Public Safety Committee on June 12th, 2014

[Kevin McNichol]

Absolutely; first, they bring independent knowledge. If they are establishing criteria to support the valuation, measuring the social impact,and setting the standards as an independent body, they become neutral in what they are presenting, and then they can fairly present that to funders and hold us, as non-profits, to account to deliver on what we said.

They also bring expertise and knowledge. I'm fortunate to have an M.B.A., but many non-profit leadership groups don't have a business background, don't understand the metrics, and don't understand the investment world. So they bring that capacity and education and ability to inform us. Certainly they can also bridge into government and bring that capacity, because most of us, as non-profits, are interested in helping the client. That's where our focus is.

I started as a social worker. I work with people. For some of this other stuff, I don't bring that capacity necessarily, and that's where an intermediary can really bridge that gap, raise our ability to be professional and work in this field and deliver the results and the expectations that are required of this.

I just see it as a good benefit for us.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

As a service provider, you're not necessarily concerned about who is investing the dollars initially, just as long as someone is able to find the people who are willing to do so.

[Kevin McNichol]

My plea is to let me do the work.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Okay, thank you.

It was funny. You mentioned “a menu of options”, and it's funny because we haven't heard that. We've heard, “it's another tool in the toolbox”. I wrote that down. It's another thing that just made me actually smile because it was a new one to add to the list.

You've talked about the statistical information, and you indicated there has been a 75% reduction in calls for police services. Can you correlate the reduction in calls to police services with a reduction in crime?

[Kevin McNichol]

The calls we were talking about are repeat calls for service. The homes we go into are non-charge in the first place. There are about 16,000 calls a year that are domestic incidents, and typically 3,000 of those, give or take, will result in a criminal charge. That still leaves 13,000 calls for help. Police go and do what they can do, but then they will often walk away. We know at least 30% of those homes will have a second call within three months, because, I would suggest, the social issues that are leading to the calls were not addressed by the officers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

That's fine. Thank you very much.

We will now go to Mr. Easter for seven minutes, please.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to both witnesses for great presentations.

I might also say that in the study on the economics of policing, especially in the Edmonton Police Service but also Calgary—although you're not with the Calgary Police Service—there was a lot of innovation seen in those two communities as well.

Starting with you, Mr. McNichol, you mentioned the evaluation systems in your presentation. How important are the evaluation systems, and why?

[Kevin McNichol]

They are absolutely critical. A well-run non-profit and a social serving agency should be collecting and evaluating its data. It's good business. It's good practice. We need to know that we do good work with our clients. The social innovation, the SCIF funding that Jackie talked about, was instrumental in bringing a new way of thinking about how we measure our impact, and that is the social return-on-investment idea. It's a different way of conceptualizing how we are making impact, and if often helps us to broaden our sense and understanding of the changes that we're helping our clients to realize and how they have ripple effects out into the larger communities and larger systems.

That is critical to understanding the value of the work we do.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I agree with you 100%.

I'll turn to Madam Biollo on this. In your presentation, you had a number of points on page 4, a number of questions you raised—all good ones. What oversight regime would support initiatives? I guess I would come at it from the angle of the question I asked Mr. McNichol. What types of evaluations do you need? How important is oversight? How broad does it have to be? Would you have oversight with regard to the mix of programs across the country? Ultimately, who would be responsible for that? Would it require federal leadership coming out of the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, or what?

Could you put some meat on the bones, so to speak?

[Jacqueline Biollo]

Mr. Easter, thank you very much for the question.

I agree that evaluation certainly is an important component of any project. Whether it be innovative, a pilot, or long-standing, it allows organizations, as well as the EPS, to look at their internal resources, to decipher collaboration, and to allocate the resources accordingly. Obviously, moving forward, it also allows us to have the evidence base to go in search of additional funding if and when doing so.

You referenced some of the questions on page 4 of my presentation. These are examples of where we in the EPS, too, in the infancy stages of the exploration of social financing, see questions that we are concerned about. I would need to start by saying that even for us, if the governments at all levels are not interested in social innovation or social financing in whatever capacity, then we do need alternate means. Where do we go in search of those?

