tuesday, and the role of multi-lateral organizations and NGOs supporting immediate humanitarian relief and long-term development work.
Lisa Raitt: Lisa Raitt: Thank you for tuning in to The Raitt Stuff. I’m your host Lisa Raitt, former cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s government from 2008 to 2015. I’m here now at CIBC Capital Markets and in this podcast, I’m going to share insights on current hot topics in the areas of public policy, politics and business with some guests along the way. Welcome back to the Raitt Stuff, everybody. One of the things that I’ve noticed a lot having moved to the private sector and moved into corporate life is the fact that people are very charitable. There’s a lot of folks who have done well in their life and have decided to give back to charity to give their time to charitable boards. And it’s a whole area that I really didn’t have a lot of exposure to when I was a member of Parliament, and I’m grateful for the colleagues who give give deeply and for our clients who give and give deeply as well, not just through their companies, but through their through their own personal means. So I thought today we would have a discussion with somebody who I greatly admire, who has worked in the charitable space for. I’m not going to say a long period of time, but she has great experience in this space. Her name is Barbara Grantham and she is the president and CEO of Care Canada. And to give you full disclosure, I sit on the Board of Care Canada, and that’s why I thought Barbara would be the great person to come on to talk to us about the charitable sector and the importance of it to our economy in general.
Barbara Grantham: Good morning, Barbara. Good morning, Lisa. It’s really a pleasure to be here and you can say I’ve been in the sector a long time. Nobody can see me. So you can say that.
Lisa Raitt: Its okay, I know. I appreciate that. So I think where I’d like to start, Barbara is one thing that has struck me, which is the fact I’m becoming more and more aware of the importance of the charitable sector to overall economic growth in our country. And perhaps that was brought into stark relief after we’ve just gone through the pandemic and what happened when basically companies closed down service companies weren’t able to serve and what happened to their employees? So give us a little bit, I guess, of an understanding of how important the charitable sector is to our overall economy.
Barbara Grantham: Sure. It’s interesting that you say that because I think there’s still kind of an image or a perception in some people’s mind that, you know, we talk about the charitable sector. We’re talking about bingo and church basements and bake sales at after school and cake walks. And we’re not talking about a cake walk. We’re talking about a sector that is responsible for just under 10 percent of the GDP in this country. It’s a sector that employs over two and a half million people in this country, which is about 12 percent of the economically active people who are engaged in the labour force. So if you just think of 10 people that you know, one of them is employed in this sector for a charitable organisation, it may be in a professional role like providing mental health services or educational services, humanitarian work. Or it might be in a more administrative role, but the sector is different than the private sector or the public sector in two regards. One is it’s incredibly important to the overall value proposition of the sector and frankly, to the engine that we provide to that economy. The people give their time like you do so generously to care. And about over 40 percent of Canadians volunteer some form of their time through the course of a year to a charity, and over $14 billion a year is given by Canadians to charitable organisations over the course of the year as well. So it’s a huge economic driver in this country, and as you said, I think for some people it became really visible through this pandemic, where mental health services for the first time were really appreciated and understood as being critically important. Child care was important to the economy and to women being able to work. So it’s it’s a driver.
Lisa Raitt: and you have worked in the past with community foundations, and I think you do some work with community foundations and I sit on my local community foundation. Yeah. And when the government made the decision that they had to get money into the hands of folks who were hurting because of the pandemic, that they went through these community foundations and pushed it out the door, that was a very interesting way of partnering up with a sector that you’re used to those partnerships through, I guess, Global Affairs Canada with the work you do overseas. But this happened locally. Any thoughts on that?
Barbara Grantham: Yeah. Again, there’s a whole infrastructure there to the sector that’s quite invisible to people who aren’t engaged, either as a board member like you or in a staff role like me. And so those funds needed to get to front line organisations really quickly. The most efficient way to do that was to do it within the the structures of those what we call intermediary organisations really fast. So United Ways and community foundations both have strong existing pipelines to the charities in their community. They’re already granting and and providing funding to them. They have the financial channels and they know which ones are on the front lines doing the work. So it’s actually a really good decision by the federal government to move the money through community foundations of Canada and United Way of Canada down to those local entities like the Milton Community Foundation, Toronto Foundation, Vancouver Foundation and the same invasive united ways across the country made really good sense.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah. Now CIBC, of course, is always involved with Run for the Cure, which is for breast cancer breast cancer awareness and have had a long time relationship with them. And a lot of people, when they think of charity, they think of those kinds of charities, either for breast cancer or for Alzheimer’s or for prostate cancer, all those kinds of things. But what Care Canada does is something that is a little bit different in terms of how you are actually part of the apparatus of Canadian foreign policy and how we interact in international development around the world. So can you give us an insight into that specific part of the charitable sector and not only you, but including the other big charities that also work in this space and help Canada serve the needs that they see internationally?
