Essentially it's the fact that the people investing in social finance do need to make a profit. They need to meet targets to get payment on their investment. With that in mind, it's understandable that even if you're willing to accept a lower rate of return, you do have to make some profit. Social investors are going to choose projects that give them a good chance of making a profit. That's been the case. None of the social impact bond projects that have come forward so far have involved anything radically new that hasn't been tried elsewhere.
The other faulty assumption is that the government's been throwing money at problems, which is a phrase you also hear sometimes in various forms. In fact, the government's been clawing it back. If you look at the history of social transfers over the last 25 years, there have been drastic cuts to federal funding for social services.
To use one small example, in 1996, cuts introduced then removed $4 billion from social services in Canada. Some of the problems we're seeing today aren't the result of throwing money at problems; they're the result of clawing it back.