Thank you. I'd be happy to hear the thoughts from others as well.
There is some great work starting to happen through the Treasury and Policy Board of the Government of Nova Scotia and through HRSDC and Service Canada. It's quite exciting and interesting to see. I'll give you a small example.
Depending on the funding stream for some of the contracts now, you can go to a flat rate that's tied into administrative costs. It used to be the case that each of your items had to be itemized and there needed to be a rationale, and so on. It's easy enough to do, but it's utterly laboursome to do. After a while--I think it was on the heels of some of the problems in the past--things got so restrictive that in the run of a day you'd spend the majority of your time managing that, as opposed to doing the service delivery for which you were receiving funding. I hope we're swinging back to a more commonsensical perspective where, yes, there's accountability, but there's also the flexibility built in so that people can do what they're being funded to do, which is to exercise their understanding and basic knowledge and to get out the door the services they're receiving the funding to get out the door.
We should look at it from a “what's sensible to do” perspective. I know that becomes challenging when we're talking big dollars on a national scale, but we should also do it with the informed understanding that to do the proactive things means a huge cost savings. Locally there is a research piece called “The Cost of Homelessness” that was done by an individual named Frank Palermo, who's a professor at Dalhousie University. He did an extensive literature review. One of the things he came back with was specifically on the issue of supportive housing. His estimate was something in the 40% range as a quick and bulky summary, but nonetheless there it is. There was something in the area of a 40% cost savings in the long term to provide the supports up front that are required. It's with that understanding from a policy perspective that things that operate on a 12-month funding cycle are hugely problematic. Our work is not always necessarily a short-term intervention. It's done with a long-term view and a long-term impact. It's like any other investment.
I would encourage this committee to understand that this work we are doing, which the Government of Canada is supporting, is an investment. When you understand it from an investment perspective, then you start to look differently at what a reasonable rate of return on the dividends is, and you can start to understand it in the same way that we look at other investments. It's no different from some of the money that's gone into the stimulus. We understand that we're building for a year or two years out, and so on. Part of what's required is not only specific changes, but a cultural shift in how we think about funding NGOs and what it is we're looking for in terms of return on that investment.