Thank you very much.
Thank you for the opportunity to present to you today.
The Canadian Community Economic Development Network, or CCEDNet, is a Canada-wide association of community groups, cooperatives, credit unions, municipalities, foundations and citizens committed to enhancing the social, economic and environmental conditions in communities throughout the country. We have several hundred members spread across every region of the country, including urban, rural, northern and aboriginal communities.
Community economic development is citizen-led action to enhance the social and economic conditions of communities on an integrated and inclusive basis. It reduces poverty, unemployment, and social disadvantage by building assets and creating opportunities. What distinguishes CED is its understanding of the interconnectedness of social, economic, and environmental issues, and a philosophy that the solutions that tend to be most effective to the complex problems that communities face are those that involve and are driven by the people most directly affected.
Community leaders understand that the complex challenges they face require multi-faceted responses. Recent trends in social economy, social finance, and community resiliency, all reflect that, expanding the scope of innovative community-based practices tremendously, with examples ranging from new community crowdfunding strategies to impact investing, Quebec's recent law on the social economy to the UN task force on the social and solidarity economy.
Our recommendations focus on how the government can implement the measures it has already committed to undertaking in the election and in the ministerial mandate letters, and ways that will maximize their success and value for communities.
First of all, the government will be making significant infrastructure investments, including much-needed social infrastructure. Building on the report exploring the potential of social finance in Canada under the leadership of Mr. McColeman this spring, the HUMA committee's report recommended that infrastructure investments include a social finance fund and a social infrastructure grant program that could leverage private investment and provide matching capital for durable social infrastructure projects, such as the proposed Canadian co-operative investment fund. Those investments also include a social impact scoring component on all infrastructure contracts and recipients, and that they include community benefit agreements similar to the provision enacted in Ontario's Bill 6 last year.
As part of Canada's climate change strategy, community renewable energy offers excellent local investment opportunities and tangible socio-economic impacts. While contributing to the transition to a low-carbon economy, community-based projects inspire a new kind of social entrepreneurship, building strong social licence for clean technologies and empowering local citizens, especially indigenous peoples, with the opportunity to reinvest clean energy project returns into local infrastructure, health, and education.
We recommend that new infrastructure investment include criteria that prioritize funding for clean energy projects for communities vulnerable to climate change and that financing is made available and affordable to communities and project developers through the Canadian infrastructure bank, including federal loan guarantees to support private investment.
Community enterprises operated by non-profits, co-ops, and microenterprises, established by or dedicated to supporting marginalized individuals in communities, create wealth and respond to the needs of rural and urban communities. Contrary to popular misconceptions, community enterprises have a higher survival rate than traditional SMEs, while offering a positive financial and social return on investment.
We recommend that social enterprises, non-profits, and co-operatives be given access to existing regulatory and tax measures and business development programs that are currently available to small and medium enterprises through awareness-raising efforts for government officials to ensure a level playing field for alternative forms of incorporation.
Finally, all of these recommendations will be most successful if they're implemented with a partnership approach. A round table bringing together representatives from the CED community and government would facilitate the ongoing co-construction and refinement of public policy in support of communities. This would provide access for meaningfully involving the CED sector in the development, and regular review of government initiatives to ensure they meet our shared public policy objectives.
Thank you.