How increasing the disbursement quote would help charities

There are increasingly strident calls for the government to increase the so-called disbursement quota (DQ) of Canadian charitable foundations, with claims being made that the current rate is inadequate and that a substantial increase in the DQ would greatly benefit charities at a time of great need. Last week's federal budget mentioned that the government was considering such a move, but fell short of actually instituting a change.

At first, I didn't understand how this would help charities, so I did a bit of digging.

The disbursement quota is the minimum percentage of their holdings and investments that charitable foundations must release each year on their own activities and in grants to other charities. It ensures that foundation assets do not just sit there accumulating and hoarding and not being utilized for anything useful.

Since 2004, this rate has been set at 3.5% in Canada, down from the previous level of 4.5%, i.e. very little. Many charity activists believe that is should be raised to at at least 5% (the current DQ in the USA, for example) or, according to some, to as much as 8% or 10%, at least temporarily, during the strictures of the pandemic. They justify this on the grounds that the long-term earnings of investments in, for example, the S&P stock exchange has been 10%-11% over the last century or so.

Others, however, urge caution, warning that increasing the DQ and setting the quota too high might damage the long-term viability of some foundations.

It seems to me that a temporary increase would be in order and, being temporary, would not harm the long-term health of the foundations in question.

Remember those corporate executives promising to take pay cuts when the pandemic began?

When the pandemic hit, there was a lot of noise from various rich CEO and board members about how we were "all in this together", and how they were going to take a pay-cut in solidarity with all the workers they were laying off, and for the general common good.

Well, Diligent Corp, a US-based corporate governance firm, have looked at executive pay at 240 large Canadian companies over the last year, and the results are illuminating but, frankly, not surprising.

It turns out that, in spite of all the bluster, those socially responsible executives only took a 5% cut in their total pay (including stock options, etc). If you include executive pay from those companies that didn't even bother making any attempt at being "all in this together" with the rest of us, and made no pay cut announcements, that figure goes down to about 1%. That is, hardly anything at all.

So, if you thought at the time that it all sounded like content-free virtue-signalling, well, you were spot on.

How can there be a racial supremacy group in lsrael of all places?

It's difficult to believe that, in Israel of all places, there is a racial supremacy group. 

Levaha is a Jewish supremacy organization, strongly opposed to assimilation, miscegenation and, indeed, any relations between Jews and non-Jews. The group is quite active within Israel and growing. It has been blamed by many for the most recent outbreak of violence in the country, in which, of course, Palestinians are suffering much worse than Jewish Israelis.

Maybe it shouldn't surprise me. Israel is, after all, one of the most right-wing and repressive countries in the world (even if its right wing is riven by infighting), and is holding the Palestinian population in an apartheid stranglehold quite comparable to anything that South Africa was responsible for, back in the day. Notably, the younger generation in Israel is becoming even more right-wing than its elders.

It just seems surprising given the history of the Jewish people. Have they learned nothing from centuries of hate and prejudice?

The ethics of shopping in a pandemic

Interesting article in the Globe and Mail yesterday about the ethics of shopping during a pandemic. 

It's not a simple thing. Many questions pop up almost every day, like: "Do I go to a store and put myself at risk, and potentially expose others to me?"; "Should I stay at home and order online, requiring other workers and delivery people to work on my behalf?"; "Is it wrong to order from mega-companies like Amazon that I know have poor protection for workers?"; "Should I only be buying things that are essential (and what does 'essential' even mean)?"; "Is it just being selfish to shop local?"; "Is there any point in taking a particular moral stance as an individual when millions of others are not even thinking about it, and when whatever good might flow from it may be offset by other concomitant evils?"

I remember, at the start of the pandemic, we in our household were ordering all our goceries online for delivery or pick-up, until it was pointed out to me that there were people much less mobile than me who could not get delivery or pick-up spots (this was in the early days, before supermarkets honed their systems). So, I stopped ordering online and started shopping in person at smaller supermarkets whose distancing and sanitary systems I trusted.

Generally speaking, I try to avoid using Amazon where possible, having read many horror stories about how staff are treated, despite it being one of the world's richest companies owned by the world's richest man. But if I can't get hold of something any other way, I am not above using Amazon, even for nice-to-have items that are definitely not essential. So, my morals are definitely relative. And, anyway, all those Amazon warehouse and delivery workers are relying on people like me with disposable income for their jobs (such as they are), aren't they, to say nothing of those poor underpaid, over-worked labourers in Chinese factories?

Like anything to do with ethics, none of the answers are easy or clear-cut. It's no surprise that ethics have been debated for literally millennia, and we are no closer to definitive answers than the ancient Greeks were. All we can do is at least think about what we do and how it affects others, and at least try to do the right thing. It will almost certainly be a compromise to some extent, but that's OK. If everyone were to compromise a bit, the world would probably be a better place than it is.

Vancouver photo exhibit covered up: censorship or marketing ploy?

A controversial photography exhibit by internationally-acclaimed Canadian photographer Steven Shearer, part of Vancouver's annual Capture Photography Festival, was covered over last week by the billboard owner, Pattison Outdoor.

The seven large billboards along Vancouver's Arbutus Greenway showed random individuals sleeping. There was nothing risqué or pornographic or violent about the photos, but apparently some people - it's not clear how many - found them "creepy" or "disturbing", and the billboard company caputulated to the complaints and removed the photos.

This, of course, has ignited a whole wave of anguished debate and recriminations about the censorship of art, the sanctity of artistic freedom, and the removal of meaningful discussion of the pieces. 

