Can and should Statistics Canada continue to track the economic impact of this sector?
GSS: What [Statistics Canada] has done is really quite revolutionary and puts Canada way at the forefront. They created what is called a ‘satellite account’ to measure the economic value of the nonprofit and charitable sector. For the first time, they have actually attributed an economic value to volunteer hours. It is a unique feature right now in Canada, and worldwide. We are way ahead of many other countries in the way that we measure, but the point is that we have not attributed the value of volunteer hours within a corporation. We have started to evolve the methodology to do that. There is important data in [the satellite account] and, for the first time ever, it is segmented by size of organization, which I think is extremely helpful. It is very powerful information, and it’s very striking that the higher up you go in size of organization, the more government money they get. The smaller the organization, the less government money and the more they rely on private philanthropy. CV