Evidence of meeting #28 for Public Safety and National Security in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was projects.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Daryl Kramp
We'll go onto another question. But I would imagine you'd be given another opportunity to do so.
Now we will go to Mr. Easter for seven minutes please.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, gentlemen, it's an interesting discussion. I do want to come off Dr. Liebman's last point on very early childhood and early childhood, which was not an area that I thought that social finance would be involved in. We can look at some early child care programs in this country. The Province of Quebec has quite a number. In Prince Edward Island we have one that is called CHANCES and it targets kids age zero to six. It's very successful for low-income families and there are benefits. We've now seen the benefits for over 20 years.
What are the specific names of those two programs you mentioned? I might want to do a little research into them.
4:15 p.m.
Director, Social Impact Bond Technical Assistance Lab, Harvard Kennedy School
The specific interventions?
4:15 p.m.
Director, Social Impact Bond Technical Assistance Lab, Harvard Kennedy School
The states that are heading down this road are going to do competitive procurements to choose which providers are going to be chosen. There are in the United States several providers in this space that have had very rigorous evaluations of their programs. The most famous one is called Nurse-Family Partnership, which has had I think three randomized controlled trials of their studies, but there are some others out there that maybe you could have your staff follow up with me on. I can send you an email and give you some more details on that.
On the preschool, the year before entering school type of interventions, those tend to be very state or city specific. There are some models out there but I don't they have brand names in quite the same way the very early childhood ones do.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
We'll get in touch and follow up on that. Coming back more to the prevention of crime side, what is the population in Rikers prison and what percentage are these programs targeted at?
4:15 p.m.
Senior Adviser, MDRC
Our population are 16- to 18-year-olds, who in New York state—one of the two states in the United States—are treated like adults. New York and North Carolina share that distinction. I'm not sure we share much else.
This is a saturation program, meaning we're trying to reach every kid who is in that jail system for at least six days because that's the amount of time we need to get to them, and give them some dose of this therapeutic intervention. The reason for this was that the city felt strongly that if they didn't do it at scale, if they didn't really do it for everybody, it was very unlikely to have a dramatic effect. They also thought it would be very difficult to be selective and give it only to some and not to others. They really wanted to do something at scale, which is complicated but we've been able to.... We're touching over 80%. The goal might be 100% but we're getting 80%, which is pretty rare in the field. It was a good idea to try to be more ambitious.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
In terms of funding this, what's the split coming from the private sector? What's the split coming from either the government or the municipal sector? Do you know?
4:15 p.m.
Senior Adviser, MDRC
This program initially is being totally funded by the private sector, by the foundation and the bank. It's a $9.6-million budget over a four-year period.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Coming back to the three points, I was impressed with these three points. If they could work and improve government decision-making, in my opinion we could use a little of that around here, Mr. Chair. Helping government shift revenues from remediation to prevention is a good idea, as is enabling government to enter into collaborative agreements with other sources. Those objectives are absolutely great.
In terms of wherever you're at with the programs that are in place thus far, I don't think you're in a position yet to tell us how successful they have or have not been, but once the program is originally designed and the funding structure set up, for the measures you're taking, do you adapt to those as you go along? Is it ever-changing or do you start a program and you're firm in that program? Does it adapt as you go along in terms of seeing some problems and some changes that should be made? Ideas...?
4:20 p.m.
Senior Adviser, MDRC
In our case, we have adapted, but we've walked a close line between both adaptation and fidelity, because we're trying to be true to a particular program model that has been shown to be successful in the past. We worry that if we change it too much, then we're working in uncharted territory, so we try to walk this line, and I think have been able to. The results will tell us.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
I guess this is the last question I would have, Mr. Chair.
For both of you, in your experiences across the country, these are new tools and new innovations used within the criminal justice system with the objective of getting to prevention. Is there any coordination across the country? Sometimes governments are good at reinventing the wheel. Is there any collaboration across the breadth of the United States or is it a mishmash with a lot of experimentation?
