SECU Committee Meeting

    Colleagues, welcome to meeting number 23 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The orders of the day, of course, are that we are studying social finance as it relates to crime prevention in Canada.

    We have two witnesses with us today. We would certainly like to welcome Shawn Tupper and Kathy Thompson from the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. Kathy, of course, serves as the assistant deputy minister for the community safety and countering crime branch. Mr. Tupper is the assistant deputy minister for the emergency management and programs branch.

    It is the chair's understanding that we generally have 10 minutes for opening statements, but I believe we will have a 20-minute combined presentation, which certainly falls within the parameters of the committee's work.

    Please go ahead.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

    Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you today.

    I gather you would like to learn more about social finance and how this approach can advance crime prevention in Canada.

    I am very happy to hear that the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security wants to carry out a study on this topic, as this will help clarify the work being considered by Public Safety Canada.

    We'll begin today by providing some background information on crime prevention. Then my colleague, Shawn Tupper, will provide some information on social innovation, and we'll explore social innovation more broadly to also encompass social financing.

    The growing costs of crime and criminal justice issues concern all levels of government in Canada. Therefore, we have to ask the question whether these costs are viable, especially in the long term, and whether governments can continue to manage all the costs by themselves.

    Crime prevention is a key component of efforts to relieve the increasing pressures on the criminal justice system.

    Well-designed crime prevention and reduction interventions can have a positive influence on behaviours, and crimes can be reduced or prevented by addressing risk factors that lead to offending.

    Strategic interventions can help not only contain the growing costs of the criminal justice system, but also reduce the pressure on other sectors such as social services.

    The federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for justice and public safety confirmed this at their meeting in January 2012, when they agreed to make crime prevention and rehabilitation a joint priority in order to fight the mounting pressures on the criminal justice system and to reduce the costs of traditional crime control measures.

    Through Public Safety Canada's national crime prevention strategy, the Government of Canada is working with the provinces and territories to provide national leadership on effective and cost-efficient ways to prevent and reduce crime by addressing risk factors before a crime is committed.

    Through this strategy, Public Safety Canada seeks to acquire and share knowledge on effective crime prevention interventions in order to help decision-makers from all levels of government and communities to make informed decisions on the most appropriate preventive measures.

    This is achieved through providing time-limited funding to organizations to implement evidence-based crime prevention projects with at-risk populations, and conducting impact evaluation studies on selective projects.

    The national crime prevention strategy targets the following groups: children between 6 and 11 years old, youth between 12 and 17 years old and young adults between 18 and 24 years old with risk factors related to delinquent behaviour, aboriginal people and northern communities, as well as high-risk offenders who are no longer under the supervision of correctional services.

    The strategy focuses on priority crime issues such as youth gangs, youth violence, drug crimes, hate crimes and online bullying.

    Let me give you a few examples of projects that have managed to obtain funding through the national strategy

and that have continued to be funded post-NCPS funding.

    The national crime prevention strategy's youth gang prevention fund provided $1.9 million in funding to the Halifax Regional Municipality to implement the youth advocate program—also called YAP—in Halifax from 2008 to 2011. The focus of the program was on preventing youth in the target age of 9 to 14 years from engaging in gang-related activities and anti-social and criminal behaviours.

    Evaluation results from youth exiting the program showed decreases in conduct problems, victimization, impulsivity, and delinquency. Additionally, YAP was found to be cost-effective, with the cost per participant being significantly less than the cost of having a child in care or in custody. YAP continues to operate in Halifax, post-NCPS funding, with support from the Halifax Regional Municipality.

    En 2008 and 2011, as part of the national crime prevention strategy's youth gang prevention fund, Public Safety Canada gave $1 million to the Calgary Police Service to implement the program Youth at Risk, or YARD. That program targeted youth between 10 and 17 years old who were either gang members or likely to be involved in gang activities.

    The outcome of the evaluation, before and after the program, shows a marked improvement in young people's attitude to jobs and to family ties and communication.

    The YARD program is still running in Calgary, Alberta, and receives funding from the Ministry of Justice and the Solicitor General of Alberta.

    To achieve effective crime prevention in Canada, the implementation of the national crime prevention strategy is based on all of these elements: integrated with other programs and services; targeted on addressing risk factors; promoting the implementation of evidence-based crime prevention, which is key; focused on specific priorities; and has the potential to yield positive outcomes.

    Through the strategy, Public Safety Canada is working with all levels of government and various other non-governmental national partners and community partners, such as the crime prevention committee of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the YMCA, the Big Brother and Big Sister organizations, and so on.

    The strategy targets those most vulnerable to delinquency and tackles the main risk factors that increase the likelihood of people committing crimes.

    To address the limited resources and to obtain the maximum benefits, the strategy focuses on the most vulnerable populations—which I mentioned a few moments ago—high-risk communities and priority crime issues.

    Over the past five years, as a result of the replication, implementation and evaluation of promising crime prevention programs and models, the projects funded through the strategy have produced useful evidence-based information and data on both effective and ineffective practices in various Canadian contexts.

    Public Safety will continue to identify what works in Canada and build on Canadian-specific knowledge on the economic impacts of crime prevention programs, to create amenable conditions to facilitate the sustainability and the opportunity to ramp up effective crime prevention initiatives across the country.

    Under the national crime prevention strategy, Public Safety Canada is currently studying innovative models for working with its partners in order to prevent and reduce crime, youth crime in particular, by developing and implementing sustainable and effective practices.

    The federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for justice and public safety have agreed that crime prevention practices must be effective and we must find the means to sustain them.

    In November 2013, the ministers approved a national action plan on crime prevention, seeking to advance the sustainability of evidence-based crime prevention practices and to study social innovation mechanisms.

    Recognizing that evidence-based crime prevention programs and practices help reduce crime and victimization levels as well as related costs, the action plan reflects the need to continue to improve Canadians' knowledge of effective practices and programs.

    I will now give the floor to my colleague, Shawn Tupper.

    Thanks, Kathy.

    The Government of Canada funds and supports initiatives devoted to addressing some of Canada's most pressing social and economic challenges. These initiatives are continuously challenged by the breadth, scale, complexity, and interconnectedness of the issues they're designed to address. Decades of government interventions demonstrate that sustainable solutions to social issues cannot be undertaken by single sectors or individual organizations. As such, these issues need to be approached in ways that utilize the competencies, capabilities, and resources of multiple collaborating partners across various sectors.

    Social innovation is an increasingly popular term used to described new, innovative strategies applied to current and intractable social problems that have not been resolved successfully using traditional means. Social innovation, therefore, encourages the public, private, and community sectors to work together to mobilize or strengthen social partnerships and to leverage new ideas and sources of capital for public good with the view of generating sustainable economic and social value for Canadians.

    Governments are already implementing various interventions to prevent offending and recidivism among at-risk groups of the population. However, as in the case in the health domain, most government resources are currently spent on the curative and reactive rather than preventative and proactive approaches. Leveraging new partnerships and new sources of funding can go far in advancing effective crime prevention in Canada. For instance, a crime prevention program that has been funded by Public Safety and has proven to be successful could potentially be implemented more broadly across the country if new funding partners are secured or new networks may be created providing opportunities to expand the reach of their intervention.

    Social innovation calls for a different role for government and for alternative ways of thinking about how social change occurs and how social good can be achieved. Given that much government funding is time limited, the issue of moving from pilot interventions to self-sustaining programs quickly becomes central.

    Governments do not have the level of financial resources required to fund these programs in a long-term, sustainable way. Leveraging new partnerships that can sustain successful projects once government time-limited funding ends is key to ensuring the public safety needs of the communities we serve. Our aim is to implement effective and efficient social innovation programs that can become sustainable. For instance, social enterprises that are provided seed money by government and private sector investors would eventually become sustainable as the business thrives and revenue is reinvested in the enterprise. Our vision is that, once programs are sustainable, governments would be engaged in the role of facilitator and public educator, while providing complementary programming to promising and truly successful initiatives.

    So what are our roles when applying a new concept like social innovation to our work? Let me be clear that, when getting something new off the ground, a partnership approach is needed. The government cannot do this alone, and others need to be involved. That is why I'm happy that there is such interest from the not-for-profit sector and the private sector in working together to address social issues.