Barbara Grantham: Well, again, it’s one of those examples, I think where you see, you know, a disaster, for example, happen whether it’s an earthquake somewhere or a devastating flood, or it could be a conflict like we’re seeing now in any of us, could open up the paper, open up online and see any number of sort of hot spots around the world. And I can say almost without reservation that in virtually every single one of those instances, one of the large international humanitarian organisations, all of which have a Canadian base or a Canadian arm to them is active in that place. Whether it’s helping to set up food distribution systems, clean hygiene for people, shelter, all of those basic, immediate things that are needed in a humanitarian crisis, no matter what, what kind it might be. And often governments generally have two channels through which they can provide the support that you often hear cabinet ministers and other members of government announces, as you so eloquently did in your day. One is through what we call multilateral organisations. So that’s the United Nations World Food Programme. For example, they distribute a huge amount of the food overseas. Unicef distributes vaccines to children, but the international what we call NGOs, those non-governmental organisations are the other critical point of distribution, if you like. It’s not government directly giving money to governments. It’s through multilaterals and through their own domestic branches of those large international organisations that have operations on the ground, so care. Like many of our peers, we work in about a hundred countries around the world. In any given year, we reach millions and millions of people, whether it’s through that short term immediate humanitarian relief or the long term development work of helping some of these countries and communities to rebuild and to move through the climate crisis, to move through a conflict crisis, to move through the COVID crisis into a long term state of well-being for everyone to bring about that more equal world that all of us see.
Lisa Raitt: So in terms of just to make sure that we cover off other entities who are out there, Barbara, not just care, who would you say are the are the bigger players in NGOs internationally that are here in Canada that people can look at as well?
Barbara Grantham: Sure. Probably the largest grouping at the risk of potentially not pleasing everybody, but the big ones would be ourselves planning to save the children world vision, Oxfam along with care. Those would be the big ones that have a global presence and operate in most contexts around the world. And then there are hundreds. Lisa, that work in a particular geography or in a particular issue like water or with a particular population, whether it’s women or children or LGBTQ members of the community. It’s a very rich landscape of organisations.
Lisa Raitt: So yes, there are ways in which federal governments can support these. Ngos here in Canada do their work overseas, but people can also give individually to all these NGOs and and you will see lots of advertising in the next coming weeks as we move to the end of the year. But we are coming up to a very important day in the charitable sector. So we have American Thanksgiving, we have Black Friday. When everybody goes for the sales, we have Cyber Monday and now. We have something called giving Tuesday. Tell us a little bit about giving Tuesday,
Barbara Grantham: So giving Tuesday began in 2012. I guess that’s a bit of a response, frankly, to the shopping frenzy of Black Friday and Cyber Monday and a thought of could we somehow plant something in people’s minds that encourages them in the middle of that frenzy to do something good to, you know, in every instance, there’s an opportunity where you have an opportunity to do good. And so it’s not just, I guess, to put it crassly, we don’t just want shopping to be part of everyday life. We want giving to be part of everyday life. So back in 2012, nine years ago, giving your was launched, Canada was in from the very beginning, as was care. And it happens always on that Tuesday after American Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday giving Tuesday. So this year it’s Tuesday, November, the 30th, and it’s really an opening day, if I can call it that of the giving season in this country. A huge percentage of the charitable giving, not just in Canada but globally, but certainly in North America, is in the last three months of the year and in particular in the months of November in December. And so it’s really an opportunity for all of us in the charitable sector to remind our fellow citizens, as I said, that generosity should be part of everyday life too.
Lisa Raitt: No, I agree. I’m really glad that you joined us today, Barbara. Thank you so much. I know you’re super busy. I really appreciate It.
Barbara Grantham: Thank you.
Lisa Raitt: Thank you. I hope you have a great, I guess, season of giving.
Barbara Grantham: Yeah, same. I hope all of us do.
Lisa Raitt: Great talking to you. Thanks very much, and I appreciate all of your wisdom. I’m sure our clients will as well. Thanks so much for tuning in. Now, if you have any questions or comments or even requests on topics to discuss, drop me a line at lisa.raitt@cibc.com. Your interactions actually will make this better. I’m your host, Lisa Raitt, and this has been The Raitt Stuff. I’ll talk to you next week.
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Barbara Grantham
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