December 2001
Co-opting Voluntary Service: Canada's State-Sponsored Version of Civil Society
by Sylvia LeRoy & Barry Cooper
When the weight of almost $600 billion of debt finally forced the Canadian federal government to curb its spending during the 1990s, it appeared that the state might finally be in retreat. As budgets were cut, politicians and activists on both the left and the right began looking to the voluntary sector (made up of non-profit organizations such as interest groups, clubs, churches, and charities) to assume more of their traditional responsibilities for the provision of health, welfare, and other social services.
These voluntary organizations are frequently equated with "civil society," a private sphere devoted to public good that exists independently of both government and the market. But civil society encompasses far more than the non-profit sector's mediating institutions. It is predicated on the sovereignty of the individual and the existence of social capital, both of which promote cooperation and trust among individuals (see Fukuyama, 1999). Preceding (and giving legitimacy to) the state, civil society describes the propensity towards voluntarism.
Rather than allowing the organizations that contribute to civil society to flourish by themselves, however, the federal government responded with its own initiative. Building on the work of the 1999 Panel on Accountability and Governance in the Voluntary Sector (the Broadbent Panel), the $96.5 million Voluntary Sector Initiative (VSI) proposes to change the relationship between the state and the voluntary sector.1 Announced in June 2000, the VSI promises to "strengthen the capacity of the voluntary sector" by improving federal funding arrangements, relaxing the rules preventing charities from engaging in political advocacy, and increasing the ability of non-governmental agencies (NGOs) to influence government policy.
This is by no means the first time the government has attempted to act as animateur sociale in order to redefine the relationship between state and society. In the 1980s, political scientist Alan Cairns used the concept of "embeddedness" to describe the interpenetration of state and society. In Cairns' account, the state is understood both as "the sum total of the programs it administers" and as an independent actor, able to stimulate social change (Cairns, 1995). But as society becomes the product of previous government action, the state becomes bound by its own past policies, and "public choice" becomes coercive.
In response to the national unity crises of the 1960s and '70s, for example, the federal government began sponsoring what were termed "social animation" programs through the Citizenship Branch of the Secretary of State. Multicultural, official language minority, and feminist advocacy groups came into being as a direct response to government funding. They were, therefore, not genuinely independent and voluntary interest groups, but depended directly on government for their existence. At the same time, they lobbied the government for more expensive and extensive social policy (see Pal, 1993). Thus, the state was said to "animate" society to lobby the state for programs thought desirable both by the state and by suitably "animated" interest groups. These initiatives were followed by the court challenges program and by special programs to assist aboriginal Canadians in their litigation (Brodie, 2001; Flanagan, 2000).
More recently, the formula has been applied to a "Community Animation Program" (CAP) co-sponsored by Health Canada and Environment Canada. Launched in 1995 as partial fulfilment of the Liberal government's Red Book commitment to environmental action, CAP provides funds to environmental NGOs and to other advocacy groups in order to bolster their research and training capacity, and to improve their lobbying effectiveness. Recent CAP grants have been used, for example, to hire a campaign director for the Prairie chapter of the Sierra Club and to fund the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) in their aggressive preservationist campaigns in Alberta (see LeRoy and Cooper, 2000).
A similar initiative inspires the Canadian Environmental Network (CEN), a coalition of about 650 environmental groups that bills its 12 affiliate offices as "the backbone of the environmental movement in Canada" (CEN, 2001). Receiving almost two thirds of their nearly $1 million budget from Environment Canada (not including CIDA contributions and contracts), CEN's mission statement is to "protect the Earth and promote ecologically sound ways of life." In pursuit of its goals, CEN's Alberta member groups collaborated with RUCKUS USA, a well-known group of protest organizers, to host and organize a protest training camp on civil disobedience in 1999.
This money trail itself disqualifies these activists from speaking as the voice of civil society's independent interests and voluntary efforts. Nonetheless, young protesters on the ramparts in Seattle or Quebec City bill their struggle as "a confrontation between civil society and corporate rule," while simultaneously demanding new public funding for their preferred social programs.
The Voluntary Sector Initiative continues what has become a Canadian tradition of state-sponsorship of civil society by promising to expand the ability of such activists to get their hands on public money. While the VSI's Joint Regulatory Table has not yet reported ($9 million has been allocated towards "dealing with" regulatory and funding issues), a previous joint initiative recommended that advocacy activities by voluntary sector organizations currently denied charitable status "are worthy of public support and should receive more support than they do now... either [through] direct funding or access to the tax system" (Canadian Centre for Philanthropy).