    To encourage the development of government community partnerships, Public Safety Canada is interested in fostering crime prevention projects that employ social innovation models to sustain and expand the important work that is already being done, that are attractive to potential investors, and that have demonstrated social benefit. These are the types of projects that we should aim to replicate more systematically across the country, ultimately enabling more local communities to tackle local challenges through leveraged resources with government and private or not-for-profit partners.

    The government's role in this area is to encourage and facilitate synergies and work across all levels—federal, provincial, municipal, not-for-profit organizations, and the private sector—to develop best practices. It is encouraging to see the growing interest of the private sector in financing approaches that create positive social outcomes.

    Social innovation recognizes that the government's role needs to move from doer to facilitator and that new partners must be involved in finding solutions to social problems. The government needs to support the development and implementation of social innovation and social finance tools. We need to be innovative and proactive for social finance to flourish in Canada.

    That's all of our formal presentation. There are a number of annexes as well in this deck, particularly annex 1, which will give you a sense of an offending pathway. This is a life-course analysis that was done within our department. We affectionately call it Tyler. It's a fictional character that is based on some of the prototypical offending trajectories that we see in the work that we do. Basically, what this page presents for you are four different scenarios.

     The red scenario is the scenario if there is no intervention for this individual, and this individual becomes involved with the law. Essentially, this individual between the ages of zero and 30 will cost the system $1.53 million. That is the cumulative cost of police, the courts, incarceration, and programming.

    We can look, then, if interventions occur, at points in this individual's life and the impact those interventions can have. For instance, looking at the yellow part of this chart, if an intervention is made when this individual is 15 years old, the cost of that intervention being $4,500, the impact would be to reduce the cost of that individual to the system by $500,000. We have used, in this analysis, only those interventions that have proven evidence-based outcomes, such that we have a fair degree of certainty that we understand what these impacts would be.

    If you look through, then, as we move down through the colours, the green is an intervention made for this individual at six years old. The intervention, again, costs $5,800, but the impact in getting to this child early, and avoiding a life course of association with crime, would reduce the cost of that individual to the system by $1 million.

    These are the kinds of impacts that the crime prevention program—and the kinds of investments we make in that program—can have with respect to youth who have at-risk factors in their lives. I think that's a really important thing, because it gives you a sense of the dollars and the mechanisms we have. It gives you, as well, I think, a little bit of a sense of where the savings land. Obviously, this gives you a sense of the national picture as far as the cost of policing and delivery of the criminal justice system goes, where costs are associated with provincial and territorial governments. So it's a cumulative impact that benefits both the federal and provincial and territorial governments.

    I think, Mr. Chair, that would be the end of our formal presentation. We're now available for questions.

    Thank you very much. Certainly we could simply say the intention is to demonstrate quite clearly that old analogy that an ounce of prevention is worth that pound of cure.

    The chair is delighted to see that, quite frankly, you have an obvious passion for carrying this forward, and I think that's great to be able to come before a committee.

    This is certainly an issue from which the committee can take what they wish. But certainly when we take a look at the community involvement in the entire process, whether we're talking about a Canadian Tire Jumpstart program, as an example, and/or whatever, and how it impacts all the way through, there are so many different ways we can interact at some particular stage and/or at each and every stage, but of course subject to...subject to...subject to....

    At this particular point, thank you very kindly for coming in here today. I'm certainly looking forward to some of the questions that will come from all of our colleagues, and we'll see where this study will take us.

    First up for questions is Ms. James, please.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    Welcome to both of our witnesses to the committee.

    Thank you for the general overview as well as moving into some aspects of social innovation and finance.

    The question I need to start with is with regard to NCPC. This is a program that was launched by the Conservatives in 2008, and obviously it has to do with crime prevention. But there are other aspects of that particular program, such as gathering data and so on. I'm just wondering if you could speak to the relevance of that information that's been gathered, and whether you feel we have solid information to determine whether some programs are successful and some are not.

    I think what we did in 2008 was recognize that there was a lack of Canadian data. I think up until that point we had been largely relying on data and extrapolating from data that were from American and British sources, primarily. So, I think the reconstruction of the program in 2008 was specifically designed to create Canadian data, so that we understand how interventions work in Canada, and how they work for the Canadian population.

    Certainly one of the things we have been very active on, in terms of the investments, is looking at the outcomes of those investments and doing appropriate evaluation of the program and of individual projects, so that we actually do have a much better understanding of what works in Canada. We've been able to utilize models we see produced around the world but adapt them to Canadian circumstances. In doing so, we create information for cities, communities, and social services that give them really valid and important information, allowing them to better understand how they should be spending their money.

    Thank you.

    I'm glad that we did talk a bit about the collection of data, because this program really has an expiry date. It's good for five years. After the five-year period, there may be programs out there that have been successful, but in fact, that period is over. Although we're doing crime prevention, it was also a period to gather the data to evaluate and make decisions as to what works best here in Canada.

    I want to thank you for mentioning other countries, such as Britain and the United States, that have been doing analysis on this subject. We've utilized some of that information to help us with our programs here.

    I just need to ask a question. For some of the programs that have been successful, do you think that there should be an extension of the funding for those particular programs? Then I'll ask a second question after that.

    As I mentioned in some of my remarks, that's not certainly the case in all the successful programs. In a number of the programs where we have been able to demonstrate that they have been successful, they've been able to secure continued funding through provincial, municipal, community, or other organizations largely because they've been able to demonstrate, through evidence-based studies, that they do make a difference. They've been able to secure the funding, in large part, because of the initial funding that led to that evidence.

    I know that it's important to evaluate long term whether.... Five years is not necessarily enough time, because someone could turn to a life of crime 10 years down the road. So I think it's important that we continue to collect the data.

    You mentioned a couple of programs. One was the youth gang prevention fund. It's part of the NCPC umbrella that I'm familiar with. There have been a number of announcements in and around the Scarborough area. I'm from Scarborough Centre. You mentioned, I think you said YAP, and you said it was successful. The question is, how do we know it's successful? What are the measurable targets to determine if a program is successful or not?

    I know some of the things you talked about—attitude change, and so on—but how do we know that it's actually stopping crime in the long term?

    I'll start. You can add to it, Shawn.

    In some cases, it's fewer points of contact with the criminal justice system. In other cases, it's sometimes more anecdotal in terms of reports from teachers and parents, and in terms of improved familial links in relationships. Sometimes it's a combination of both, but certainly the points where they intersect with the criminal justice system is always a key interest.

    I think, as well, we look at the risk factors that might be evident in an individual's life. If they're associating with people who are involved in crime, or if they have a family where there are issues within the family that may be crime-based or violence-based. We're looking at whether they're staying in school. Employment records are track records. What we do in these programs is measure whether people stay in school, whether they stay employed, if they're in a gang intervention program, and if they stay out of the gang.

    In my former life, I worked in IT. We had to do performance reviews, and we had measurable targets that we could actually...concrete numerical data. I mean, basically you wanted to improve on your performance. You wanted to do this and that, and after the year we could actually go back and see whether we met those targets.

     I'm trying to figure out what metrics are used to determine if a program was successful. I know you could say that teachers have said they stay in school, and so on, but what were the actual targets from the start of the project to the finish? Were there actual targets in place, and how do we know that, long term, it has actually worked?

    I think the targets would vary by the kind of program, and indeed they vary a little bit by community. We try to design these things to take advantage of the local community assets. We definitely do look at contacts with the law and either the avoidance of, or the reduction of, contact with the law. But it does matter to us in terms of looking at their participation in the program. Do they stay in the program? Do they attend every session? Are they meeting the objectives of the program?

    Some of our programs are actually school-based. They actually have curriculum that they need to work through, so it is a question of being able to measure that they're actually achieving the curriculum that's defined for them in the school. It varies by project and the type of project. We have lots of studies. If the committee wants to look at that, we can provide you with some of the evaluations that we've done of the different programs that would give you that evidence.

    Thank you very much.

    Thank you, Ms. James.

    Now, Mr. Garrison, please, you have seven minutes.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

    I'm still at a bit of a loss in terms of what we're actually studying in the committee since we didn't have any consultations about this study beforehand. I thank the two witnesses for bringing the larger context to the table, because what I find when we look at, for instance, the deck you've handed out on crime prevention and social innovation, we have 12 pages, and only the last one deals with social finance. So I'm still concerned that we've selected arbitrarily one piece of the national crime prevention strategy to look at in detail.

