Human Resources Committee on March 31st, 2015

[Marie-Claude Morin, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I am sorry, Mr. Chair. We should have let you know ahead of time.

My thanks to the witnesses for accepting our invitation. All your testimony was very interesting.

My question is for you, Mr. Cyr. It is mostly about your organization.

Pay-for performance models depend on an evaluation of the results, in order to see whether organizations have achieved set objectives or not. But evaluating results is difficult when we want to measure the success of some social programs, for example. I am not saying that it simply cannot be done, but it can sometimes pose an additional challenge when we are looking at it from a qualitative point of view, not just a quantitative one.

In your opinion, what kinds of indicators should be used to measure the results of social finance objectives? What steps should we take in order to get better evaluation and follow-up in terms of the impact of social finance models?

Thank you.

[Jeffrey Cyr]

Thank you for the question.

I'll try to be more brief than I was last time. Good English would help too.

It's hard to say without looking specifically at the individual program. Put simply, social innovation and social finance are about increasing the public good. At the outset we should know what the public good is. What are we trying to do?

If you take the Canada learning bond example, or our social enterprise model we use under the urban aboriginal strategy, it has very broad goals. We know what the broad goals are. We're trying to change leadership.

You can measure it, although it's very consuming to do it. We created a system where we could have a 12-year-old come in and get the leadership mentoring program. You take an intake slice of about 20 minutes, kind of like a client assessment tool, and you can measure exactly where they are. Let's say it's engagement and public speaking skills. Four months later they come out of the program and you should be able to track the difference, if any. It's good to know when there's not any change, as well, and how much effort and time has to be put into it.

There are a lot of indicators you can use. I think there are 264 indicators that are commonly used around the world. You can narrow that down to about 15. We've done the homework before on this sort of stuff.

One of the issues is that I don't think government officials who create programs go to that level. Sometimes they're asking you for indicators which are quantitative, when you really need to get a qualitative.... Changing our frame of reference is helpful. I'm not expecting everyone to change overnight and I'm not saying every program is that way.

If you want more people into learning bonds that increase educational outcomes, then you'd better be prepared to measure for 15 years and take some risk. The risk is small, but it's the commitment to change. I would say you're going to need qualitative stories from folks on an individual level.

I have 25 people in this program and with 15 of them we've seen change in their lives. We come back four years later and we've seen change again. Where are they now? That's the sort of thing we have to be doing in the long run and it takes commitment.

There are a ton of indicators you can measure all across the board, everything from increased economic participation and better schooling to how they adjust in society. There are ways. It's not rocket science to do it, but it takes a lot of effort and you have to build systems very thoughtfully at the outset.

They sometimes have to be holistic. Very quickly, if you have a child who cannot succeed in school, and you go backwards and do an indicator, and you find out they live in a household with four other families and that the parents can't help with homework, the indicator may not be that they're not getting good schooling; it's what's the support system. That's why friendship centres can have a wraparound holistic model. If we can't get to where the issue is, then we're not going to.... That's what social finance is supposed to do: get to cause and not the symptom. That takes a longer arc thinking.

I hope that's helpful.

[Marie-Claude Morin, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you very much. That was very interesting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

You have 10 seconds. Would you like to...?

[Marie-Claude Morin, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

That's okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Mr. Boughen, will you finish up this round of questioning for us, please?

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Let me add my voice to those of my colleagues' in saying to the resource team, we are glad you could spare part of your day to be with us and share your expertise.

Jeffrey, you mentioned in your presentation that there is a tension that should be looked at with the young aboriginal people growing and being part of society. What do you see happening? I am told there is wealth there that hasn't been tapped efficiently for many of the aboriginal youth, but there is a great need in our world for academics, tradespeople, professionals, and so on. The aboriginal folks can fill any and all of those requirements, but how do you see them moving into those realms? Traditionally, they haven't been in there. We need them there.

[Jeffrey Cyr]

That's a big question.

What we know is that aboriginal people, indigenous people, who make it to post-graduate studies, master's or doctoral studies, do as well as any other person in Canada, so we know the problem is further down the chain. The question is leveraging young aboriginal people, young indigenous people, into an educational system. Obviously there are multiple barriers, both in access and cultural appropriateness. Location matters a lot, so if you have to finish grade 12 in Thunder Bay and you are from a reserve farther north than that, and you get that dystopia of moving to a city and not having parental support, we do have big issues. I am sure my first nations brothers and sisters would talk at length about education issues. If I could try to bring it back to social innovation, there are ways to facilitate engagement that young people can own. They think differently than I do and Yancy does, and we are both aboriginal people. You know, under 24 they think differently.

We have discovered this most appropriately in our A4W Live, action for women live mobile platform which we are building. It goes to individual cellphones. We are going to be releasing it in June. It is designed to change gender-based behaviours between aboriginal men and women, boys and girls, about sexually based violence and all those sorts of issues. I have done focus groups and testing, and we now know that they think completely differently than we do about the reality. I think they are the source of energy and dynamism at a community level. I come back to, as much as possible, facilitating community-led and community-driven approaches to an issue, awfully creative at the community level, once you get down there and put mechanisms in place. Right now we know that when we take supports.... For example, the urban aboriginal strategy is designed to funnel partnerships, in particular. If we can get it down and support it at the community level, they can leverage what I call the nested energy inside communities in bigger and smaller cities.

It is a complicated question, to be honest. It has a lot of different leverage to it, a lot of things that we would need to do. From a social finance and social innovation perspective, it's there. One of the components in our social innovation summit is to engage youth as the facilitators, those who run around and learn from the folks who are doing social innovation, whether from MaRS or all the other big social innovation labs, because they need to own it. We found that if they own it, then it will flourish. This is not totally on point, but just to add something to that.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thanks for that.

Éric, in your presentation you talked about leveraging funding. This chart talks about the commitment of government. Is there any move afoot to move the federal government out of it and have more commitment to funding from donors? Do we have to have the feds there to 38%?

[Éric Hébert-Daly]

I think you're talking about a different presentation. You may be talking about Evan's presentation.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Does your operation have funding from the feds?

[Éric Hébert-Daly]

No, we're not funded by governments at all.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

That wraps it up pretty much, Mr. Boughen. We're out of time.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

We're out of time. We get the right witness and we run out of time. I'll pass it back to you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you.

We want to thank you for being here, all three of our witnesses, for taking the time today. In your presentations, some of the things you've said are very significant to this study, and through the questioning you've also given us your perspectives, which will be incorporated in the study.

You're welcome to present to us in writing anything further that you may wish, through the chair to this committee, and we'll try to incorporate it in the final draft of what we come up with. It is a significant study, as you know. We truly appreciate your being here. On behalf of the committee, thank you so much.

We'll take a short break and then go into committee business.

[Proceedings continue in camera]