Human Resources Committee on March 24th, 2015

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Mr. Butt.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to everyone, but in particular, to my friends from Mississauga, welcome to Parliament Hill.

Thank you for being here today and sharing the great work your organizations are doing.

I have two questions, one for Peel Multicultural Council and one for Eden. That's not to ignore the great work the United Way is doing on social enterprise, and in particular the United Way of Peel Region. It's been a real champion of social enterprise. I want to make sure that's on the record.

Naveed, I want to start with you. When Peel Multicultural Council decided to create this new legal services social enterprise idea, you came to see me. I think it's a great idea. Why did you decide that was the right model for the delivery of this new program that you wanted to offer? You've been a very successful settlement services and newcomer agency for maybe two or three decades now, that I'm familiar with. What was the idea behind going the social enterprise route? Why did you think that was the best body with which to deliver this service?

[Naveed Chaudhry]

Social enterprise in itself was taught as a tool for delivering new services and also for the sustainability of PMC, so that's the whole idea of where it is coming from. But it's important to note that we chose this area because there are service gaps. We see settlement services and then there are gaps because newcomers, if they need legal services, if they need life services, or if they need immigration services for their families, are sometimes lost and don't know where to go. Sometimes they're paying high dollars for the small service they are getting.

So there's a need out there. The need plus our ability to deliver is what pushed us into going for this. As well, we have had similar successful projects by settlement agencies. There's an agency in Belleville that does translation and interpretation services as its social enterprise, and they are doing very well. They are in the black and they are reinvesting the profit they are making from this project back into their social services. Similarly, an agency in Sault Ste. Marie does immigration services. We chose it because we are in a bigger geographical area and we think we have the capacity to do three related areas.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you.

The community learning kitchen I always thought was such a fabulous extension of the services you're providing as a traditional food bank in Mississauga, because I think it takes us to the next level, which is making sure people are preparing food properly, that they're rationing properly, spreading out the allotment of food that many of your clients are getting from the food bank. It's their main food source.

As I understand it, there's also a component of potential employment, training people to become cooks, and obviously helping people to improve their employment prospects. Can you share a little about how that is all integrating and working within the community learning kitchen and then how you're also bringing in the private sector to play a role in that as well, and engaging them in supporting this social enterprise initiative?

[Peter Costello]

Thank you.

Yes, the community learning kitchen, when it comes to employment and training and things like that, we do with our social enterprise. We also bring people in from the low-income community, students and others, and we train them in basic cooking skills. Some of them will go on. Right now I have somebody who's doing basically a pre-apprenticeship before starting Stratford Chefs School, which is an amazing cooking school. She's going to be training with me over the eight-week program. She's helping me teach the hands-on classes for my clients of the food bank.

We also do things with Carassauga. We have people come in and we train them. We pay them. This is the whole thing with the social enterprise. They're coming in, they're being trained, and they're being paid at the same time so they see what the avenues are and they see what it's like to be in a working environment. With Carassauga, they serve in the Brazilian pavilion. That's what we do there. That's a really great opportunity for a lot of the people who are sons and daughters of clients, and also some of the clients, to learn about the industry.

I also have a number of people who have taken the classes and been part of it and have gotten enough confidence to get jobs in the industry. Even though they weren't specifically training to be cooks or chefs, they ended up going into the industry and finding work. It just gave them that much more confidence to do it.

The other aspect is the corporate groups. We do a lot of corporate engagement. As you know, Mississauga has a lot of large corporations, so we'll bring in a lot a groups from every walk of life. Eight to 12 people come in, they learn some basic cooking skills, and then they produce up to 300 portions of food that get distributed to the food bank. It allows them to see the operations of the food bank and what we can do to support the community through their active engagement.

So it's a bit of a two-way street, and I think that's really important to understand that; we are not there cap in hand. We're there as a partnering organization with them, and so—

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you. I'm going to have to end it there.

[Peter Costello]

I'm sorry. I get excited.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

We're way over time, but I appreciate your explanation.

Now on to Mr. Cuzner for five minutes.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

To the witnesses today, thank you.

I'll direct this to Ms. Gagnon, but I would appreciate input from the other witnesses as well, because I trust you see it all from your vantage point. I guess this comes from what Ms. Sims had asked for a yes-or-no answer to, but it obviously involves more than a yes-or-no answer.

There's a concern that governments could pull back public funding in areas where services are currently being delivered by the public. Your comment that there's no one answer for complex social issues was right on. This social financing certainly provides other opportunities in some situations.

