Evidence of meeting #51 for Finance in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was youth.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Dalal Al-Waheidi  Executive Director, WE Charity
Scott Baker  Chief Operations Officer, WE Charity
Sofia Marquez  Former Staff Member, Government and Stakeholder Relations, WE Charity, As an Individual
John-Frederick Cameron  Chief Executive Officer, Katimavik

4:25 p.m.

Conservative

Marty Morantz Conservative Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB

Okay. Thank you.

4:25 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

Thank you. I believe you're on the list for a little later, Marty.

We'll have Mr. Fragiskatos, followed by Mr. Fortin.

Peter.

4:25 p.m.

Liberal

Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Cameron, for your testimony.

In your experience and the experience of the organization, certainly running large programs.... As I think you put it, this is what you do as an organization. You connect volunteers with opportunities that are available. I want to know about administration costs in the public domain. Because of what happened with WE, they would have been paid, as you know, a maximum of $43.5 million to build and administer the program.

On the face of it, I think the average Canadian hears that and might have some questions about why programs cost so much to build and administer. Do you have any thoughts on that?

4:25 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Katimavik

John-Frederick Cameron

It's an expensive activity at times to safely engineer a program where you're moving young people from community to community, and the cost attached to that through travel and through housing is expensive. It can be expensive.

On the program's specific cost, I have no comment to make on whether that was an appropriate amount of money. I would have to—

4:25 p.m.

Liberal

Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON

I'm not asking you that. No, it would be unfair to ask you that. I'm asking a general question about administrative costs that are incurred by organizations such as yours to build up programs and oversee them. It's not an inexpensive thing. You're saying that it's very costly.

4:25 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Katimavik

John-Frederick Cameron

Yes, and administrative costs as a percentage of program costs in the sector usually run anywhere between 10% to 20%, given the charity, to answer your question.

4:25 p.m.

Liberal

Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON

Okay, thank you very much.

The Canada student service grant program as envisioned—and I agree with you—was innovative on paper. There was a great deal of promise and potential there. It does not look like it will go ahead. There is money on the table as a result, up to $500 million. In your view, as someone whose life's work is focused on youth, do you have thoughts or ideas on what government should do with respect to that money and how it can invest it in youth or in other areas? Do you have any perspectives on that?

4:25 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Katimavik

John-Frederick Cameron

The scope and the focus of this particular program, as I said in my opening, is something that we very much believe in, because obviously students have been displaced from jobs that they would need to continue their education.

First of all, I would say that it's unfortunate, because I think we don't want to see an entire generation of youth delay their post-secondary education and, therefore, delay unnecessarily their entry into the job market for a year or two.

Katimavik did write the minister a letter to say that one of the things that we were proposing we consider, as a country, going forward, is that some people might argue that university-educated youth or post-secondary education students are somewhat privileged. They can afford to go to school, they have some benefits to help them to do that, or they are eligible for grants. However, there's a whole subset of other youth for whom I think this was a wonderful opportunity to enter into training, those who, otherwise, would not have had the chance or have conceived that they had the opportunity to do that. Therefore, we could more broadly serve a larger segment of young people.

That is what I would say around doing a better job in terms of this particular initiative.

4:30 p.m.

Liberal

Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON

Thank you very much.

I have a couple of minutes remaining, but I'll leave it with one question. I think it's a very important one.

Because of some of the challenges that have arisen here.... Let's make no mistake, while the program as envisioned held a great deal of potential, there were mistakes made in the execution. I think that's very fair to say at this point. As a result, for Canadian citizens looking at this and thinking about the government's ability to help fund youth service opportunities in the future, there could be some hesitation on the part of citizens when it comes to that.

Do you have any thoughts on what you would say about the importance of youth service and the need for federal governments, this one and ones in the future, to continue to look to cultivate that, champion it and fund it?

