Human Resources Committee on March 12th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

That's the five minutes.

[Sherrie Marshall, Manager of Operations, Crossing All Bridges Learning Centre]

Being a non-government funded program—

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

That's the five minutes.

Mr. Goguen, for five minutes, sir.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you to all the witnesses for your testimony. It's pretty inspiring to see the resiliency you have. What probably intersects all three of your causes is that you make Canadian citizens with disabilities or obstacles certainly more productive, so we all win from that.

I was wondering about the YOU organization. You deal with the homeless. I know that every individual is different, but what is the face of homelessness in your world? Who are the typical people on the street who you help? Do they have learning disabilities or developmental challenges? Tell us about it.

[Steve Cordes]

That's a very good question.

I'll start off by saying that there is such a range of situations, but there are now a significant number of people with various mental health issues. We seem to hear about that more and more across the country, and we're certainly seeing it. Homelessness may have resulted from intergenerational poverty, not always but that's often a theme. Certainly mental health breakdown somewhere between a parent and a child is also a cause, with somebody ending up living in a shelter or couch surfing, which means they're staying with friends for a few days at a time but have no address. Eventually they end up at Youth Opportunities Unlimited.

We have a drop-in centre. That's the starting point for many people with us. That's where Courtney started with us, and that's where you can come in for breakfast. We feed 60 people a day. We see about 100 people a day, about 60 of them for food, and 30 who we house in apartments. But it's not just about food. I think one of the folks who uses our services described it by saying, “In London, Ontario, if you're homeless, you don't have to starve.” There are church kitchens. There's the food bank. There are all kinds of opportunities. You struggle and you're not going to get well, but you will not die from no food. However, you may die from isolation, because coming in for food is just the starting point. Really, what you're doing at that point is coming in for some social interaction.

Think about the world of work and how much interaction we get because we get to debate things at a committee meeting, or we talk. Then we go home and talk with our spouse about what our day was like and so on.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

It's a sense of belonging.

[Steve Cordes]

Exactly. If you're homeless, your sense of belonging is upside down because your friends are people who want something from you. Your friends are there to take advantage of you, so you can't trust them. If you have had bad experiences with institutions, you don't trust them either, so who do you trust?

For us, that's the starting point. You come in and there's very little expectation other than asking, “What do you need from us?” That's the starting point, followed by, “Where are you sleeping tonight? What do you need tonight? Hopefully, we'll see you tomorrow.” Then you start a relationship: “Have you thought about working, going back to school?” We have very structured programs that kick in at times, but we wrap those programs around these young folks, so they don't feel like they're going from this program to that program, and so on. They're talking to Steve, then they're talking to Mirella, and then they're talking to somebody else, that kind of stuff.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

All right. Working with people with a developmental challenge is obviously very challenging. Not all people have the capacity to work eight hours a day or to sustain working. I'm wondering in what kind of a combination you do that.

Also, I'd like to ask this question to Crossing All Bridges because I suspect you work very heavily in the same sort of sphere.

To Crossing All Bridges—perhaps after you answer, Mr. Cordes—I am wondering if you have someone from the operation who acts as a buffer with the employer to accommodate the needs of the people you try to place in a work setting.

I'll go with you first, Mr. Cordes, if that's okay.

[Steve Cordes]

Absolutely, and I'll be brief on that.

We're big advocates of very flexible programming. Not everybody can work full time; they might get there.

I think starting a job for some of the folks we represent is almost like quitting smoking. If you smoke, everybody says, “Oh my gosh, why wouldn't you quit? It's so unhealthy. It's so expensive”, and so on. But it's hard to do, isn't it? If somebody quits for a while and then goes back to cigarettes, no one jumps all over them and says, “I knew you weren't really motivated. You had no motivation to quit smoking”, and so on. Yet if somebody loses their job, that tends to be what we think of them, “Oh, you weren't motivated. You didn't take it seriously”, and so on.

It's a very hard thing. They're going into a world of work that they sometimes don't understand, brand new social situations where people are talking about their kids, their vacations, and so on. For someone who's been homeless, what do they talk about with their colleagues? It requires flexibility.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

To the folks from Crossing All Bridges, what kinds of special steps do you have to take to integrate people into the workforce?

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

I need very quick wrap-up comments. Please go ahead, each of the witnesses by teleconference. First we have Crossing All Bridges.

[Sherrie Marshall]

We have individuals who take a very long time to learn any skill and to be able to execute it on a regular basis. Therefore, we are in continual training. Every day is like a new day for us. Therefore, when approaching employers at the present time—which is why we want to have social enterprise—we can only include these individuals in a volunteer way because employers aren't ready to have to do that much training and retraining all the time, and not have them be able to work for long periods of time. They can work for very small stretches, and then not always consistently in those areas.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Ms. Mason.

[Gillian Mason]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank you again for inviting us here today. I would very much like to maintain the dialogue we're having, because the kinds of questions that have been posed today are the kinds of questions we will get better and better at answering as we experience what it is to really have a social enterprise. I look forward to continuing to work in partnership with you to meet the social challenges of Canada.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you, witnesses, for your testimony here today.

I think it's been a interesting week in many ways for our committee. On Tuesday we had the supply side of the equation for social finance. Those are the intermediaries and financiers who are trying to look for opportunities to invest within the social sphere. We heard their story about the fact that, frankly, at this point, they're not able to find enough demand for the money they have available. Today we've heard from three organizations who I believe have a need for investment on the demand side.

One of the things that hopefully will come out of our study, which I think has a very good possibility of expanding because we've had a lot of interest in this study, is a report that gives a unique Canadian perspective on this and will begin to bridge those disconnects that perhaps exist today so that organizations like yours can benefit and prosper, move forward in the future, and achieve your goals.

Thank you again for being here with us.

Committee members, that concludes today's meeting.