    I was glad to hear Ms. Thompson mention that the provinces and the federal government had agreed that rehabilitation and crime prevention were joint priorities. I'm also glad when you look at the crime prevention strategy that it says that one of its goals is to prevent future offending among vulnerable populations. I guess if I had my way we'd be talking much more about mental illness than we would be about social innovation.

    This committee just tabled a report on policing, where the evidence we heard from police was that their costs are driven primarily by mental health and addiction problems. We have a current crisis in our correctional system in accommodating people, which was identified by the Auditor General. A large number of those people are people with mental illness. I believe we actually have a crisis in the way we treat people with mental illness, who will eventually come out of prison, hopefully. Although, I have to say, I think dealing with the question of mental illness is urgent since the reports of the Correctional Investigator show that an additional 58 prisoners have committed suicide in custody since the death of Ashley Smith.

    Rather than go on about the mental illness part, I guess what I'm saying is, I think this committee would be better off spending a larger proportion of its time looking at that aspect of national crime prevention than this narrow focus on social innovation.

    I'm going to give the chair a notice of a motion:

    We won't be dealing with that notice of motion today, but it sets aside my concern. Now I'll actually ask you some questions about this narrower aspect. But, again—

    Mr. Norlock has a point of order.

    If I may, it's not a point or order, but it's just to inform the committee that this committee has done exactly that study, and not that many years ago. I know one of the researchers accompanied us, and I believe we did mental health and addiction in prisons across Canada. We went to Norway and we went to Great Britain to see their programming.

    When we do discuss the notice of motion, perhaps the chair could advise the committee when that study took place, and perhaps Mr. Garrison might make himself aware of that study and see if his motion may have already been dealt with by this committee.

    Thank you.

    Rather than getting into a discussion on this, the motion is in order. It's a substantive motion, but as such, coming before the committee, it would have to be translated. So the notice of motion—

    It's in both languages.

    It is in both languages?

    Mr. Chair, I'm fine if it's not distributed, or we deal with it further today. We can deal with it at the earliest opportunity. It's simply my way of saying I think we've selected a narrow part of what's before us.

    That's fine, but a substantive notice requires 48 hours—

    That's right.

    —and as such we will deal with this at a later time.

    That's what I was expecting.

    But it is in order and it is a substantive motion, so 48 hours.... Your notice is hereby given and it's fully understood. That will certainly come on the agenda of the committee in the due course of that time allowance.

    Thank you.

    I'm hoping I have a little time since we—

    Actually, you have about a minute, sir.

    Okay.

    In the last page on deck 12, you talk about examples of social finance mechanisms. My specific question would be this. Are you now funding projects in each of those areas, so social enterprise, social investment, pay for performance, and social impact bonds? Is the department funding projects in those areas right now?

    Right now we're exploring the viability of these kinds of approaches to funding our work. We are looking—as the first member who asked us questions—at how we can shift the way we currently do funding in NCPC toward using these kinds of mechanisms.

    Relevant to your first comment, this is less about subject matter than it is about understanding new tools for the way we can do work within our departments. All of these tools would be appropriate to apply in the context of mental health or any other kind of substantive issue. This is really about how we can leverage our resources through partnerships so we can actually find more people to come to bear in addressing the very problems that you're identifying. So our ability to work with John Howard or another organization on a mental health issue might actually be facilitated through this kind of funding mechanism.

    You do not yet have Canadian examples of these being funded at this point?

    Pay for performance would be the one across government. We're doing more on that because it's an easy way to adjust our grants and contributions programs. We've investigated the others and we're considering whether we can deploy them.

    Mr. Richards, please.

    Thanks, Mr. Chair.

    I was quite interested in some of the exchanges and some of the questions that Ms. James had been discussing back and forth with the two of you. At the end of her round of questioning, she was asking about the metrics and the measurements, and you've given some examples of some of the ways that you see yourselves measuring the success or the performance of the programs. I may have missed some of it but I was trying to make notes as best as I could.

    You had mentioned something about the number of police contacts of the participants in the programs as being one of the measurements. I'm just wondering how you get those measurements. Do you have access to CPIC? Where does that information come from and how are you able to access that information on participants to actually be able to see exactly their contacts with police? I would say that would be a measurement of crime prevention but I'm just wondering how you gather that information and what it has shown.

    In all cases in our programming, it's voluntary. Our focus is on youth so primarily we'll work with either schools, school counsellors, social service agencies or parents. What will happen is that they will identify individuals that they want to bring forward and have them participate in the program. It's based on that voluntary participation that we're able to gather evidence about them.

    In a school for instance, if we're running a program, teachers may identify kids who are having a lot of trouble with the law. So they'll be identified as participants in a program and it's from there that we'll build individual files or information about those individuals.

    I understand that. Once they've entered the program, you're obviously wanting to gauge the success of your involvement with that particular individual. Maybe I misunderstood. But I understood that you tracked their contacts with the police following their involvement in the program.

    How is that done?

    That would be done again in working with our partners. Sometimes it's with policing agencies. One of the examples that Kathy noted is that we do fund policing agencies to run some of our projects. That would be exactly the way we do it. It is with local police or with schools that would have that information.

    So it would probably be fair to say that the information you would have would be somewhat sporadic.

    It may not be complete.

    You're not able to actually measure across the entire participant spectrum. It would be where and how you can gather information about specific individuals and somewhat on a voluntary basis. Would that be a fair characterization of the measurement then in that case?

    I would say that there are data sets that are incomplete but I would say that, based on the size of our population, the statistical correctness of our approach, and the methodological correctness of our approach, we're fairly confident in understanding the results that we see for a whole program.

    Don't take it as me...I'm not trying to criticize or anything. I'm just trying to get an understanding of this, so I appreciate that.

    You also mentioned attendance at school and work, completion of the programming, obviously. There must be obviously some other metrics. Can you give me some further examples of these metrics and how they actually link back to demonstrating a successful prevention of crime?

    Obviously someone being in school is a good thing. There's no question. No one is challenging that here. But show me how you're able to link that back to measuring crime prevention in those kinds of instances.

    Just to go back to the point with respect to how we collect the metrics, I think an important point to make is that the evaluation of the program is part of the funding of the program. So It's something that's done initially at the outset. It's a condition of the funding, so the metrics are very clearly established in terms of how we are going to measure success. It's established at the outset of the project. Often the projects are community-wide projects, so while you're funding an organization.... Sometimes it's an organization that's going to work with schools, it's going to work with police, etc. So it really is very often a whole-of-community approach that's being funded.

    I'm sorry, your second question was...?

    Essentially what I'm trying to get at here is that you mentioned some things that I think are laudable goals: having someone in school, attending work, continuing to attend the program. That's great. I'm glad to hear you're measuring those things. I'm trying to get a sense of how you link that to crime prevention. In other words, those are good things that happen, but how do we know we're preventing crime? That's obviously the goal of the program. I'm using that as an example. I'm not picking on that specific....

    In some cases it's reduced risk of recidivism. We know through the metrics that are collected that they've had less intervention by the police, less contact with the police, they've stayed in school. We know that schooling helps to reduce risk factors, as does solid employment, for example. All these factors contribute, including the very metrics such as the contact with the police.

    We don't have longitudinal data, nor are we doing anything that could be construed as a longitudinal study.

    We deal with the child for two years in a program, last year and this year. We say we have success because they stayed in the program and that should reduce crime. We don't track that child for the next 10 years, so there is no hard evidence in Canada.

    We do have evidence internationally that helps us understand what these various risks mean in employment, housing, certain conditions that speak to the risk of the child. We know from available evidence from around the world that those very factors are the things you look at when you're trying to measure crime and the risk of people entering a criminal lifestyle. Again, we've only been collecting data since 2008, but we feel reasonably confident, based on our outcomes looking at international data, that we can say these methodologies work and they are reducing crime in Canada.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Richards.

     Mr. Easter, you have the floor, sir.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I thank the witnesses for their presentations.

    The national crime prevention strategy has been around for a considerable time. I had some experience with it previously, especially with youth. I think you need to be congratulated on that strategy because I think it has obtained results.

    The chart in annex 1 is intriguing. I think it shows what the potential is, but I'm somewhat on side with Mr. Garrison's question in the beginning. This study seems to be targeted at one small aspect of the national crime prevention strategy, the social finance proposal. Given the record of this government, one of the concerns we have is that this could be a way of transferring costs onto others for crime prevention, policing, and the criminal justice system. That is a worry. Increasingly in the research we have done, we're seeing cases where that can happen.

