OTTAWA — Canada’s largest charitable foundation has dramatically increased the amount of money it gives away, following The Logic’s investigation into the rules that govern charitable disbursements and the exceptions the Canada Revenue Agency makes to those rules.

But the federal Liberals have put off promised moves to raise the annual “disbursement quota” for charity foundations, which currently requires them to give out 3.5 per cent of their holdings (averaged over two years), and to make the exceptions some foundations get more transparent.

According to its newly filed financial statements for 2021, the Mastercard Foundation gave out just under US$1.4 billion last year. That’s 4.4 per cent of the foundation’s stated net assets of nearly US$31.5 billion at the end of 2020.

(The official calculation uses more finely detailed figures but not vastly different ones. Also, although it’s based in Canada, the financial giant’s global foundation reports its figures in U.S. dollars.)

It’s a sharp increase from the US$887 million the foundation disbursed in 2020, the US$302 million it disbursed in 2019 and the US$266 million it disbursed in 2018.

The Mastercard Foundation has had the benefit of a special arrangement with CRA for 15 years, allowing it to spend less than the quota in some years as long as it spends more than the quota in others to make up the shortfalls. That deal ended in 2021.

“The Mastercard Foundation fulfilled its disbursement requirements in 2021 and will continue to do so going forward,” wrote Don Kelly, the Mastercard Foundation’s lead for public affairs and communications in Canada, in an email to The Logic.

In June 2021, the foundation pledged US$1.3 billion for COVID-19 vaccination efforts in Africa. Kelly wrote that among the largest recipients of Mastercard Foundation funding were universities, UN agencies and non-governmental organizations.

According to its financial statement, it’s pledged about US$1.2 billion for similar programs in 2022 “to save the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in Africa and hasten the economic recovery of the continent,” followed by US$548 million in 2023 and US$335 million in 2024.

“This is generally good news,” Kate Bahen told The Logic. The managing director of the charities watchdog Charity Intelligence Canada has previously called the disbursement deferrals “taking a loan out on the charitable sector”—essentially, the charitable component of a global financial powerhouse borrowing money from charities.

By her calculation, the Mastercard Foundation has caught up on its payments and then some.

She continues to take issue with the foundation’s practice of discounting the value of its holdings of Mastercard Inc. shares, which are practically its only assets—by 19 per cent in 2021. Mastercard transferred the shares to the foundation with the condition that they can only be sold if the money is used for charitable purposes, not to buy other things. So the foundation asserts they’re worth less than face value. A CRA spokesperson told The Logic it could take several days to explain whether and how it scrutinizes such claims.

All of this is under the legal terms that have applied to charities for years. In the 2022 budget, the federal Liberals promised significant changes: first, to raise the disbursement quota from 3.5 per cent to five per cent of assets for charities with more than $1 million in holdings; and second, to make deals like the one the Mastercard Foundation had for 15 years more transparent.

The CRA could still grant exceptions, but “Budget 2022 proposes to allow the agency to publicly disclose information relating to such a decision,” the document said.

Not yet, though. The promises in the government’s budget need to be put into formal laws and regulations before they become reality. These were not in the Liberals’ Budget Implementation Act, known as Bill C-19, which got royal assent on June 23 after the Senate passed it.

The terms for a much-anticipated tax credit for capturing and storing carbon dioxide were also promised in the budget and likewise were not in Bill C-19. Federal officials have said a second budget implementation act may come in the fall.