Evidence of meeting #51 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was organizations.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chief Executive Officer, The Honourable William G. Davis Centre for Families
What the future holds....
Chief Executive Officer, The Honourable William G. Davis Centre for Families
It's crystal ball time. Well, I generally am a very optimistic person, and one of the things I do is invite people to come to the centre because a picture really paints a thousand words. There isn't a single person who comes through and doesn't say two things. They'll say, number one, “I had no idea”, meaning that they had no idea the level of need and the kind of needs for the services we have. Also they see that it makes such a big difference in the community and for the people who come. I think people also have a real sense of wanting to be part of something that builds hope and possibility in people's lives.
We're beginning another campaign to bring in more capital dollars to really develop that lower level in the building, so that we can provide space for other non-profit organizations that can't afford space. Again, it's the example of a space where people can come maybe when they want to do something but they don't even have revenue for rent. That's one of the things we're doing as well as having other areas where we can take in more tenants, because the more tenants I have paying rent increases the amount of revenue that comes into the building and then we can provide more service.
For me, that crystal ball is a combination of increasing those revenues for sustainability and having a good business model, on the one hand, but also making sure we're giving back to the community.
One of my visions for the agency in terms of social innovation is seeing how we can become a kind of backbone for other organizations. It's a very diverse community we live in. For example, I had a group of young people who call themselves Brampton's Multicultural Youth Council. This is a group started by a grade 10 student. By the time I met her, she was in grade 12 and had established quite a governance model for this group of growing young people, and we discovered they just happened to be using our space late on a Friday afternoon, in the early evening.
It was, like, who are these people and what program are they with? I found out they weren't with anyone. They were just a self-starting group, so I said, “Let's partner. Come and use the space”. I'd much rather they be in my space than at the mall. Let's give them some support. They don't have a charitable number. They can't do fundraising. Well, maybe I can do that fundraising and support that group for being able to innovate.
I think part of what we're doing as we strengthen our own organization is to be able to then provide for startup non-profits. We know how expensive the infrastructure for a non-profit organization is. You need a finance person, you need an ED, you have to get a charitable number, so how can we provide opportunities, especially for marginalized communities—and in this case, marginalized youth—to give them those kinds of opportunities? I think we can do so much more as non-profits when we are better resourced.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Phil McColeman
Thank you.
I think you're going to be our last questioner, Madam Groguhé.
Sadia Groguhé NDP Saint-Lambert, QC
Thank you.
Ms. Kenny, I would like to know what you think about the intervention of foundations, instead of federal institutions, in the funding of programs. Social finance also raises that aspect. Could you comment on that?
President, Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada
With your permission, I am going to let Diane answer because she has more expertise in this area.
Director, Community and Government Liaison, Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada
The first issue is the fact that federal funds are transferred to third parties; Marie-France referred to this earlier. When Canadian foundations or enterprises take initiatives, while having no official language obligations, and provide services to official language communities, they are quite simply not all that interested.
The second issue is the following. In the case of a big project where a foundation does have the obligation to serve the community, be it in French or in English, the linguistic safety space is lost. I will explain what I mean.
In communities where francophones are a small minority, French-speakers already have trouble obtaining services in French because everywhere they go they are spoken to in English. When a service could be offered in French, but is not actively offered because of the anglophone environment, people speak to francophones in English. We lose a lot of our people in that way.
That is one of the important facts that explain why we constantly make the point that francophones need to be served by francophone organizations, and solutions need to be found that take that into account.
President, Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada
I would like to add a few words about the foundation.
Most of the organizations in the Canadian French-speaking world, particularly in our communities, do not have a charity organization number. They are not entitled to one. This limits us when it comes to doing funding campaigns.
NDP
Sadia Groguhé NDP Saint-Lambert, QC
I see.
With other witnesses we discussed the matter of evaluating outcomes. It is certainly a very central and very important matter. You talked about impacts and how they are measured. My next question is addressed to all of you.
What criteria could we use in evaluating outcomes?
How can we look at this with regard to social finance?