    As a U.K. ministry study stated:

    I think as this social finance bond, or whatever you want to call it, comes into play increasingly around the world, there is also evidence around the world that cost is transferred to the private sector.

    Ms. James in her questions said a number of programs have been successful. It raised the question, should they be expanded?

    Neither she nor you folks went into what those programs are. I'm wondering if Public Safety Canada has a list of those programs, any analysis of the experiences under them, and if it would be possible for you to provide a list to the committee so we can have a broader example of what programs are operating and how they are being handled.

    We certainly have a list. Basically our programs are categorized three ways. We have proven, promising, and new. Proven programs are programs that are considered to be best practices, promising are those that we think will become best practices, and new, we just don't know. They really are experimental, trying to determine whether they can deliver the kinds of results that we would look for. We have a list under each of those three headings of the kinds of things that we have been funding and we would be happy to provide that.

    Thank you.

    In one of the studies that we have looked at from the Canadian Journal of Nonprofit and Social Economy Research, they say this in terms of the challenges to government, and I'll ask you your thoughts on it. Under the section on challenges for government, they say there is a consensus in the literature that the shift to SIBs—basically a social impact bond—will not reduce bureaucracy and cut public sector costs. The costs of administrative change required by a comprehensive shift to SIBs would be significant.

    They go on from there talking about the skills that are required, etc.

    Do you have any thoughts on that in your experience so far on social finance and moving that way? Are there costs? Do we reduce bureaucracy?

    Yes, I have many thoughts about that. I've been working on—

    We've seen you smile. You must have some thoughts.

    I've been working in this area for the last eight years. Indeed I think social impact bonds are kind of the far end of the spectrum in terms of the kinds of tools that are available when one talks about social financing.

    It's a little bit the holy grail. The concept essentially being that we try to create a marketplace that would allow private sector investment into areas where there may be the possibility through investment to reduce social ills. The design of it is such that the risk to the private sector.... It's basically a venture capital sort of approach, which is they put their money on the table, if they achieve the outcome that the project is designed to achieve then government pays them back a return on their investment.

    So there is a risk to that investor. It's a well-articulated and well-understood risk. In the examples that we see around the world where other governments have experimented with social impact bonds, we have not yet seen any government launch a really theoretically pure social impact bond. All governments have actually put money forward in the front end as opposed to allowing the private sector to make that initial investment, so we've not really seen a good test of that model.

    We spent two years looking at that model, particularly in the context of public safety and have concluded that we probably could not achieve a social impact bond in the context of the criminal justice system. The primary difference between our system and the British system, where they have several of these bonds going, is simply that we have actually achieved an awful lot in the context of our criminal justice system in terms of reducing recidivism rates and being able to work with offenders in ways that other criminal justice systems have not. So they have much more spread that they can actually achieve outcomes using this kind of tool. We have a much smaller gap in terms of what we might be able to achieve through those kinds of investments. So our conclusion is that they may be a bit risky.

    Other kinds of investment tools, however, pay for performance, pooled investments, social enterprise models, trying to incent or incite small enterprises to actually find a way of commercializing some of the outcomes. Those are other mechanisms of social finance that we think are actually applicable in Canada and could have some success. There is a social finance community in Canada that is ambitiously looking at those models.

    Do I still have some time, Mr. Chair?

    Earlier on, Ms. Thompson, you talked about some of the proposals that have been in play and that were sowing some success, but the government, as I understood from your remarks, hasn't continued to fund them. But the programs have been able to secure funding either in the private sector or from provincial and municipal governments.

    That again comes back to my concerns about a transferring of costs to other areas like what we've seen happen under various governments, not just this one. A proposal is working well, the feds decide they're going to pull the program, the province or somebody else feels obligated to pick it up for a while. On those programs that you said they've been able to secure funding, do you have examples of them that you can give us on the top of your head?

    What's the federal funding been and where have they gone to continue the program?

    Very briefly, please; we can give you a chance at a further response down the road, but just briefly on Mr. Easter's time.

    Just briefly, with respect to some of those models that are funded and that get funded after, NCPC, the funding for the strategy, is very time-limited. It is up to a maximum of five years and it's non-renewable. It's really to foster evidence-based projects.

    However, in some cases, as I said earlier, because of the demonstrated success, the funding is then continued through either provincial governments, municipal governments, community organizations, or foundations. Universities in some cases are also getting together on some of these projects. The reason is that cost savings have been demonstrated.

    It's important to remember that the administration of justice falls back to the provinces, so in a lot of cases, because these initiatives have demonstrated that there is a reduced cost to the courts, to policing, to legal aid, for example, and a lot of those costs are provincial or municipal in some cases, it's in the interest of provinces and municipalities to continue the funding.

    Very specific to some initiatives.... I did provide some in my presentation, but we'd be happy to follow up and provide those in writing.

    Thank you very much, Ms. Thompson.

    Ms. Doré Lefebvre, you now have the floor.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

    Mr. Tupper and Ms. Thompson, I would like to thank you for being here with us today and for giving us an idea of what is happening at Public Safety Canada. Let me also thank you for your presentation on

social financing.

    I would like to go back to what my colleagues Mr. Garrison and Mr. Easter said about the role of social finance at Public Safety Canada. I too think it is relevant.

    You said that it was still

“the far end of the spectrum”,

    to quote Mr. Tupper who used the expression earlier. Based on your presentation, that is still a very small portion of your strategy.

    Ms. Thompson, in your presentation, you talked about the approaches and the goals of Public Safety Canada and of the public you are targeting. Your main target is youth under 18 years of age, meaning young people who are not of legal age. I thought I heard you say that Public Safety Canada was addressing youth and street gang violence. I think the approach is excellent for identifying patterns, in particular with respect to reintegration. We want to make sure that young people do not enter the vicious circle of organized crime, as we can often see.

    Following up on what Ms. Thompson said in her presentation, if I may, Mr. Chair, I would also like to introduce a notice of motion on a study that may well be undertaken by the committee. The motion reads as follows:

    I will introduce my motion in due course.

    Let me continue with my questions for the witnesses.

    Let's look at the last page where you talk about social finance definitions and mechanisms. You list four points. Are those approaches used for street gangs and people you consider are at risk and targeted by Public Safety Canada?

     We have a limited number of experiences using these because they are relatively new to the way we work, but I'll give you a hard example. Last year, the department entered into an agreement with Habitat for Humanity, where we are trying to use Habitat, whether it's on their job sites or at their rebuild stores. They have agreed to work with us and the Correctional Service of Canada to give employment to offenders so that they have one of the most important factors that leads to successful outcomes once they're out of prison.

    We launched that last year at a national level where we will work with Habitat to see them offer employment opportunities. It required very little funding from the federal government, and frankly, the big aspect for us is ensuring that we have that partnership such that they can identify individuals to participate in their programs.

    Another area that we're working on with the John Howard Society is, again, looking at small business enterprises where John Howard is working with individuals who have returned to the community, giving them employment and working with us such that we are able to look at their outcomes, measure what they're doing while they're either on parole or post-parole, and understand the kinds of things that seem to contribute to their ability to enter back into communities and remain successful.

    There are other areas of our work where we haven't really been able to deploy these kinds of mechanisms but where we are hopeful that we would be working on youth employment projects, looking at youth who are at risk and trying to ensure that they have some of the critical factors to success. Employment would be one of those critical factors. Working with private sector or not-for-profit agencies, and again, finding different venues that allow them to become employed, stay employed, and work with us because we have to surround them with the right kinds of support to allow them the greatest chances of successes.

    These are relatively new. We don't have a lot of examples of success and how they work. We've only been trying to engage in these kinds of things for a short period of time in a criminal justice context. In Canada, social financing models, such as I've described on this page, have existed for some time, particularly with respect to the environmental sector. There is very good evidence of the ability to look at investments that protect the environment, and they do so through public-private sector partnerships where we work with foundations and small enterprises to do environmental pursuits. That's far outside my expertise, but I know that's the area where there's been the most investment in this area.

    Thank you, Mr. Tupper.

    Now to Mr. Payne for five minutes, please.

    Thank you, Chair.

    Thank you to the witnesses for coming today. That's some very interesting information that you're providing in terms of crime reduction. I was interested particularly in the statement you made in terms of the crime prevention and the million dollars contributed to the Calgary police program, the YARD program.

    I was curious about how many individuals have gone through this program and for how long a period of time. What kind of metrics did you use to measure success? Were the police providing information? Were there surveys? There are a number of those kinds of questions that are popping up in my head. I'm wondering how we know for sure that this program is successful.

    I don't have all that data right at my fingertips here, but that's certainly stuff that we can provide you with. Certainly in the design, the proposal would outline how we propose to gather data and measure it. Indeed, where we have an ongoing project like that one, we can start giving you evidence that we've been collecting over the period of time that the project's been under way. We can certainly provide that to you.

    Do we know how long or when the program started and how long it's going to run?

    My understanding is that the program was initially started in 2008 and targeted youth at risk between the ages of 10 and 17 years of age. I can't tell you at this time how many participants have been put through the program, but there are cohorts of participants. It's not one, as my colleague said earlier. We're not doing longitudinal studies where we're following a specific cohort. There are cohorts that go through the programs, so there would have been a number of cohorts going through the program over the years. We'll have to provide that after this meeting.

    It's obviously important for us to get the information to really understand whether in fact these programs are successful and what is used to measure them.

    I think of criminals, and I tend to think of them as sneaky. So, if you're doing a survey, are they actually telling the truth on it? They may say they're not in youth gangs, but is somebody following them? How are they tracking them? These are the kinds of things that are going through my head to try to figure out whether in fact this money that's being spent is being well spent. I'm sure once we get some of the data, that'll be very helpful.

    Do we have any ideas in terms of cost per individual in a program?

    Again, it would vary based on the program itself. The funding can vary from one program to another, and the percentage that's funded as well. In some cases we'll fund 100% of the program. In some cases the community will secure a certain contribution to offset some of the federal funding as well. The funding will vary from initiative to initiative. Some of the programs, as I said, are larger than others and will have different cohorts that go through them.

    Typically the cost per individual in a program will range somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000. Most of our programs are probably more towards the $5,000 range. A $10,000 program would be dealing with much more complex situations and issues, but typically it would be about $5,000 per participant.

    Let me ask you another question then. In terms of the number of programs you have out there, how many have you found that have not been achieving your goals? Has the funding been pulled before the five years is up?

    The one thing that is a bit unique about this program is that it truly is experimental. That is the way we reconstructed it in 2008. It is why we end the funding in five years. It is not designed to give sustainable funding. So we very much monitor these programs, and indeed we do pull funding if the program is not working. But that it did not work is not a failure from our program design element, because we are trying to determine what the best practices are. I can't give you the specific number again, we have it in our reports, but we do pull funding when we determine that a project is not delivering the results that we were anticipating.

    We also pull funding from programs when they're not doing what we asked them to do. For instance, if they're not doing the reporting, if they're not doing appropriate management, if they're not doing the governance that we expect of a project, we pull funding for those reasons as well.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Payne. I'm sorry your time is over now.

    Mr. Rousseau, please.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

    My thanks also go to Mr. Tupper and Ms. Thompson for joining us.

    One of the items that concerns me and that the witnesses raised in the document they have shared with us is that crime is concentrated among a small number of offenders in regions where the crime rate is high.

    The region I represent is mostly on the border. There is a lot of crime, which is not always caused by members of the local community. A number of crimes are committed. For instance, the region of Stanstead has been infamous for two years because of illegal immigrants and weapons trafficking. There is also smuggling of counterfeit goods. People are quite concerned about crime prevention. What do we have to do?

    We also see that there have been a lot of cuts to the Canada Border Services Agency and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Because of that, the people are quite worried and say that it is all well and good to want to fund crime prevention efforts, but how useful will that be for their region in terms of the trafficking taking place along the border with more than 100 kilometres of forest?

    That is why I think other measures would have been much more beneficial. As a result, Mr. Chair, allow me to introduce the following notice of motion:

    As I said, the issue of crime is extremely tricky because the riding I represent is very rural.

    So I would like to ask the following questions. What assessment tools could be used to determine whether a program or community organization is successful or not, especially in rural regions where everything is spread out and difficult to quantify? In human resources management jargon—I used to work in that sector—we talk a lot about quantitative control of programs. What parameters could help us assess the programs? Are they quantitative parameters? Could qualitative parameters also be considered as acceptable tools to use?

     Again, because of the nature of this program being experimental, we take the same models and we apply them in all sorts of different conditions. We will run the same program in aboriginal communities, rural communities, northern communities, and in urban environments, the whole point of which is to test those models and understand exactly the kinds of parameters you're looking at.

    We are very much interested in taking a SNAP or a YAP or a YID project and running them in multiple sites to test the very kinds of things that we need to understand. What does it mean if you don't have that density of population? That tells us things about cost. It tells us things about the kinds of resources we need to see available in communities. It tells us who the best deliverers of those kinds of resources in a community are. Again, in a rural community, you don't necessarily have that concentration of the different kinds of services.

    That is very much a part of what we're doing right now in trying to build this database and in building the evidence that tells us what works in Canada. We are running these sites and doing them in different contexts so that we really do understand those variables.

    As I said, we've only been building up this database since 2008. We're only starting to have an understanding of what works. I think it is a little bit of what allows for the conversation you're having today; that is, where you go from here in terms of understanding what works in the Canadian context for crime prevention, what we can measure, and what kinds of investments we want to make in Canada.

    You have half a minute.

    How can we be sure of the good faith of the private sector with a prevention program like that?

    I have, over a number of years, been working with the financial sector, particularly when I was exploring the concept of social impact bonds as it might apply in the criminal justice system. It was not hard, at all, to find people who were willing to talk with us about their interests.

    Calgary is a great example. The private sector in the city of Calgary is very actively engaged. We see it in the context of social housing, dealing with homelessness. Frankly, they have an abundance of money from the private sector because the companies understand that their investments as good corporate citizens make a difference in the communities in which they work.

    They also understand that in a city like Calgary where there are labour market shortages, keeping people on the straight and narrow and on the right side of the law, particularly looking at youth, speaks to who they're going to employ down the road.

    In Calgary, we also see, around oil and gas investment, that those companies have very strong relationships with aboriginal communities. They spend a lot of money in those communities to try to ensure and improve the health of those communities. In working with us, they've been very intrigued at these concepts—particularly the area we work in—from a perspective that they can better invest the kinds of moneys they're giving to aboriginal communities to see better outcomes.

    We've had a lot of interest, and as I said, there is a very active social finance community in Canada. We'd be more than happy to provide the committee with names of the leaders in the social finance community in Canada who could come and speak to you as witnesses.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Tupper.

    Thank you, Mr. Rousseau.

    Now, Mr. Norlock, please, you have five minutes.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

    Through you to the witnesses, thank you for appearing today.

    Through you, Mr. Chair, in response to a previous questioner who was very worried about government cutbacks regarding social transfers, I would remind the committee that back in the mid-nineties there was a social transfer cutback by the federal government both to social services and to health, for somewhere in the vicinity of $25 billion.

    I know that worried him very much.

    Also, I'd ask the witnesses, would you agree with me that the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

    Sure.

    Would you also agree with me that one of the things you're trying to do, or that you've been doing since this program began, is to look at innovative ways of achieving better results with the money that is available for crime reduction?

    Yes.

    Would you agree with me that there are some models out there—and I think you mentioned it in your questioning—that have not been tried in Canada? Our great researchers have found that one of the leaders in just one part of doing things differently—and I'm referring to social impact bonds—is the United Kingdom. They seem to be having the most success.

    Also, in the 2014 budget in the United States, President Obama brought in some programs like social impact bonds and other innovative crime reduction ways because the old ways just don't tend to work.

    Would you agree with me that Australia is also doing some things in that regard?

    But we don't have to look to other countries. I'm sure you are aware that in 2011, the YMCA in Toronto issued community bonds in regard to social housing because we know giving people decent places to live is part of crime reduction. The LIFT Philanthropy Partners in Canada, RBC's impact fund, $20 million—there are private sector dollars out there doing some things that it makes sense for the federal government to team up with. Would you agree with that?

    Would you also agree that even in Quebec, we have the Mouvement des caisses Desjardins, with their Placement à rendement social, which also attacks this. These are significant dollars using money out of people's RRSPs and other things, to invest in. Isn't that a good way for governments to work with communities to get things done in a new and innovative way?

    We're looking at British Columbia, who's also trying this. We're looking at Alberta, in the 2012 mandated results-based budget. We're also looking at the 2012 Commission on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services, also known as the Drummond report, which suggested the Province of Ontario look at that. It's unfortunate they haven't because they have a deficit of $12 billion now. But going on to Nova Scotia and the 2013 Speech from the Throne, they also mentioned social impact bonds as part of a way of reducing crime.

    Have you studied those or looked at those, and could you let the committee know the results of your investigation into these and how you think they have been successful? Or, if the federal government were to head down in that direction, how do you think we should twig those very things so that we can maximize the number of dollars available for crime prevention by working with willing partners like the provinces and like non-profit agencies and others?

    Would you like to make a comment on those statements?

    Very quickly, since we're pretty near out of time.

    Mr. Chair, if they wouldn't mind....

     If you don't feel there was sufficient time to answer those questions, you could, in writing, get back to the committee, or better still, perhaps attend another committee meeting.

    I can say very quickly that I know all of the organizations you've identified because I've been meeting with them and speaking with them about our ideas over the last eight years. I'm a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, working on social financing. There is a very active community here. All of the organizations you identified are trying to do leadership in Canada.

    The one you missed that is, I think, absolutely the most fantastic in all of country is Vancity. I think British Columbia is a real hotbed of this kind of thinking and innovation. The British Columbia government has put in place an assistant deputy minister responsible solely for social innovation within their government.

    It's active, it's hot, and these are the new tools for how governments at all levels, all orders of government, can work together to get better outcomes for our communities.

    Fine. Thank you very much, Mr. Tupper and Mr. Norlock.

    Now to Madame Doré Lefebvre....

    Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

    In Canada, right now, there are not really a lot of social finance examples that we can use if we want to fund organizations or projects. You have probably looked at how it works in other countries. We often hear about the United Kingdom using this practice.

    There is one thing I don't understand. The private sector surely wants to invest in social finance because it can get something out of it. Could you tell me how that works and where it is in effect? Does the government pay dividends?

    Once again, I will use the example of young people, in this case the rehabilitation program for troubled or street gang youth. This is one of the priorities of Public Safety Canada. These young people do not bring in money for the private company that invests in the program.

    What is the benefit of investing in social finance for the company?

    For a lot of people, frankly, it's part of philanthropy. A lot of corporations already spend a fair amount of money that is not about return on investment for the corporation, but rather, is about contributing to their communities. There are a lot of investors who are simply trying to design different mechanisms for making investments through the marketplace that, again, have that double return. The idea is that you get a return for your investment but you also get a social impact, and they are trying to bring those things together. There is an acknowledgement, in a market context, that you would get less money on your return, because they aren't the lucrative sorts of investments that are possible in other sectors that are more monetized.

    The very idea is that these are individuals and corporations that actually believe they want to put their money to social good. As I said, one of the best areas in Canada that is worth exploring, simply by way of a comparative analysis, is what is done in the environment sector. For instance, I can speak to a small family foundation that on Vancouver Island bought up tracts of land so they could prevent trees from being cut down. They funded that by cutting down a small section of trees, creating high-end condos that they sold for a profit, which reinitialized the foundation's base of funding but allowed them to protect big tracts of land on Vancouver Island. That's a simple example of where a small family was able to make a simple investment to protect large tracts of land, and they were able to monetize it through the development of high-end condos. That's only a simple example of this.

    We were looking in the criminal justice context at potentially partnering with Correctional Service Canada through CORCAN, their business entity, in potential employment programs that would allow us to do good rehabilitation with offenders but have them do returns to the community by way of, for instance, building houses—giving the offenders skills, giving them the opportunity to work, but also creating a social good in terms of building social housing in the community.

    There are all sorts of examples.

    The Elizabeth Fry Society has an MOU with the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services whereby, with some initial seed money, they were able to create an enterprise through which women offenders can participate in a company and obtain some skills recycling roofing materials, so it has an environmental dimension to it as well. That has a social, environmental, and economic benefit, because these women are then employed in some meaningful employment with skills development.

    One point that's important to remember is that social innovation has different elements, whether or not it's a social finance approach in which there is both a social benefit and an economic benefit. Shawn talked before about pay for performance, where there is that clear economic benefit if there's a demonstrated outcome at the end and a clear savings. There is pay for performance, the social impact bonds, which we've talked about already, and then there are other social investment funds that pull capital from investors to provide loans and mortgages and venture capital for not-for-profit organizations for social purposes.

    There are different types of social innovation. I don't know if the committee is planning on having ESDC present, but they are leading the government initiative, so it would be helpful for them to walk you through these different tools.

    Fine. Thank you, Ms. Thompson.

    Thank you, Madame Doré Lefebvre.

    I will now give the floor to Mr. Maguire.

    Mr. Maguire, please.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the presentations today as well.

    There have been a number of great examples that you've provided I think in regard to the success of these programs. There are costs that are variable depending on a number of factors that go into each one of them. So without getting into the monetary amounts, what drives the costs up so much? It's hard to believe that it could be expensive for every individual enrolled. So out of all the projects that have run their course, can you provide me with some examples of the benefits of the ones that have succeeded and some of the failures?

    We did elaborate on some during the presentation. Beyond those I think, as we offered earlier, we have a list in a report of all the initiatives that had been categorized according to those three categories that we mentioned earlier; that is, new, promising.... So we'd certainly be happy to provide the committee with a list of those and the evaluated results, if that would be helpful.

    Okay. One example that my colleague just mentioned, as an example from other countries, is that the United Kingdom delivered some great social financing programs. Can I delve into that a little bit more, into the big social capital that they may use, their social investment bank. How is that set up? It has several functions to it. Can you just elaborate on the effectiveness of that?

    That was a fascinating project in the United Kingdom. In finding their seed money for that bank what they did was they went to their five Merlin banks, the biggest banks in the U.K., and they identified all of the dormant accounts. Because they hadn't done anything with them, they were able to regulate and they were able to extract that money. That is how they found their seed money to set up this social financing fund in the United Kingdom.

    What they were able to do, therefore, was, because it was unclaimed money, they did what they needed to do to make sure that they were protected from taking people's money, but they were then able to really identify that and say this money is going to be used exclusively for these kinds of purposes.

    That bank then was able to establish a not-for-profit organization whose sole purpose is to work with the private sector and with the not-for-profit sector to create awareness, create knowledge, and to build the bridges. They basically act as an interlocutor between service providers and funders. It is through those mechanisms that they are able to create the different approaches that they have been pursuing in the United Kingdom.

    Thank you for that as well. These are good programs, good adjustments.

    I wonder if you could just provide us with those kinds of examples, clear-cut examples on how these kinds of programs are successful. Can you give the committee some idea as to why our opposition colleagues have decided that this isn't a good decision right here and now? They don't seem to be accepting the idea that this is a good way of moving forward and getting others to help with preventing crime and certainly rehabilitation in those areas as well.

    I think the challenge is to find the willing partners, but I think there are willing partners. Indeed, in my view the theory behind this concept is to allow people from outside of government to explore their ideas about how they can contribute to resolving some of the social problems that might be identified. Effectively, it is a little bit about unleashing innovation outside of government and it also is an opportunity to unleash funding or resources from outside of government to affect these kinds of problems.

    I think that is what truly the innovation is. Obviously, government maintains its role and I know there has been some concern and criticism about these models in the sense that government is offsetting its responsibility. I think the real measure if you look at what's happened in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States particularly is that you don't see a reduction in government funding, but rather you see government maintain its funding and it's done in partnership. I think that's the signal the government's not offsetting its responsibility and downloading, but rather it's trying to expand the scope and the impact of its investments by partnering with others in using their investments.

    I think it's something obviously that would have to be watched, but I think so far in the examples that we've seen governments aren't offsetting their responsibilities. They're trying to join up—that's just British language.

    So I think that's the real effectiveness of these things. The other side of that where government has to be involved in maintaining its credibility in these activities, and again we were very conscious of it in the criminal justice sector, is that while we want to unleash and allow the private sector to come forward with its own ideas, government still has a responsibility to make sure those ideas are good ideas.

