by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

It’s the Big Problem. Some have scads of cash, others don’t have jack squat. So how to painlessly remove some of the cash from the rich to get it to the needy? You can’t rob the rich, not legally anyway. If you tax ’em too much, they just flock to some tax haven like the Bahamas, joining such moneyed former Montrealers as Yank Barry, Corey Hart and the Alexis Nihon family.

So you’ve got to talk the rich into handing it over.

There are two types of giving. To find out the kind you favour, answer this: if you have $5 to give, do you donate it to a food bank or a university?

The charitable giver chooses the food bank. The philanthropist chooses the school. Here’s why: “Philanthropy always addresses the root of a problem. If there’s poverty in the community, a philanthropist doesn’t create soup kitchens, he tries to address why there’s poverty,” says Soma Hewa, an academic who moved here from Calgary to advance the cause of philanthropy. “If you’re a philanthropist, you want to promote education, because by doing that you promote people’s ability to get a job.”

Charity is a short-term emotional response to poverty favoured by Catholicism. Philanthropy is a Protestant, rational approach to poverty. As Quebec has serious Catholic traditions, philanthropy has a lot of catching up to do. Hewa dismisses statistics indicating that Quebecers give less to charity than citizens of any other province. He says that our welfare state and the proliferation of such institutions as food banks prove that Quebec is actually the most charity-oriented province.

The problem with charity is that, while it might alleviate the discomfort or guilt we feel when faced by the poor, it doesn’t do much to solve poverty. Philanthropy, however, seeks to empower the poor through giving them the means to escape squalor.

As a bonus, philanthropists are ordered to be indifferent to beggars—even the one with the floppy stump you see lying around shirtless on Ste-Catherine. The Calvinist, reformist thinking behind philanthropy forbids you from weeping for the wretched. “Protestant doctrine states that your place on this Earth is a choice made by the inexorable power of God, so you cannot question that decision by showing emotional attachment to a fellow individual,” explains Hewa. The Protestant approach to humane compassion is to “build the kingdom of heaven on Earth, to dedicate all your activities to greater glory of society, not an individual or an institution,” he says.

Philanthropic giving gained speed a century ago, thanks to big money givers named Carnegie, Rockefeller and Rhodes, who also employed it as a capitalist plot to keep government down. “Foundations started to keep the government Big Brother out of public affairs, and indeed philanthropy is an integral part of capitalism,” says Hewa, who believes the creed will grow fast as the planet continues towards unfettered capitalism following the decline of communism.

The true philanthropist rejects the concept of intergenerational inheritances. “The idea is that, if you leave money to your kids you’re putting a curse on them,” says Hewa. “The parents’ responsibility should be to give children the best means to earn money.” Hewa points out that inheritances have wreaked havoc on the family empires behind such companies as McCain’s, Provigo and U-Haul.

Hewa, who’s organizing a major conference on philanthropy here next June, says that Bill Gates and his Richest Man title are particularly distasteful to those of the philanthropic creed. “I find it hard to accept his philosophy of enjoying being the richest man in the world. There’s a difference between the morally bankrupt rich and the morally rich capitalist,” says Hewa. Gates violates the Protestant obsession with discretion that stems from the reformist notion that, Hewa says, “You don’t do things to promote yourself, you do things to promote the greater glory of the Lord.”

Like a modern Robin Hood, Hewa will keep promoting the distribution of wealth, armed with persuasion and hopefully handing out sustainable wealth for the poor. :

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca