Public Safety Committee on May 15th, 2014

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Ms. Lower-Basch, have you...?

[Elizabeth Lower-Basch]

These models, by and large, do not say that governments are now not going to be partners in this and will not pay. I think it's really a question about whether governments are paying upfront for the program, or if they're paying down the road for the outcomes that are achieved.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

We have heard that this is a totally complementary program to the government continuing with its financing and just trying to get more results from it. Coming from a rural area, the way I look at it is that you don't necessarily have to be in a highly populated area with a lot of crime to have effective partners. They may not look at the high return financially as necessary to partnering with this. There may be other benefits, obviously, just from the fact that their property isn't as impacted by somebody, for example. That could be another reason as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Maguire. I appreciate your time.

Madame Doré Lefebvre.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. McWhinnie and Ms. Lower-Basch, thank you for taking part in our meeting today. You bring very different, but equally informative, insights to the table.

Mr. McWhinnie, you discussed the ethical questions raised by these kinds of partnerships between the private sector and government.

My first question is for you, Ms. Lower-Basch. In light of your experience in Washington, you might be able to enlighten us about something.

In 2007, the Quebec government decided to pursue social finance through a philanthropic public partnership, with the focus on philanthropy as opposed to finance.

To that end, the government chose to work with the Lucie and André Chagnon Foundation. Lucie and André Chagnon were two members of the private sector who had just sold a large telecom and had a lot of money to spare. The province signed an agreement with the foundation, which was to provide up to $500 million in funding for social projects over 10 years. For its part, the government was to invest $350 million over the 10 years.

What many people came to realize, over time, was that the foundation wielded a tremendous amount of influence over the social policy of the provincial government in office. And right now, some 350 organizations from across the province have joined forces to pressure the government not to renew a similar agreement.

I am wondering whether you know of any such situations in the U.S.

Do foundations involved in these types of programs have more influence over the U.S. government?

What is your take on the situation the Quebec government is facing?

[Elizabeth Lower-Basch]

The U.S. has a program called the Social Innovation Fund, which does match philanthropic dollars and money from the government. But I think the total amount is small compared with overall government spending, so I have not heard this complaint about it influencing policy too much.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. McWhinnie, do you think this kind of thing could happen in the public safety sector?

You are going to lose your funding after March 2015. You were told that it wouldn't be renewed. If you were able to access that type of funding, would you worry about the private sector's influence over your work for Circles of Support and Accountability?

[Andrew McWhinnie]

Thank you. That's a great question.

It has occurred to us that if we were to have a corporate investor, along with government, in Circles of Support and Accountability, they might hesitate. Indeed, the comment in the last presentation was that perhaps there's the tendency to go after the low-hanging fruit.

We go after the tough guys, the guys who are high-risk people. Let's just ask ourselves the question: who is going to invest in support services for sexual offenders? I mean honestly, really. And if they did, are they going to have a say, stating that we want you to pick this guy but not that guy? He is really high profile and if our company or our organization is associated with support services to him, that's not going to look good on us.

So I think there is a concern. Or it could be: we do not want you to recruit these volunteers but only this type of volunteer, or we don't want you to recruit from the faith community—where we spend a lot of time recruiting volunteers—because we're a secular organization and don't believe in....

Yes, in short, I do have concerns about what those partnerships would be. We'd have to select partners who can get along together very well and understand and share a vision together, which influences that.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

What could happen to you after March 2015, once your funding from the Correctional Service of Canada runs out? Do you have a plan? What will happen to your agency?

[Andrew McWhinnie]

Yes. I was at a COSA retreat this week. We claim to be a community-based group and so we're now looking at our communities and our provinces to replace at least some of the funding.

Some of our circles will fail. They don't have the backing in their communities and are unable to find the backing in their communities. So Circles of Support and Accountability will shrink in Canada. But it won't end. People are quite determined and quite passionate, in terms of the services that they are providing. But it will become a lot more difficult to do these things after March 31, 2015.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you.

Now, Mrs. James, please.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you and welcome to both of our guests.

I have a couple of questions for Mr. McWhinnie. First, I want to maybe backtrack a bit as to why we started this particular review of our current funding, which is the NCPC, as you've mentioned, as well as delving into social financing of possible future endeavours the government may embark upon.

You mentioned that you were aware that the funding would run out in five years because the NCPC was almost like a pilot project in itself. So there are various streams. One was dealing with youth gangs. There was another one, and you're funded under a particular stream as well. The idea was not only just crime prevention but also to gather the data and to see what works and what doesn't work.

With your organization, Circles of Support, I know that Correctional Service Canada had said it was going to cut off that funding and I know that there was a wide support for your organization from within all parties within the government. Indeed, Minister Blaney contacted Correctional Service of Canada to make sure that the funding continued.

Obviously, as a government, we were quite concerned, based on the results that we have heard from you today. I was trying to write them down. I wasn't quite quick enough, but you talked about an 82% return, and another with an 18% return on investment, and there another one where for every $1 invested, you're saving $6 costs down the road.