    The example we used is, basically, government would have to assure that nobody is doing harm. If you wanted to do anger reduction through chocolate milk baths, as long as it didn't hurt anybody, so what? It's their money. If you wanted to do it by drugging people, government would have an opinion about that because you'd want to make sure that there was no harm done.

    Those are things where government's do need to be involved, governments do need to set parameters, and governments are doing that in the models that you see around the world.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Tupper.

    Thank you, Mr. Maguire.

     Ms. James, go ahead, please. You have five minutes.

    Thank you very much.

    With regard to programs that have been successful or not, I know you haven't been able to put forward statistics as to the number, but with regard to the program itself, is there a common theme that has been more effective than others? I'll ask that question, but it's going to lead into the secondary question as to whether any of those successful programs might be candidates for delivery under a social finance model.

    Is there a key that has been successful? Would any of those be able to be moved into a social finance model?

    I think the biggest key is the locality or the community element of it, that it is a locally based investment and it's building on the assets of the local community. The other aspect is the sustained intervention itself. It isn't people coming in to lecture. It isn't short term. Clearly duration of the treatment, if I can put it that crassly, is a really critical factor. That's why I think it is about looking at community safety. It is about how we build those partnerships so that you get those sustained interventions. Those seem to be some of the really critical factors that speak to success.

    Would any of those successful programs through NCPC be candidates for delivery through a potential social finance model?

    Right now we think theoretically the answer is absolutely yes, because we can identify partners and we know that we have individuals who are interested in making investments. For instance, one of the communities that we work with is an immigrant settlement organization. We were interested in funding them because they were working with immigrant youth. It was about capturing immigrant youth before they joined gangs or got into trouble, and ensuring that they had ways of integrating into Canada and becoming successful Canadians. We know a large part of that is about giving them opportunity in Canada. That's a simple example of where you could probably get corporate interest in terms of an employment perspective with a not-for-profit organization working in a community around immigrant settlement, where the government could provide seed funding or actually go to the other extreme and look at a social impact bond and fund only if it's successful.

    A program that might be deemed successful—and I know that some of it is based on surveys from the participants and so on, so it is somewhat discretionary upon who is filling out the surveys—might be delivered under a social finance model. Could you explain the difference in delivery between what we currently do today with regard to crime prevention and this evaluation period of five years, and what we would do through a social finance model?

    Very quickly, our current model is basically based on a project proponent coming forward and making a submission. We work with that organization to make sure they meet the criteria of our program, and if they do, they basically enter into the competitive pool. This program is oversubscribed in terms of the number of projects we get against what we are able to fund. It's a straightforward grant and contribution program; it's contributions.

    New mechanisms would be, for instance, what we're doing with some of the small organizations we've been partnering with. We might use some of our money to seed social enterprise. We did this, again here in Ottawa, with John Howard, but the great example is what we did with the roofing company. We gave them the equivalent of $2,375 per participant or per employee of that new company. They were able to establish a firm using some of our money, which gave full-time living-wage employment to 40 women offenders coming out of the system in British Columbia. Through sustained employment, they were able to afford apartments and to live in their community. That's a great example of how we can find those partnerships, and with small amounts of money, seed an enterprise.

    Fine.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Tupper.

    Now, Mr. Garrison, go ahead, please.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

    I want to return to a point that Mr. Maguire raised about our attitude on this side of the table.

    We see this fundamentally as a question of what priorities the committee has. We haven't said there aren't good things in the study we're doing. We're saying it seems a very narrow study when there are much bigger problems to be looking at. I also see the discussion—and this is one of my concerns about social finance ideas and crime prevention—often straying into other good social development projects, which have very little directly to do with crime prevention. We have limited resources to spend on the actual crime prevention programs, which actually work quite well in this country and which other people look to as models of what's happening.

    I'm really still wondering why such large emphasis is being given to this when our crime rate is dropping and we've had a lot of success—I'll give credit—under the national crime prevention strategy. We've had a lot of successes.

    So what is the motivation? Is it really just tapping new money, as you're talking about?

    In part the motivation is the increase in costs. While the crime rate is going down, unfortunately the costs of the criminal justice system are continuing to increase at a rate of about $20 billion a year, for policing, courts, legal aid, and so on. That is part of the motivation.

     Also, as I indicated earlier, some of the initiatives fortunately are able to secure continued funding, but not in all cases. It is an issue for the program that the funding ends after five years, and in some cases for very promising initiatives that ought to be considered longer-term. We are looking to see whether there other mechanisms that can be used to help foster them and continue the social benefits.

    So then, there really is an aspect of cost reduction driving this kind of initiative.

    A second question I have is this. If you're bringing private money into the crime prevention system, don't we have a danger...? I hesitate to say “would you agree with me”, as Mr. Norlock always does, but would you agree that we have a danger that private decisions will distort the public priorities?

    For example, we visited Calgary and talked about all the wonderful programs funded by businesses in Calgary. Calgary is very lucky. It has the headquarters of the oil sands, with a lot of money and a need to buy goodwill with a lot of that money. But if you go to other communities in Alberta or British Columbia that don't have those corporate headquarters and don't have those companies that need to buy goodwill, you don't have those resources.

    When the government ends up funding or advancing funds to those private interests to make these initiatives work, it really drives money to where the money already is instead of sometimes to the communities that have the greatest need.

    You're asking for a comment.

    I certainly don't deny that Calgary has the luxury of a lot of headquarters and a lot of money. But look at the example of Vancity in British Columbia. Their region of operation is the entirety of the province. I haven't looked at their numbers in a while, but my recollection is that a couple of years ago they were trying to transfer half of their total asset investments to social impact investing. I think their assets at the time were $14 billion, and they were trying to ensure that at least $7 billion was invested across the province of British Columbia in social impact investing. I would very much encourage you to speak with Vancity in that regard. It's a great example.

    My other concern is that some kinds of crime prevention are sexier than others or more popular than others.

     We have the example of Circles of Support and Accountability, which is very successful. It has very high success rates in dealing with sex offenders returning to the community. But it's very hard for me to imagine that you can sell that to a corporate sponsor as a kind of project you need to do, even though it has huge results and huge impacts in avoiding future crime.

     Again it's the same idea. How are we going to get people to look at what is sometimes the greatest need, when we're dealing with unpopular topics?

    Our experience with that is that, when we were out looking at potential partners, one of the elements we confronted the most was “we don't want to deal with sex offenders”. We spent a lot of time educating those potential partners about just what and who a sex offender is.

    The fact is that not every sex offender is a high-risk offender. By giving them a little bit of knowledge and understanding of the kinds of offenders they might be working with, we've actually made some progress.

    Habitat for Humanity is a perfect example of that. Many of the local habitat organizations were very concerned about the kinds of people they might be working with. When they realized, through some of the workshops we were doing, that the very people already working for them were the people they were worried about, we were able to dissipate a lot of that fear.

    Thank you, Mr. Garrison.

    Mr. Norlock, please.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

    Let me go along with this whole idea of partnering. My background is policing. When I began policing, we didn't have any volunteers in police offices or stations or detachments, and today we do.

    If we take a look at our health care system, which is one of the biggest burdens every level of government has, even down to municipalities, in my municipality we're now paying a bit of a premium on our property taxes to keep our little rural hospital open. What do we have in the hospitals? They would not be able to function without partnering with the community. I'm talking about volunteers who work in their offices.

    This committee just looked at the economics of policing. We saw that more and more police organizations are not cutting back anywhere, but they have volunteers who help out.

    You can look at every segment of our society. You came right out and said.... You were talking about the banks. Among the examples I use, thanks to our good researchers, is RBC and its involvement in the community. You mentioned CIBC.

    To me, it makes sense. I think most people who pay taxes would say that if you're going to use some of their valuable tax dollars to help reduce crime—and I'd like you to make a comment on this—which is a good thing because it saves policing and judicial costs and the whole judicial system, then they want you to maximize those dollars.

    Then you have companies—banks, Canadian Tire, Tim Hortons, but it doesn't matter who it is—who want to do things in a positive way for their communities. What better way is there than to work with youth or other folks to help reduce crime, which affects not only their bottom line...? Let's talk about what affects us. We're all worried about our back pocket, whether as the taxpayer paying taxes or as one whose house may be broken into or their car smashed in to go after the wallet that was left carelessly on the seat.

