Human Resources committee  Yes, I'll provide some overall comments on social impact bonds. I think you have had some comments on them from prior speakers as well. We believe in the concept of a social impact bond, which is pay for performance, and which introduces new players and uses private capital, and we believe in de-risking it for governments, and so forth.

Human Resources committee  I don't think that I would be the best person to provide that view.

Human Resources committee  Yes, you are actually correct. In our current loan program, getting access to financing, period, is a struggle for some of these businesses. But in many cases, and this is why we saw this opportunity to work with the banks and so forth, they were able to get financing through banks and other traditional sources.

Human Resources committee  I have two comments on that. We work with community partners like the YMCA and Goodwill, who provide such support, if needed, for these candidates. They are the judge if that's needed or not. We are more the intermediary. Secondly, what we believe is appealing with the model that I described is that half a percentage equates to $3,000 over a period of a five-year-term loan.

Human Resources committee  Yes. It's a little trickier to do the evaluation of the savings to the government. But yes, absolutely, because those population groups are served by the partners we're working with, in addition to other population groups, we believe it's transferable. But what's exciting about this whole set-up that we're working on right now is that if the banks take this on, instantly you can have a national scale with your program.

Human Resources committee  These are very interesting questions. My having come from the private sector into the social sector, it has been an eye opener for me. I often make the parallel or correlation with the venture capital world where you invest in the entrepreneur and create the conditions for the entrepreneur to be successful.

Human Resources committee  We have two due diligence processes. One is our financial due diligence and the other is our social due diligence. The financial due diligence process looks quite similar to a bank's. However, in the bank you have the sales department and the credit department, and there are more guidelines there.

Human Resources committee  I'll give you an example. We invested in an organization in Winnipeg, a renovation company. They had a submission to hire urban aboriginals in the business, so it was a classical social enterprise. Their customers were non-profits, but more and more so the commercial sector clients, as it's a fee-for-service enterprise, similar to any other renovation company, only that a majority of the staff were urban aboriginals.

Human Resources committee  It's a great question, and I'm sure that prior speakers have touched on this. In our case, we're a non-profit funded by a philanthropist, so our motivation is purely to be a catalyst for new models and approaches. A best-case scenario would be to deploy 100% of our capital into our initiatives and loans and so forth.

Human Resources committee  Yes, I think the topic of evaluation is a tricky one. I say that from a couple of perspectives. I think Sandra in the prior session talked about the different types of investors, from the impact first investors to the finance first investors. I think you see the same in terms of evaluation depending on the investor.

Human Resources committee  I have a couple of comments. When we give a business a loan, we tell them that they have a year to hire at least 20% of the total staff from the population groups I've been talking about. If they're not able to meet that target, we reserve the right to call the loan. So we have a target like that.

Human Resources committee  We deal in the area of employment for people with barriers to employment. For us, the current way the system is set up—and I'm speaking to the provincial systems in terms of how the community service agencies like the YMCA and such are being paid—is that it's based on the number of people who attend training sessions and on the number of people who are placed in jobs.

Human Resources committee  Thank you for this opportunity. I believe that the speakers in prior sessions have talked about social finance at large, social enterprise, social impact bonds, and how to unlock capital for foundations, and so forth. All those topics are very important and are very promising, but I will perhaps take the discussion in a slightly different direction.