Evaluation does need leadership. In a program such as this, we probably would look to the levels of government to set the foundation and assist us with the governance aspect. From our perspective, we've been very successful in setting up partnership agreements, memorandums of understanding, and terms of reference that succinctly outline what the goals and expectations of each organization are.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Yes. I think you're coming to some points that.... There's no question that there seems to be considerable favour and considerable push, actually, on the government side, for the social impact bonds. I think some of the rest of us are looking at how you make that work in a fair and balanced way across the country.

In some areas where there isn't as much investment, how do you prevent national crime prevention policies from being reduced? We hear they're not going to be, but I've heard that before. We have a government that really is not all that interested in national strategies, and this is a push by the federal government. What are the As, Bs, and Cs that we need to pinpoint—and these questions are a good start—that need to be put in place to ensure the national government is providing the leadership on all those other areas beyond just the social impact bond?

Do either of you have any suggestions?

[Jacqueline Biollo]

Thank you again.

If the question is directed at us, I think you need to look at the risk of not doing something like this. Again, there's a leadership opportunity. Most of the programs may not be transferable. We can't perhaps pick up one program and implement it wholeheartedly in other jurisdictions just because of the demographics, the dynamics, the political will, or the organizational support from not-for-profits. But I appreciate the opportunity to present before you, as outlined in our report, some of the questions that I would continue to encourage your committee to investigate, to perhaps provide confidence to organizations that are looking at social impact bonds as options.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. McNichol, do you have anything to add?

[Kevin McNichol]

No, I don't think so.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

You have mentioned evaluation. Do you believe that it may be necessary to have some national oversight? Or can that be broken down at regional levels or project levels? I guess my question, too, would be, how do you coordinate this into an overall crime prevention agenda?

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

That's your time, Mr. Easter.

[Kevin McNichol]

I think for me the key element is that each one of these is going to be centric to the community. I think Jacqueline talked about that quite clearly around the capacities of each community, the big-P and small-p political will, and who are your champions within that community. I don't think you're going to be able to rubber-stamp these pieces.

For these to be successful, I think the key is to really follow a community development approach, where you listen to the community. The community will tell you what they want and what they're willing to champion. As they tell you that, that's where the investors will also be coming from—that community—to step in and participate. When you have that marriage, you'll have success.

The previous speaker talked about how there's a whole bunch of things you can do, a menu of things you can do, in terms of preventing crime. None of them are bad. All of them produce positive outcomes. We need to find ways to do more of them, wherever you choose to start. I think it's really incumbent on us to say that we need to prevent crime as a national strategy and then support our individual communities to say, “This is how we want to prevent crime in this community.”

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Rousseau, you have four minutes.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As social democrats, we have a problem with social impact bonds as regards program governance. Will the programs be available to all Canadians across the country? Will they be available up north to first nations communities? Will they be provided in urban and rural areas equally? Will they support crime prevention policies based on the various indicators and measures of crime around the country? What can you tell me about that, Ms. Biollo?

[Jacqueline Biollo]

Thank you very much for the question.

I do think that in using the intermediary, although we've heard that a lot of the philanthropic initiatives are very community-based, it is recognizable that many of these systemic barriers are international, not only national.

To your question on whether these programs could be portable to remote locations, I think that's where the opportunities are that not only the federal government but the provincial governments are identifying as high priorities. They're investing the time and due diligence to champion these initiatives and then leveraging the partnerships or the opportunities through the intermediary and investors to address these systemic barriers. I do actually think that opportunities through social impact bonds would be available to all communities across Canada.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. McNichol, I'd like to hear your take on the issue.

[Kevin McNichol]

I would support that position. I think what's interesting is that depending on how the vehicles are set up, and I just think of Alberta, and northern Alberta with the oil sands development—

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Exactly.

[Kevin McNichol]

—and the other issues that are there, the opportunity is potentially there to have those companies, if we set up and support those communities and talk about how they want to deal with and address the issue of crime. This might be a very effective avenue, where there are intermediaries and government involved, supporting the community interest and bridging in the alternate sources of financing, to enhance the services and programs that are there.

Will every community be able to benefit from these? I don't think so. But that's where I was saying that we need to look at this as a menu of opportunity. In bringing in additional items on the menu, hopefully the result will be an enhanced ability to provide a broader social safety net. The broader the net, the more people we're going to cover, and the greater the benefit across the country, in my opinion.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Ms. Biollo, are you convinced that social impact bonds can help Canada's and Alberta's social fabric?