    I wonder if you could make some comments about your experience and the willingness of the private sector to meet with governments, who aren't necessarily cutting back but who just have limited resources, and about how these companies can work with us to maximize our impact on the increasing cost of crime.

    Certainly there are companies—you mentioned Tim Hortons—whose goal is to provide goods and services while also addressing a social agenda. I think those are the kinds of companies you want to partner with.

    Just to go back to Shawn's point earlier, it really comes down to the partnership in communities. That is what the federal government is trying to do. It's not in fact to reduce, but to try to find a way to partner and get maximum benefit out of some of these initiatives.

     I think it's about the types of companies. It may not be a model for all companies, but there are some companies whose mission very clearly is to deliver the goods and services but also to go further and promote social good and be a responsible partner in the community.

    It's one of the elements that will be different in Canada from what you might appreciate in other countries, such as the U.K. and the United States. Canada does not have the depth of philanthropic spending that you would see through the charitable trusts and the foundations in either the U.K. or the United States. We just don't have that kind of money in Canada. We rely on social financing; we rely on private sector investment and their inclinations to look at social good, because we don't have access to significant funds of money that are held by foundations or charitable organizations.

    Thank you for that, because you just hit on something that I think this study needs to look at. Perhaps if we can show some positive outcomes, could we not then loosen up some of those trusts, some of those people who are reluctant in Canada—those limited dollars—by saying, this really works, and if you guys help us and put your shoulder to the wheel, as it were, to assist us, you can have some positive outcomes, and your philanthropic organization, will be able to show some positive outcomes? Then the people who contribute to your trust will be even more prone to want to do so.

    Would you not agree with me that the innovation you're looking at may end up stimulating even more participation in crime reduction, which is a problem that affects everyone, rich, poor, or otherwise? Would you agree?

    I would say the more you improve the model, the more people will come to want to use it.

    Fine, thank you very much.

    Mr. Easter, please.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I think you're seeing some of the differences of opinion on the committee. There's no question that the national crime prevention strategy does good work. But I would agree with Randall that there are other priorities the committee maybe should be looking at. One of them is the challenge around mental health issues, which is really one of the major contributors to the cost of policing. It's one of the major contributors to the cost of corrections.

    I'm wondering, under the national crime prevention strategy, if you do any work at all in terms of the mental health and addiction problems that are really out there. I was at the mental health champions awards, I think they're called, one evening last week, and there was an individual there whose last name was Batten. He's now leading a very productive life, but he told a heart-wrenching story, when he accepted his award, of being incarcerated and spending a lot of his time in solitary confinement, until somebody took an interest in his issue and his mental health problems and addiction problems. As a result of that, he's now leading a very productive life and won one of the mental health champions awards.

    So I think what that shows is that if there's the right programming out there, some of these so-called problem people can be producers in terms of society and contribute to the economy. So I'm wondering if there's anything under the NCPS.... Do you have any programming in that area at all? Or is it mostly with youth?

    The focus of the program at this point in time is around youth. But indeed in that context we do look at addictions and drugs as a major component of the programming that we're doing, so drug interventions and whatnot. There is some element of mental health that builds into that, because there is a correlation between addictions and mental health issues.

    We don't have specific envelopes of funding that would be exclusively dedicated to mental health issues. One of the things, though, that we try to do is to understand how issues link up, because oftentimes, as I say, crime, drugs and addictions, and mental health are all things that become linked. So when we do our investments, we try very much to ensure we are partnering with different agencies that can bring their various expertise to the kinds of things we're doing.

    I want to come back again to my worry of where this social financing might go. In terms of our research, you did mention in the beginning, I believe, that the only example thus far that you're utilizing in terms of social finance is the pay for performance. Am I correct in that?

    Correct.

    Because what's happening around the rest of the world is much broader than that, and you mentioned the ones in Britain. But if I was to look at the project in Australia:

There are other examples. We can look to the U.S. in terms of California, which is basically broke because they've privatized the prison system. I do not want to see Canada go that way, although that seems to be the way our criminal justice system is going at the moment.

    Voices: [Inaudible—Editor]

    Hon. Wayne Easter: No, it's no joke. It's the facts, guys.

    Half a minute, Mr. Easter, and you're over, please.

    But in any event, it's not anticipated, from your perspective at the moment...going these other ways that these other countries have gone? Or are all these four options that are on your paper here options that Public Safety could go to?

     I think theoretically all of these are options that we should and can consider—

    That's my worry.

    —as possibilities.

     As I said earlier, I've been working in this area for eight years and I was a huge fan of what the Brits had done. I am becoming quite skeptical of the model that the Brits have put in place, and I would point to Peterborough as a perfect example of cheating on the side. First of all, for a social impact bond you're not supposed to have government money up front. The Brits put government money up front. You're supposed to design them in a way that they're rigorous and can be validated in terms of measurable progress moving forward.

    We're running a little out of time, I'm sorry. You're a wealth of knowledge on this and we certainly would love to have you here for days. However....

    Yes, Ms. James.

    I don't know whether this is a point of order, but I think that we have a lot of questions for these witnesses and I hope they would be willing to come back for maybe another hour or something. I know that our time is also cut short.

    That's a request. It's certainly not a point of order. That can be discussed with both the witnesses and in committee business.

    Right now, we have a financial issue that we need to deal with.

    You can have the floor for a minute if you'd like, Mr. Payne.

    Yes, I'll be very brief. Thank you, Chair.

    In terms of the comment around mental health, I know there's the Bell Let's Talk mental health initiative. In terms of Mr. Garrison, yes, there's not a lot of corporate organizations in smaller communities, but, you know, in the smaller communities that we have around we have all kinds of folks—there are banks, there are plumbing companies, there are transportation companies, real estate organizations, all kinds of organizations—all providing funds for minor hockey, minor soccer. That's to keep the kids busy, to keep them out of gangs.

    That's only a small example of what can happen in smaller communities. You don't necessarily need to have a major program.

    Fine. Thank you very much, Mr. Payne.

    The chair has really enjoyed this. This is fascinating and certainly is breaking new ground potentially for our committee and our government and our opposition to consider this.

    We thank you very much for coming today. The witnesses are excused.

    We have a very brief financial matter to deal with. I would ask now for the indulgence of our committee members. We have a routine budgetary proposal before us. Obviously, it's an interim request, as we do before all of our committees.

    Does anybody have a problem with it? If not, I would like a motion to accept that budget.

    I so move.

    And seconded...fine.

    (Motion agreed to)

    The Chair: Thank you very much. It's passed.

    The chair will also bring one other issue to your attention. We can deal with this now or we can deal with it another time. I would have to have unanimous consent for this.

    In terms of the quotation for the printing of the economics of policing, the challenge, of course, is.... It's not a problem when it's in black and white, but to put it in colour where the graphs actually are effective.... Quite frankly, it's ineffective unless it's in colour. However, in order for us to have a number of copies in colour, there's a quotation charge to the committee. For 25 coloured copies, originally we were looking at close to $500. We have a reduction in that quote now, down to $285, thanks to the good work of the committee, the clerk and that.

    I would simply like to know at some point if the committee is comfortable with that amount and/or that price. So I leave that with you right now for discussion.

    Yes, Mr. Easter.

    How many copies did you say, Mr. Chair?

     If you want 25 copies, it's $285. You can take 125 or you can take five. The chair, of course, will be at the will of the committee as to how many copies you believe we and/or the committee should have at their disposal and/or for the use of Parliament.

    I do think, Mr. Chair, that for the graphs to be effective, they really should be in colour.

     I mentioned this to you before, Chair. I don't think anything can be done this time, but my experience always with supplementary reports, or dissenting reports...it always said at the top of the report, this is a supplementary report by the NDP, or the Conservative party when they were in opposition, and that didn't happen in this case. I think in the future the Library of Parliament clerk, or whoever, needs to ensure that this doesn't happen, because the report doesn't read correctly the way it is with—

     I understand your point, Mr. Easter, and certainly the chair can take that under advisement and discuss it with everybody else.

    Right now, I do need a decision. Would you like to quote—

    I would so move.

    At $285...? Are we all in favour?

    (Motion agreed to)

    The Chair: It's unanimous from the committee.

    Is that for 25 copies?

    For 25 copies.

    Thank you very kindly.

    Votes will be called, so we will adjourn for the day.

    The meeting is adjourned.