4:20 p.m.
Director, Social Impact Bond Technical Assistance Lab, Harvard Kennedy School
I think there's a little of each, but in our model, the Kennedy School SIB Lab model, what we're getting by working with 10 governments at once is some of that cross-fertilization. We bring together our fellows, who we put on the ground to help each state or each city themselves, but also the government officials they report to. We bring them together once or twice a year to talk about what they're learning, and we do regular phone calls so that they're sharing their experiences.
We're trying to build that kind of network, but there are definitely elements of these projects that are unique to a particular project, where different jurisdictions are suddenly learning new things or dealing with something that hasn't been dealt with before. I think it's a combination, but we're doing our best to spread our learning. Obviously, appearing before your committee is part of this effort that we're trying to participate in.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Daryl Kramp
Thank you very much, Mr. Liebman.
We now go to Ms. Doré Lefebvre for five minutes.
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Rosane Doré Lefebvre NDP Alfred-Pellan, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Dr. Liebman and Mr. Butler, thank you for being here today. This is very interesting.
Mr. Butler, I would like to ask you a question.
You spoke about interest that you paid. The members on this side of the table understood that the rate was 20%. Is that correct?
4:20 p.m.
Senior Adviser, MDRC
No. I'm sorry if that was unclear. The amount of repayment is capped if the project succeeds in reducing recidivism by 20%. The investor's maximum profit, at that rate of a 20% impact, would be $2.1 million. That's the most money the investor would gain.
4:20 p.m.
NDP
Rosane Doré Lefebvre NDP Alfred-Pellan, QC
The rate is still 20%. I think you mentioned that your program was $9.6 million. That still borders on 20%.
4:20 p.m.
Senior Adviser, MDRC
Yes. If you take the base of a $9.6-million investment, they can get a net return of $2.1 million over a period of years, which, when you look at it on an annual basis, is not that out of line with other investments.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Rosane Doré Lefebvre NDP Alfred-Pellan, QC
Thank you.
Mr. Liebman, at the end of your presentation, you said that you were in the process of experimenting with social finance, that it was a suitable tool for certain places but that it was not the best solution for others.
Could you give me some examples of places where social finance is a good thing and others where you consider it not to be a very good idea?
4:25 p.m.
Director, Social Impact Bond Technical Assistance Lab, Harvard Kennedy School
That's a great question. I think this tool works best when you can measure the outcome you care about and when the thing you can measure is a holistic indicator for what you're trying to achieve. If you can only measure a part of what you care about in terms of your social objective and you pay a lot of money based only on that part, you can distort performance toward the thing you can measure and away from other things that are important.
In an area like criminal justice, where we know that reducing crime and incarceration is our primary goal, I think this is a very good tool. But in other social services, where we might be trying to accomplish five different things and we can only measure one of them, this could be, I think, a tool that would have risk. It might get really good performance on the thing we can measure and really bad performance on the things we couldn't measure.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Rosane Doré Lefebvre NDP Alfred-Pellan, QC
That's interesting.
Mr. Butler, do you have any comments on that?
4:25 p.m.
Senior Adviser, MDRC
I don't know.... I think I'd like to go back for a moment, actually, to your other question to me, if you don't mind.
4:25 p.m.
Senior Adviser, MDRC
The one thing I would note is that, whatever you think of the rate of return to the investor, in that scenario the projected net taxpayer savings—which means after the program costs have been absorbed and the investor has been paid—are over $20 million. If you're thinking about it from a benefit-cost perspective from the taxpayer, that high rate of return accrues more to government than it does to the investor.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Rosane Doré Lefebvre NDP Alfred-Pellan, QC
I find it surprising that you say that because a witness from Washington told us at the start of our study that if it was possible not to use social finance, she would not use it because she felt that, basically, it cost the government and taxpayers more because of interest paid to investors, among other things.
Does that statement make any sense to you?