The distinction of charities within the non-profit sector bears further consideration. Like many interest and advocacy groups claiming to speak for civil society, most charities appear to be independent from government. However, a 1999 case study of Ontario charities found significant differences between public or quasi-governmental charities (those charities receiving 55 percent or more of their revenues from government grants) and genuine private charities (Clemens and Francis, 1999). Public charities were consistently much larger, relying on far fewer volunteers than did comparable private charities. For instance, the typical public welfare charity in Ontario has a budget almost twice as large as its private counterpart, while using volunteers only one tenth as much as paid labour. This suggests that government funding co-opts voluntary initiative while crowding out private funding. Ultimately, the publicly-funded charitable organization becomes more like the state that supports it, rather than the civil society it purports to represent.
Instead of encouraging charitable giving and volunteering as an alternative to failed social programs, the VSI seeks to transform the voluntary sector into another bureaucratic interest of the state. Of the VSI's budget, $28.5 million has been earmarked for increasing "sector involvement in departmental policy development" (SIDPD) through a series of pilot projects. Twenty-one "Round One" projects were announced last August ("Round Two" projects will be unveiled in December) including initiatives to enhance the ability of "the settlement sector" to share policy decisions with Canadian Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and to facilitate the relationship of environmental groups with Environment Canada. According to the Honourable Lucienne Robillard, the federal cabinet minister overseeing the VSI, "these projects are instrumental in building the voluntary sector's capacity to influence Government of Canada policy-making" (Government of Canada, 2001, Aug. 8.)
By promoting political advocacy, promising federal funding, and facilitating access to the policy process, the state continues to find new ways to embed itself into the fabric of civil society. But by so doing, federal subsidies for political advocacy distort the democratic process while compelling citizens to support through their taxes political positions with which they may disagree (see also Samples, Yablonski, and Osorio, 2001). In short, the VSI exemplifies a problem, not a solution: when civil society is merged by state action into political society, the government undermines the traditional autonomy of the voluntary sector and increases the dependency of its citizens, all in the guise of improvement. In turn, this indirection and mendacity undermines both social capital and government legitimacy.
Note
1 For details on the Voluntary Sector Initiative see http://www.vsi-isbc.ca.
References
Brodie, Ian (2001). "Interest Group Litigation and the Embedded State: Canada's Court Challenges Program." Canadian Journal of Political Science, 34: 357-76.
Cairns, Alan (1995). "The Embedded State: State-Society Relations in Canada Today." In Douglas E. Williams, ed. Reconfigurations: Canadian Citizenship and Constitutional Change. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
Canadian Centre for Philanthropy (1999). "Education, Advocacy and Political Activity." Supplementary Paper A for the Report of the Joint Tables. Working Together: A Government of Canada/Voluntary Sector Joint Initiative. Available electronically at http://www.vsi-isbc.ca/eng/working_groups/advocacy/ related_reading.cfm.
Canadian Environmental Network (CEN) (2001). Annual Progress Report, 2000-2001. A Presentation for Environment Canada, August.
Clemens, Jason and Johanna Francis (1999). "Public and Private Charities: Ontario as a Case Study." Fraser Forum. (June).
Flanagan, Tom (2000). First Nations? Second Thoughts. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Fukuyama, Francis (1999). Social Capital and Civil Society. Prepared for the IMF Conference on Second Generation Reforms. IMF Headquarters, Washington, DC. Nov. 8-9. Available electronically at: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/seminar/1999/reforms/fukuyama.htm.
Government of Canada, Privy Council Office, Voluntary Sector Taskforce (2001). "Government of Canada and Voluntary Sector Team Up." News Release. Aug. 8. Available at: http://www.vsi-isbc.ca/eng/news_view.cfm?id=13.
LeRoy, Sylvia and Barry Cooper (2000). Off Limits: How Radical Environmentalists are Shutting Down Canada's National Parks. Public Policy Sources, Number 45. Vancouver, BC: The Fraser Institute.
Pal, Leslie (1993). Interests of State: The Politics of Language, Multiculturalism, and Feminism in Canada. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's.
Samples, John, Christopher Yablonski and Ivan G. Osorio (2001). More Government For All: How Taxpayers Subsidize Anti-Tax Cut Advocacy. Policy Analysis No. 407. Washington, DC: The Cato Institute, July 10.
Sylvia LeRoy is a research analyst in The Fraser Institute's Calgary office. She is co-author, with Barry Cooper, of the Public Policy Source Off Limits: How Radical Environmentalists are Shutting Down Canada's National Parks.
Barry Cooper is Professor of Political Science at the University of Calgary and Director of The Fraser Institute's Calgary office.
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