4:30 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Katimavik

John-Frederick Cameron

Yes, absolutely. What I would say is that the results speak for themselves. As I mentioned in my opening statement, these young people who leave programs like ours were previously unaware as to how they could contribute and find ways to do so. They leave these programs with a tremendous sense of renewed confidence, very self-aware of who they are and committed to the next stage of their journey.

It's up to us, I think, organizations like ours to also provide.... This is where I would say—just to get back to your previous question for a minute—there's an opportunity to do some more with any residual money that is there that could be invested to provide job skills training and employment training.

Take that exercise of investing in them and building up their confidence, building up their self-esteem, confronting whatever issues they have in their life that they're facing...and as you can imagine, there are a lot of mental health challenges. I know you're aware of this in terms of youth in general. As we confront that, the second part of that job is essentially to position them for a working life. The investment, I think, will speak for itself, because we already see that seven out of 10, just broadly speaking, who come from a multitude of these programs, change their lives around in a very successful way and go on to contribute to society.

4:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

We'll have to move to Mr. Fortin, who will be followed by Mr. Julian.

Mr. Fortin.

4:30 p.m.

Bloc

Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, Mr. Cameron. Thank you for being here.

I'm not sure I understood your answer to the following question.

Do you think Katimavik could have managed the grant program we're talking about now?

4:30 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Katimavik

John-Frederick Cameron

I would say to you that we have the knowledge and the capacity to have participated in the management of the program. I believe that for a program like this to succeed, it would have had to have been a collaborative effort, leveraging the expertise that some charities and some non-profits bring in terms of the placement and the development of the cohorts and managing that whole exercise.

The other part of it is that we wouldn't have had an infrastructure like a web portal that could be up and running in two weeks. I'll be a little flippant. I hope you don't mind if I say this. If somebody came to us with a sound investment and said that we had two or three months and they were going to invest a good degree of funds with us, could we have developed that capacity relatively quickly? I would say, yes, we would, but I wouldn't say, even if that were the case, that it would have been a smart, efficient way to do it, rather than bringing together a collaboration of charities that specialize in this area.

4:35 p.m.

Bloc

Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC

It's a bit like what WE Charity wanted to do by subcontracting to Katimavik or other organizations. It's sort of the same thing.

If I understand correctly, you would have done something similar, right?

4:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Katimavik

John-Frederick Cameron

Yes, we would have formed a collaboration, but of course our emphasis would have been on organizations that excel and have the expertise in volunteer placements.

4:35 p.m.

Bloc

Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC

Right.

Do you think Youth Service Canada could have done the same work? Could it have delivered this contract instead of WE Charity?

4:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Katimavik

John-Frederick Cameron

Are you referring to ESDC?

4:35 p.m.

Bloc

Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC

That's right. I'm talking about Youth Service Canada.

4:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Katimavik

John-Frederick Cameron

I'm not sufficiently aware of their capacity, to answer that question.

4:35 p.m.

Bloc

Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC

Do you think organizations other than WE Charity and Katimavik could have carried out this contract?

4:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Katimavik

John-Frederick Cameron

As I said before, I think a number of other charities—and we're blessed as a country to have so many non-profits that are skilled in this area—could have come together and delivered the program, leveraging each other's expertise.

I'll try to speed this up so that I don't take up your time. Not all of us possess necessarily the same infrastructure, but we possess different levels of capacity. On the capacity side, I would say, yes, we could have, but we would have needed an organization that had the infrastructure in place to use the portal in an execution framework.

4:35 p.m.

Bloc

Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC

Thank you, Mr. Cameron.

I don't want to rush you, but you know that the time we have in committee is limited.

Does Katimavik have facilities in Quebec?

4:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Katimavik

John-Frederick Cameron

Our head office is in Quebec, yes, and we run programs in Quebec.

4:35 p.m.

Bloc

Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC

As I understand it, you have employees who speak French, and the entire francophone infrastructure is in place in Quebec.

If you had been asked to manage the grant program in Quebec, would you have been able to do so?

4:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Katimavik

John-Frederick Cameron

Yes, we have the capacity to do that.