the blog quebecois

MADD Canada has been in the news of late:

Mothers Against Drunk Driving has stopped fundraising efforts at a time when holiday merrymaking means more intoxicated drivers are on the roads.

The organization's efforts have been put on hold following an investigative report by the Toronto Star that claimed just 19 cents from every dollar raised actually goes to victim services and fighting drunk driving.

The report alleges that the majority of donations go to professional telemarketers and people who go door-to-door raising money for the charitable organization.

But Andrew Murie, MADD Canada's CEO, has called the article misleading and said 83.6 per cent of donor money is used on MADD Canada programs.

I don't know if there's any significance to it, but organizations formed to combat drug and alcohol abuse tend to perform poorly in the eyes of charity oversight groups. The American Institute of Philanthropy gives its "A" status to none of them. The Charity Navigator awards MADD's US parent foundation an overall rating of 47.60 (out of 100]; HOPE International and The American Jewish Committee, to choose two others at random, scored 60.68 and 62.54 respectively.

As Steve Janke pointed out a few days ago, single-issue pressure groups inevitably succumb to a sort of drift, in which the original focus gives way to institutional survival.

There's another potential hazard ahead for MADD; namely, its future as a registered charity. I doubt that politicians have any appetite for reviewing it, but bureaucrats are another matter. In 1989 they stripped Greenpeace Canada of its tax-free status on the grounds that it was engaging in too much political lobbying. The rules are somewhat vague and subject to interpretation -- just the way they like it:

The Income Tax Act allows a registered charitable organization or foundation to devote no more than 10% of its resources to political activities so long as the activities are "ancillary and incidental" to the organization’s charitable purposes or activities.

Certainly MADD does seem to devote a lot of time and money pushing for political and legal changes, from installing ignition interlock devices on offenders' cars (and eventually on all cars); to lowering the current 0.08 blood-alcohol limit to 0.05 (the efficacy of which is strongly disputed by the Canada Safety Council ); to increasing taxes on alcohol. It was a major lobbyist behind the government's recent legislation concerning drugs and driving.

MADD would argue that its expensive and slick advertising campaign, which rolls out like clockwork at this time each year, is intended to "educate" the public; yet it is intended to "educate" politicians as well. Does all this cross the line into political activity? I suppose Revenue Canada will be the ultimate judge of that.

You know, for people who insist that they're not wild-eyed neo-prohibitionist zealots, as MADD frequently does . . . ya coulda fooled me:

Egged on by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority is thinking about banning alcohol from commuter trains on the Metro-North and Long Island railroads. "Times have changed and drunk driving is a major concern," says MTA board member Mitch Pally. "People get off the railroad and they get into cars," says Deena Cohen, president of MADD's Long Island chapter. "Somebody is going to get killed."

People also get off airplanes and get into cars, attend sporting events and get into cars, go to rock concerts and get into cars, eat at restaurants and get into cars, and leave bars and get into cars. As a result, somebody is going to get killed. Does that mean alcohol should be banned from all of these places as well?

To further follow the logic, people drink at home and then get into cars. So obviously that's got to stop, too.

I'm sure the WCTU would approve.