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Matthew Lau: Government spending squeezes out charitable giving, and that’s bad

As government social spending rises, private giving becomes rarer. But private charities can do things governments can't

A study last week from the Fraser Institute shows that as government social spending has risen in Canada over the decades, private charitable giving has fallen. In 1961, government social benefit spending was 4.8 per cent of GDP; by 2025 it was more than nine per cent, almost double. Over the same period, the percentage of tax filers who reported giving to charity actually rose from 24.5 per cent in 1961 to 29.6 per cent in 1990, following favourable changes in tax treatment in the 1980s, but then it fell to just 16.8 per cent by 2023.

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