Nov. 19, 2006: 4

Charity and Foundations: creating philanthropic beachheads in Canada

Charitable Foundations have been in the news lately.

Li takes world view with his CIBC fortune -- When Li Ka-shing sold $1.2-billion worth of stock in Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce last year, he made headlines by announcing plans to set up a Canadian charitable foundation. ... , By Paul Waldie, Saturday, November 4, 2006, Page B3

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story
/LAC.20061104.RCHARITY04/TPStory/Business

Charity and Foundations: creating philanthropic beachheads in Canada

February-April 2005 Global Giving Round-Up

www.synergos.org/globalgivingmatters
/briefs/0503roundup.htm

Hong Kong businessman creates philanthropic beachhead in Canada

Li Ka Shing of Hong Kong, long an influential donor in Asia, is establishing a major philanthropic base in Canada. Li, who has already given more than US$800 million to Hong Kong charitable causes, will create the Li Ka Shing Canada Foundation with proceeds from the sale of his 4.9 percent stake in the Canada Bank of Commerce. The sale is expected to yield approximately $1 billion. The new Canadian foundation will address a broad, but as yet unspecified range of causes. .... as chairman of the Cheung Kong Group of Companies, which includes Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., .... with a fortune estimated at more than $12 billion. ....

In establishing what could be one of Canada's two largest foundations, Li said he was recognizing the "warm welcome Canada has extended to me and to our group of companies over the years." (Association of Fundraising Professionals Release, January 24, 2005; Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2005)

Aga Khan honored for bridging gap between Islamic and western cultures

His Highness the Aga Khan was awarded the National Building Museum's Vincent Scully Prize .... the Aga Khan said he would donate the $25,000 Scully Prize money, together with a matching gift of his own, to support architectural students from developing countries studying at Harvard, Yale and MIT.

At a ceremony in Delhi in December, the Aga Khan presented the 2004 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, which carries a prize fund of $500,000, to recipients from Egypt, Burkina Faso, Yemen, Jerusalem, Turkey, and Kuala Lumpur. One of the recipients, Iranian architect Nader Khalili, ....

The award is administered by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, part of the Aga Khan Development Network (www.akdn.org), a group of private development agencies ....

Note the word "private" ... "the Aga Khan Development Network (www.akdn.org), a group of private development agencies". In Canada, I believe it is known as the Aga Khan Foundation Canada (AKFC).

So why are Canadians contributing tax dollars to his Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa? I realize that question falls into the politically incorrect realm of questions one is not supposed to ask in Canada. Well, I'm asking ... again ... still.

Do people with money have only to enter Canada for doors to political networks and connections to open for them ... doors that remain closed to the hoi polloi, the ones who actually work here and pay into what government(s) have give to a non-Canadian's foundation? Or am I missing something about charity, globalized charity? Foundation charity? Someone, enlighten this member of the ordinary citizenry,