Could you develop—and I know Mr. Crawford, you had trouble giving this a yes-or-no answer—the areas that you see will benefit from social investment? And are there specific areas in which you don't see social financing, in which governments will have to continue to provide services?

I'll throw the question out there.

[Carole Gagnon]

There are certain areas. There are people in crisis, for instance, or people who constantly need some support. A certain percentage of the population will likely always require some assistance from either a government or charitable organizations. A larger percentage of the population, however, could benefit from social finance types of investments.

To name just a few, there are people with disabilities who want to participate in a workplace, new Canadians who want to participate in a workplace, people who are coming out of jails who want to reintegrate into society. There are many areas that government ought to examine with consultation around the impact of investing in one or another area and really an understanding of which population or which issue is best left untouched for this kind of finance.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

It has to be done on a case-by-case basis.

[Carole Gagnon]

I think so. That's my understanding.

[Bill Crawford]

I think my response to this is that basically there's a limited amount of donation dollars in Canada and there's a limited amount of investment dollars in Canada. We have to make sure that we put in place safeguards so that we're not trading one for the other: so that the donations to charities continue and there's a value to that; that investing in social enterprise projects or social finance initiatives in the future has a separate value, a separate mechanism; and both are supported.

[Jagdeep Kailey, Manager, Settlement Services, Peel Multicultural Council]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think there is another advantage of social enterprise, in the sense that when we work with vulnerable communities there is always a need to develop social skills in them. There's a gap that community organizations sitting in the middle can fill. There are services that are always needed. However, once you provide those services you strengthen them. It's not just handing out some freebies to them. In fact, you are creating a social stance, a social asset, and experimenting with that is a great tool for all organizations, and we can look towards a greater future.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Teach a man to fish.

[Jagdeep Kailey]

Exactly.

[Peter Costello]

I would just comment that it's really important to understand that the scale of the solution has to meet the scale of the issue. So it's not us or them or any one individual, it's the combination. I think we need the support all the way through, with all three organizations—the social group, the government, and industry. We need to work as equal partners in all of this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Mr. Mayes.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you to our guests who are here today.

One of the issues we're looking at with social finance is just as Madam Gagnon mentioned, that we have to have a change. To have a change we need to have some sort of framework or guidelines to ensure that the rules are followed, that there are outcomes, and that there are measured results. There are some impediments to broadening involvement in social finance. For instance, with regard to CRA, there are issues around profit since non-profit organizations cannot have profit.

Can you tell the committee about any specific items you see that would require policy changes by the government in order to make available better support for social finance?

[Bill Crawford]

I think I was talking about that in my prepared notes. The CRA, as it is now, is in part an impediment to social finance and the development of social finance in Canada. The current rules and restrictions are confusing to start with, and create a lot of fear among charitable boards as to what they can and can't do. Some of that needs to be cleaned up. There needs to be more allowance for charities to engage in business-like ventures.

Of course, rules need to be in place in terms of profit back to the charity and different things like that, but the whole related business category needs to be expanded and clarified. That in itself will open up more opportunity and give charitable boards the confidence to be able to move forward.

I know in my own experience and the initiatives that we've initiated at Eden Community Food Bank around the community learning kitchen and starting social enterprise projects, and engaging with corporate partners, our board has always been very careful as to what we can or can't do based on our charitable status.

It's been holding us back in terms of what we can do, so that really needs to get looked at.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Madam Gagnon, do you have a comment?

[Carole Gagnon]

I would take it slightly differently.

First, I agree with what Bill has said. I think the other aspect is that the sector itself has to build its capacity to measure outcomes, which means, therefore, that investments in organizations have to include dollars toward their ability to measure outcomes. That's a shift; it no longer would be strictly about program delivery.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Would one of the targets be, though, with putting together a social financial plan, to have outcomes that would sustain the program? I know that one of the challenges with many organizations is that you're waiting for the dollars every year and it's difficult to be assured that you're going to be able to sustain the programs you've begun. Even if they're successful, sometimes, whether it's government funding or even donations, that might be an off-year.

Can you see where social finance, where you're investing in something where there is an ROI...that using that ROI gives you a revenue flow that is going to sustain the projects that you might have going? Can you see an advantage to that?

[Carole Gagnon]

I certainly can, over time; and I stress over time. Many a time we think the social return will be a short-term gain, and it's not. We have to be mindful of the runway that's required for us to start to see the benefits to our society. We have to plan, therefore, accordingly.