But it seems to me that there has been probably more discussion of the exhibition since its removal than there ever was before. There have been many examples of artistic censorship over the centuries, from to Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (urinal) to D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover to the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks. All proved to be temporary bans and a product of their times, and in some respects have resulted in greater discussion (and even revenue) than their initial appearances ever generated.

Which makes me think of the old adage, "Be careful what you wish for".

Is there really a "she-cession" going on?

Canada's recent federal budget made a big noise about addressing the "she-cession" Canada has been experiencing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among other announcements in the unprecedented high-spending budget was $30 billion towards a national child-care program, specifically aimed at boosting female employment, which the government claims has been decimated by the pandemic. Quoth Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, "The closing of our schools and daycares drove women's participation in the labour force down to its lowest level in more than two decades".

But is there really any evidence that women have been hit harder  over the last year or so? After all, many professions and essential businesses in great demand at the moment (e.g. nursing, care workers, factory workers) are largely female dominated. 

The reason I even ask is that The Globe's Andrew Coyne disputes the existence of such a she-cession at all. Now, I rarely agree with Mr. Coyne's point of view, and I'm always suspicious of his methods and motivations, but he purports to back up his claims with statistics. 

According to him and his (undisclosed, unfortunately) sources, male unemployment peaked last May at 13.9% compared to 13.5% for women, and the latest figures show 7.3% for men and 7.6% for women (i.e. not materially different). He also notes that, while employment participation rates did fall quite dramatically last spring, the gender differences were not that notable. In fact, men's fell by 5.7% and women by just 5.5%. (Just in passing, he also points out that the government figures showing a fall in overall employment rate from 74% to 63% actually uses April 2020 (i.e. the worst point) as the latest date, whereas the actual current rate is right back up to 73%. Ah, yes statistics can be slippery things.

So, where did this idea of a she-ceasion actually come from? Well, a CBC article from early March 2021 quotes a report indicating that unemployment among women remain 5.3% below February 2020 levels, compared to 3.7% for men, a very different profile to Andrew Coyne's, and it points to job losses in the food services and accommodation sectors, also women-heavy employers, which makes sense. The reoort, by the Labour Market Information Council also notes that employment for women in low-earning occupations is 14% down from pre-pandemic levels (compared to 12% for men), whereas high-earning jobs for both genders have largely recovered. 

A recent Royal Bank report also concluded that there has been a three-fold increase in the  number of women considered long-term unemoloyed, with an additional 200,000 women out of work for at least six months and ever-decreasing chances of getting back into the workforce. Low-earning women in particular have been hard hit, with a 30% reduction in employment compared to 24% for men in the same income bracket. Also, according to the report, nearly 100,000 Canadian women have left the workforce permanently since the pandemic struck, more than ten times more than men.

So, who do I believe, the disaffected, curmudgeonly Andrew Coyne, or the Labour Market Information Council and the Royal Bank of Canada? Hmm, let me see...

The 2021 Carbon Clean200 list

If you are interested in such things, you've probably read many articles and reports on which companies are the greenest, which are guilty of greenwashing, etc. Well, as reported in this month's Corporate Knights, here's another one, with a slightly different focus.

The Carbon Clean 200 list is compiled by Corporate Knights and California not-for-profit As You Sow, and it ranks the top 200 clean companies, out of a global pool of 8,000 large publicly-listed companies, based on their total "clean" (i.e. socially and environmemtally responsible) revenues. It's a bit of a fraught calculation, but may give people a good idea of where to put some of their investment money, especially given that many so-called green investment funds and indexes are actually pretty unreliable.

Anyway, for what it's worth, Google parent company Alphabet Inc tops the list again this year with a huge US$135 billion in clean revenue in 2019 (accounting for 83% of its total revenues), followed by German industrial giant Siemens (US$56 billion, 44% of total revenues), Taiwan IT firm TSMC (US$46 billion, almost 61% clean), Germany's SAP (US$34 billion, almost 84% clean), and Spanish electrical utility Iberdrola (US$32 billion, about 62% clean). Tesla placed ninth, if you are imterested. The top-placed Canadian companies were Canadian National Railway Co and Canadian Pacific Railway Co (Nos. 35 and 62 respectively), followed by Bombardier (80), Cascades (86), Canadian Solar Inc (105), and Telus (167).

The top 200 companies represent thirty different countries, of which the USA accounts for 46, Japan 26, China 17, France 15, Germany 8 and Canada 8. On average, about 40% of the revenues of the top 200 companies are classified as "clean" (with the majority of other revenues classified as neutral), compared to about 8% for the other companies.

So, nevet let it be said that there is nowhere worthwhile to park your investment money.

Derek Chauvin guilty on all counts, great - but why on more than one count?

In case you missed it, Derek Chauvin has been found guilty on all counts for the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Justice has, belatedly been served, or at least a measure of police accountability, and worldwide demonstrations and riots have been averted.

But am I the only one left wondering how someone can be found guilty of second degree unintentional murder, third degree murder, AND second degree manslaughter? Wouldn't it be one or the other? How does that work?

CNN has done its best to explain what these different charges actually mean, interpreting the complicated legal jargon involved. But it's still not clear to me why all three of them apply to the same person committing the same act.

ABC News does a similar analysis, but also notes that each charge carries a different maximum sentence (40 years for second degree murder, 26 years for third degree murder, and 10 years for second degree manslaughter), even if, in practice, in Minnesota, sentences of 12½ years for each murder charge and 4 years for manslaughter are more normal. But the point is that he will only actually be sentenced for one charge, the most grievous one.

So that, I guess is the salient point: more than one charge is brought so that, even if the worst one fails, there are others there to backstop it. In practice, then, Chauvin will be sentenced based on the strongest charge on which he was comvicted, second degree murder.

What a Byzantine beast the law is!