Sharon, did you want to speak?
Chief Executive Officer, The Honourable William G. Davis Centre for Families
That's a great question. It's something we put a lot of thought into as well, looking at how we measure impact.
I think there are different layers or levels of measuring that impact. Certainly for us, with all of our programs we do pre- and post-testing. We're always evaluating and looking at the outcome evaluations for all of our programs. Those can demonstrate the impact of a service on individuals, couples, and families. You can see that immediate impact in people's lives.
When we look at larger-scale impacts, for a very large community, it's a challenge to measure some of those impacts. Doing that kind of impact study also requires dollars and investments of money. Sometimes we're asked to do that measuring, on the one hand, but we're not given the resources we would need to actually do the kind of study or the kind of work we need to do in order to demonstrate that impact. On the micro-level, we can demonstrate it. At a larger community-based level, we're just now beginning to be able to do that.
Let me give you an example with the Safe Centre of Peel, which is where people go when there are immediate issues of violence. We can look at the number of murders in Peel region. We can ask if some were prevented due to the existence of the safe centre. But how do you measure that? How do you prove that? It's next to impossible to be able to capture that—
Chief Executive Officer, The Honourable William G. Davis Centre for Families
—when you look at a million people, with a dynamic population moving in and out. I'm not saying you can't do it, but if you want that data, you need to invest in getting that data.
Before coming into my role as CEO, I was teaching at the University of Guelph. I like to see people breaking out of all these silos and beginning to partner more together across sectors, certainly across non-profit and corporate sectors but also in terms of knowledge generation and with universities engaging the academic sector to help us do these kinds of impact studies.
There was a question earlier, and my recommendation would be to build in funding and some money to do the kind of study of that impact, and, again taking a grassroots approach, to ask what kind of impact this community is looking at having in this community and what measures would make sense for that community.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Phil McColeman
Thank you very much.
I want to extend the committee's appreciation to both organizations for being here and for describing the work you're doing and your connection to our study, which is obviously on the types of organizations that would, perhaps, in the future benefit from social finance. We appreciate learning more about you.
I have one quick question. What was the building you renovated used for before you purchased it?
Chief Executive Officer, The Honourable William G. Davis Centre for Families
It had two previous lives before ours. It was the head office of a starch-making factory. It had a science lab. And before that, it was for glue.
Chief Executive Officer, The Honourable William G. Davis Centre for Families
Yes.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Phil McColeman
That's very interesting.
I'm working on a project in my community that is very similar to yours. Ours was a manufacturing facility for Spalding golf clubs. So there you go. You never know.
Chief Executive Officer, The Honourable William G. Davis Centre for Families
I'm very tempted to contact the previous owner and ask if they would buy me a new elevator electrical panel. I haven't done that yet.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Phil McColeman
Thank you very much.
We'll have a short break. When we come back, we'll be on video conference.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Phil McColeman
I'll ask committee members to please come back to order. We will begin the meeting.
We're now connected with our witnesses from Toronto. Just before we begin the second half, continuing with our witnesses, I want to take a moment for committee business to inform the committee of a couple of things.
The committee decided to present to the Liaison Committee our proposal to travel to the United Kingdom on this study of social finance. The Liaison Committee approved our revised budget to travel. Now that approved budget will go to the whips of the respective parties for their approvals to authorize our travel. That's the status right now. The whips will determine whether or not we travel. I want to let everyone know that.
Second, we had a committee meeting cancelled Tuesday of this week because of the budget presentation. We had on our schedule for next Thursday to discuss our travel arrangements. We will be trying to reschedule for next Thursday the witnesses who were cancelled on Tuesday of this week.
Is that all I needed to cover?
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Phil McColeman
We had projected that we perhaps would travel during early May. Our clerk has found out there's an election in the U.K. and there are people we want to speak to in government at that time. We're also proposing that we will postpone our travel, should it be approved by the whips, to the end of May, after the election and at a time when it will be much more convenient to talk to the appropriate people who are involved with social finance inside government.
Mr. Boughen.
Conservative