Do you have that statistical information? Could you actually submit it?

[Andrew McWhinnie]

Yes.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

That would be terrific, because we'd like to see what areas are working and why some might be better than others. All seem very good, and obviously I'm glad to hear that crime prevention and protecting our communities are job number one. I'm glad you're able to provide that. Thank you very much.

You talked about your concerns with regard to possible outside investors getting involved with the Circles of Support. Prior to the NCPC funding—which is going to end in 2015, as it's a time-limited pilot—were you being funded elsewhere or did your Circles of Support start with that particular funding pilot project?

[Andrew McWhinnie]

I mentioned that the Correctional Service of Canada was the primary funder outside of the National Crime Prevention Centre. So prior to NCPC's involvement—and your summation of the involvement of NCPC is entirely correct——the other organizations that were involved in terms of funding were the Mennonite Central Committee Canada, the Mennonite Central Committee Ontario, the Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver, and a number of other small funders across the country for their projects, such as the Ontario Trillium Foundation and a number of other similar funds in other centres, the Alberta foundation in Calgary, and some police forces. I think the Calgary Police Service provides $2,000 or $3,000 to Circles of Support and Accountability.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

You've listed a whole bunch of organizations or groups that had been supporting you prior to the NCPC funding. These are actually investors that might be involved in a social finance type of contract with your organization through the government. Obviously, there's an intermediary in between there and someone who evaluates the project at the end, but I think that from the perspective of crime prevention and seeing that projects are working, it's important that, based on results, we use other ways to get greater bang for a buck and bring more dollars into the fold to expand it. Would you be open to looking at areas like this?

I know you said you are concerned that maybe some Circles of Support in some areas may not find the same support, but there are other ways you can do social financing. There's a model called pay for performance. Certainly, based on the results you've given here, you would be getting money and continual funding if those were based on pay for performance.

[Andrew McWhinnie]

The organizations I have just mentioned I would see as intermediaries and not as people who would actually invest. The organizations I've mentioned don't have any money to invest.

But yes, absolutely, while we have ethical concerns and we see that there may be some ethical questions to be answered, we're open to at least talking and entering into dialogue about these possibilities, because—oh, my gosh—we don't have much more than about 11 months before we'll be almost dead in the water.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I think we're all here so we can take a look at what works and what doesn't and we can see how we can continue with crime prevention in this country.

Under our current model, we invest in the organization, and they carry out the project for five years, but we have no idea whether there are any results until after that five-year period. We're at a point now where we've gathered that information, and it's time to actually, I would say, invest in areas that we know are proven, through different methods as well so that we can extend the dollars coming into crime prevention and community safety and also get the best bang for—let's face it—the taxpayers' dollars and make sure we are investing wisely.

I really thank you for your presentation, and if you could get those statistics to us, I would very much appreciate it.

[Andrew McWhinnie]

The committee has them.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Okay, thank you very much. I very much appreciate that.

I had one question as well for our other witness, Ms. Lower-Basch.

You mentioned some of your concerns, two of which had to do with social finance, but you also indicated that there are options to that. I think we have to remember that when you get into social finance, a lot of it has to do with the contract that's established up front. So if organizations are afraid they're not going to get the money from their initial investment returned to them, that would be part of the contract process. I just wanted to clarify that as well.

I guess I'll leave it be for now.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Mr. Garrison, please.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Lower-Basch, I have your paper from March 2014 in front of me. One of the things it says is that “so far, up-front funding for SIBs has mostly been provided by foundations, or by private investors backed with a guarantee from a philanthropic source, rather than by purely profit-motivated investors”.

Is this a pattern we've seen elsewhere, that in fact profit-making corporations aren't really the main participants in this kind of activity?

[Elizabeth Lower-Basch]

I think it's still a work in progress, and some of the more recent ones in the U.S. have more private investment. Goldman Sachs has put up some money. For example, the New York City Rikers Island one is from private funding, but then there's a guarantee from the Bloomberg foundations. So I'm talking about models like that.

I think it's really a very novel method. If you're really interested in making a profit, you're going to be entering it cautiously and figuring out whether or not it's really an opportunity.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. McWhinnie, I think the first thing we need to say is thank you to the services board for the work they have been doing. The statistics are available through numerous published reports and through Corrections Canada reports. Earlier skepticism was expressed about these kinds of projects displacing government money and things that already work, but I have to say that to me what we have sitting here at the table with us is an example of an organization that is extremely successful. To me there is very little prospect, as you were saying, that you could run this same project with private financing, but I don't understand why we'd even want to think about that. This is a group that's already a community-based citizens group. This is not a government program; it's a very effective community-based program.

I just don't understand the government's determination to end the funding for this. I know you can't explain that from your end, but I know in my own community services board, and I know from my work in criminal justice....

Can you talk a little bit about what kind of support you get from communities?